Our Lives and Our Legacy: A Personal Essay

Betty-Anne Howard

Betty-Anne and her peers at the 2023 CAGP Conference

Recently I attended the Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP) conference in Vancouver, BC. This incredible event has broadened and enhanced my perspective on our lives and legacy, and since May is “Leave A Legacy” month, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to share my experiences with you.

My trip begins: On my way to the CAGP 2023 conference in Vancouver

If you’re wondering who and what CAGP is and does, you’re not alone. I felt exactly the same way a few years ago. That was before I learned more and then joined CAGP, as a Professional Member (most of the members of CAGP are charities). I am grateful for that decision, as being a member has allowed me to learn a great deal about how much charities value their donors, the incredible work the charities are doing and how all of us can work together to change the face of planned giving – which includes gifts in our wills.

CAGP is a home for those of us who want to make a difference in the world while addressing the barriers and challenges we face in the charitable and financial service sector.

Your Money Your Impact by Lynn Whetam, CFP

I was excited to attend the conference, and as I boarded my flight to Vancouver I took out my friend Lynn Whetam’s newly published book to read on the flight: Your Money Your Impact: Connect With Your Values And Design A Financial Plan That Leaves A Lasting Legacy.

Your Money Your Impact by Lynn L. Whetham CFP

Lynn’s book immediately became a bestseller on it’s release, which doesn’t surprise me, given her passion and purpose in life is helping others in ways that will enhance their lives and communities.

Experience tells me that people are thirsting for and craving this information and guidance for leading a more purposeful life. As a result, Lynn’s book is meant to directly enhance the lives of the people with whom she works by multiplying their impact on those causes that are most meaningful to each of them.

Lynn and I have weekly conversations via Zoom to discuss the many challenges we face as Financial Planners in an environment where we, at times, feel isolated given our desire to; in Lynn’s words “empower people to make conscious decisions when it comes to their money.” We support each other in helping our clients and others make informed decisions, weighing the pros and cons of different options in their financial lives from a values-based and purposeful lens.

Her book was a powerful way to begin my journey, and the perfect companion for my flight!

Thinking about legacy – what matters to us?

As I mentioned earlier, May is “Leave A Legacy” month and I had on my to-do list pre-conference to write an article about legacy for my blog. So while I was traveling and waiting for the conference to begin, I began to think about what legacy means to me.

Legacy conversations often begin with asking ourselves what’s essential and why. In addition to our families and loved ones, what else matters to us? What is something that we want people to value and treasure about us?

When I work with clients I ask the question “Who and what has made a difference in your life and how did that person or experience make a difference?” But on this trip I turned the lens on myself.

This made me think about how my Grandparents, who were farmers, had no hydro electricity and no other income except their Old Age Security. Despite their circumstances, they conveyed repeatedly to me via their words and actions that no matter how little or how much you have, you must always “lend a helping hand” whenever you can, however you can.

It comes as no surprise then that my Mother carried on that philosophy and tradition, even though we were living “below the poverty line” for most of my life. I don’t think I truly understood how ingrained this message became for me and how it embedded itself into the fabric of my life until I started asking myself these legacy questions AND learning more from the charities I talk to about the impact I and others could have in fulfilling their mission in our communities.

For example, because of the generosity of two high school teachers in my community I was given the opportunity to experience my first play at the age of 14. This experience had a profound impact on my life, and the memory of their kind charity has inspired me to do the same. It gives me great pleasure to be able to magnify my gift to a Foundation for the Performing Arts so that other kids, who like me due to financial constraints wouldn’t have exposure and may not be drawn to the theatre, would be given that opportunity.

After my Mother’s death due to cancer at the very young age of 64, I became quite interested in the work being done at the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. Their cancer coaching program that helps support families and their loved ones who are dealing with a cancer diagnosis and treatment sounded ideal to me, given what my family had gone through.

We experienced a 4-year agonizing emotional rollercoaster ride that left my Father especially feeling isolated and alone. I sought out counselling from the cancer clinic to help me, and when I saw what ORC was offering to husbands and fathers I knew this too was a charity I wanted to support. I did that via a charitable giving life insurance policy I put in place several years ago. The beauty of this policy is that if the charity needs money in a more immediate sense they can access that via the cash value inside the policy and the longer I live, the higher the “death benefit” becomes so the more money they’ll receive at my death.

Our Legacy and Our Mission

You can see how legacy is an extremely important topic for me and I have thought a lot about how I want to be remembered both now and when I am no longer here. This is also why, given my experience in delivering presentations for many different charities to their donors and having follow up conversations with them, I am passionate about extending what I see is my purpose in life.

“Cultivate confidence and nurture financial well being in order to inspire, activate & facilitate radical positive change.”
Our mission, Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions

To cultivate confidence and nurture financial well being in order to inspire, activate & facilitate radical positive change is a part of both my personal and professional legacy that Tara Tennant, my business partner and I intend to live and deliver, over the years to come.

We know and understand that people want to make a difference in the world, they’re just not sure how to go about doing that, how best to incorporate philanthropy and charitable giving strategies into their lives and their wills.

Too many people carry around the biggest most erroneous assumption that they have to choose between giving to their families OR to their favorite charities, electing to leave out charitable gifts in their wills, not knowing and realizing they can do both – give to their families AND their favorite charities. We address this myth and misconception on a daily basis in our conversations with both our clients and donors we meet through the charities we work with. It actually infuriates me because I know what a difference we could and can all make in our communities if we have the appropriate and relevant information to make an informed decision. Ultimately, we imagine the endless possibilities we face to have a powerful impact on and with our favorite charities.

How Did The CAGP Conference Impact My Perspective on Legacy?

It is now post-CAGP conference, and I can’t even begin to explain how incredibly impactful and transformative this conference was. It has been one of the most progressive and intensely emotional conferences I’ve been to; this is especially important given the nature of who we are as professionals working in this field and the impact we hope to have on the purpose we set out to achieve.

The CAGP conference made us more knowledgeable and more connected to the people we want to help in our community. As I reflect on the experience, what comes to mind is that so many different words describe what we do; Philanthropy, Planned Giving, Gift Planning – it all boils down to helping others, including our communities, from a place of love and empowerment. No matter what we call it, it all boils down to one purpose – to help people who are in need.

Imagine how your own perspective would be shifted after attending sessions (like I did) with titles such as: Decolonizing Philanthropy; Bringing Philanthropy Back to its Roots through Community-Centric Fundraising; 12 Ways to be More Inclusive; The Paradigm Shift: Intersectional Worldviews in Indigenous Philanthropy.

My perspective on our lives and our legacy has truly been broadened and enhanced.

BIPOC Experience and Acknowledging

More specifically, when I now think about this topic, I believe it is my responsibility to acknowledge how we have, as a Nation, i.e., Canada, participated in the genocide of our First Nations People and have created, imposed, and perpetuated systemic racism on the Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, often referred to as BIPOC, community.

This is an acknowledgement that is long past due, I know, and one that I hope we can all discuss openly and candidly as part of how we live our lives and donate our money – which can be seen through the lens of our legacy.

I hope to expand and enhance our understanding of legacy to include where we’ve come from, how we got here, and where we are going. We must incorporate the experience and, therefore, the lens of the BIPOC community, into our considerations of legacy. Not an easy task in many ways, and yet I remain eternally hopeful that if we can open our hearts and minds simultaneously, we can work towards creating a beautiful world that we can all be proud of.

The Pillars To Build A Culture Of Philanthropy

In the spirit of expanding and enhancing our understanding of legacy, let me share more insights I gleaned from the conference. When we think of legacy and philanthropy, we often refer to the 5 Pillars to Building a Culture of Philanthropy that focus on; inclusion, transparency, empowerment, collaboration, and celebration.

This is defined as follows; “Community members should always feel like they belong (inclusion), believe in the purpose their community exists (transparency), have opportunities to tell their story (empowerment), have the power to help others tell their stories (collaboration), and feel like their contributions are valued (celebration).”

Sadly, what I learned is that systemic philanthropy has not been equitable! There is an excellent report you can learn from here: Unfunded: Black Communities Overlooked by Canadian Philanthropy.

The statistics are staggering! For example, “Across all community foundations we reviewed, grants to Black-serving organizations represented 0.7% of total grants during the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years. Grants to Black-led organizations were only 0.07% of total grants made in the same period.”

These are abysmal numbers, and alarming at the same time when we see how built-in racism is within the charitable sector—certainly not a great legacy for the “gift-giving” sector of our philanthropic endeavors.

Foundation for Black Communities

I was delighted to hear that this report has been instrumental in granting money to be directed to black-led organizations and forming a dedicated Foundation for Black Communities.

“The Foundation for Black Communities will be a first-of-its-kind institution to invest in priority areas that will lead towards a more promising future for Black people in Canada. The Foundation for Black Communities will embody a transformational model of community philanthropy that centers the self-determination of Black people in Canada, leverages community assets, and utilizes an inclusive and trust-based decision process to determine resource allocation and community and capacity building priorities.”

This is exciting news and we at Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions, as a social purpose driven business, are looking forward to becoming an ally in support of this organization. This too will become a part of our legacy.

Decolonizing Philanthropy

Another significant topic that became part of my own transformational journey during this conference was learning more about Decolonizing Philanthropy from Nikki Sanchez. Sanchez is an Indigenous media maker and environmental educator who spoke about the “values of relational accountability and reciprocity into philanthropy to build a future everyone can take pride in.”

She took us on an emotional journey telling us the story about an Orca whale who shared her grieving publicly, carrying her dead calf for over 17 days, across 1000 km. Sanchez saw the parallels between the mass graves found bearing indigenous children and Tahlequah’s public display of her pain and grief.

Sanchez has some excellent TEDx talks clearly articulating what we as colonizers need to think about, explore, and do or take action on to acknowledge our Canadian legacy as a first step towards truth and reconciliation.

The Gift We Want To Leave In Our Society

As you can see, in this article I have discussed many different ways and means to take a closer look at what our legacy means, not only from our own personal roots but also by exploring some of the societal factors we must take into consideration.

When I think specifically about the theme for this month – “Leave a Legacy” I am reminded from the CAGP conference that we need to go beyond our own personal legacy, the good deeds we’ve done and can do, by taking an historical and deeper look at who we are in the world, and the people who have been harmed by the systemic racism inherent in our world.

I keep reminding myself of the quote; “There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem.” (Eldredge Cleaver).

I hope you’ll join us in continuing this conversation and discussion how our legacy can make a difference in the world, while being mindful of the profound impact we can have on the lives of others. It is important to live our legacy in ways that will show respect for those who’ve paid a price because of systemic racism.

It is also important to understand how much charities value their donors, to gain a broader perspective on all of the incredible work charities are doing, and how we can work together to change the face of planned giving and financial planning services.

At Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions we are working towards making a difference in the world while addressing the barriers and challenges we face in the charitable and financial service sector, and this conference has been an impactful and enlightening experience in our steps to do just that.

I invite you to reach out to me if this has resonated with you, and if you want to explore cultivating your confidence and nurturing your financial well being in order to inspire radical positive change. Together we can make a difference!