August 29, 2023 • 61 mins
Wendy was frustrated that many women weren’t able to participate in female philanthropy that was usually time-based such as bake sales and events. So one day she dreamt up a whole new world called Impact 100—where 100 women each give $1,000 and together they’d make a transformative gift of $100,000 in their community. Today, there’s Impact 100 chapters in 60 cities and they've collectively given away more than $123 million!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
If I could gather at least one hundred women who
each wrote a check for one thousand dollars, one thousand
dollars is a stop and think gift. Now. I was
thirty eight years old. I myself had never written a
check for one thousand dollars to a single charity. I'd
never done it, but I figured I could. And I
also knew the power of that that if we could
(00:29):
get one hundred women to write a check for one
thousand dollars, one hundred percent of it would be pulled
in a grant and then offered right back to the
local community where these women lived, worked and played. In
our very first year, when this was just dreamt up,
one hundred and twenty three women wrote a check and
(00:51):
we gave away a single grant of one hundred and
twenty three thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur,
and I've been a football coach in Inner City Memphis.
And that last part it unintentionally led to an oscar
for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. I
believe our country's problems will never be solved by a
(01:21):
bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big words
that nobody really understands on CNN and Fox, but rather
an army of normal folks US, just you and me deciding, Hey,
I can help. That's what Wendy Still. The voice we
just heard is done. From this first grant from one
hundred and twenty three women in Cincinnati. Wendy's idea that
(01:44):
she called Impact one hundred has spread like wildfire, far
more than she could have ever imagined. There's now chapters
in sixty cities across four countries. And get this, they've
collectively given over one hundred and twenty three million dollars
(02:04):
through one one thousand dollars check at a time. I
cannot wait for you to meet Wendy right after these
brief messages from our generous sponsors. Wendy Steal, how are you?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I am great, happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
I'm happy you are here. Thanks for I guess you
just got off a plane, didn't you, Yes, sir, flight
was well, not too bumpy.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
It was all good.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's good. I understand our producer Alex picks you up
in an uber.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yes he did.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's really impressive. So our producer doesn't even have a
car he's ubered to get you. Is that what I understand?
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yes, but it was a nice uber.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Oh well, thank goodness, is a nice uber apparently owning
and renting a car escapes Alex. So that's probably another
show an army of normal people who can't drive or
something like that. Anyway, thanks for being here. I'm sorry
I had to uber here. Maybe after this thing sells
(03:12):
some advertisements, he can come up with enough money to
get a car to actually pick our guests up rather
than ubering. We can dream, that's all right. I guess
I got to be fair to producer Alex. It wasn't
exactly his fault. He bought a new car and after
only five weeks it wouldn't start, and the stupid part
(03:32):
that was needed was out of stock, presumably a hangover
from the COVID supply chain issues, and the auto dealer
wouldn't take his car back because it was after four weeks,
which is ridiculous, but you know that's big car business
for you. And so Alex literally was ubering around picking
(03:55):
up our guests. I guess we talk about it on
the podcas as, but normal people face normal struggles and
normal problems, and Alex the producer is uh not immune
to it. So, Wendy, so much to talk about with you.
(04:20):
I've read and listened to a lot of your story,
and I have a bajillion questions. But as you know,
it is an army of normal folks, and normal folks
seem to identify with normal folks. So tell me about
Wendy the little Girl. Where'd you grow up? And how'd
you grow up? And all of those things which start
start where you will start where you're born, and carry
(04:42):
me through Wendy the Kid.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Oh my gosh. Well, I was born in Connecticut. I
am the middle of three girls, and my parents. My
dad worked for a corrugated box company. When we lived
in Connecticut, he was a regional sales manager. My mom
stayed home, probably traveled a lot. Then he traveled an
awful lot. Yeah, he got promoted when I was in
(05:06):
elementary school. We left Connecticut and moved to Saint Louis, Missouri,
where so he could be closer to the head office. Exactly. Yeah,
so he went from being a regional sales guy to
a national sales guy. We moved to Saint Louis, and
that is where I grew up.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So how old were you and your sisters when you
moved to Saint Louis.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Gosh, I was probably in second grade.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
We was seven.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, little sister.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
She is four years younger, so she was just a.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Toddler three and your older sister.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Three years older, so she was so.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah. I mean, your dad gets a big promotion, goes
to Saint Louis, got a three year old, a seven
year old to ten year old, and live in the
American dream.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
It sounds like, yeah, it was. Saint Louis is a
nice place. You know, it's not that different from Cincinnati
in terms of the economics. Really works. It's beautiful place,
lots of rolling hills, but enough corporate headquarters so that
people can really make a living there.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, and the cost of living is not ridiculous like
on the coast right exactly coast really Yeah, it's a
lot like Memphis, Cincinnati, Saint Louis, Memphis, a lot on
Nashville not so much. I think National's cost of living
has gone through the arth, but a lot of towns
like that. And it is true that a lot of
corporate headquarters are there and so your dad's there, and
your mom was a stay at home mom.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
She was a stay at home mom.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, got it. So you grew up with that, and
I remember, I think up through eighth grade you went
to the local public school. Yep, and at what seemed
to be a great childhood and normal family and all
of that.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And your mom was an alcoholic. She was.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
She was a recovering alcoholic for all of my memory.
And so a recovering alcoholic is an alcoholic that recognizes
she has a disease, but that she's currently not drinking.
So I didn't know her as a drinking alcoholic, if
that's even the right way to say it. I don't
(07:17):
remember her drinking at all. But she had AA meetings
in the house. She was, I mean, her recovery was
very much a part of our daily life.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
How old was she when you were seven?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Oh gosh, so I have to do the math. So
when I was seven, my dad would have been thirty seven,
which means my mom would have been thirty five.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Then her alcoholism had to predate way appreciate me.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, although later in life I found out she actually
did relapse during our childhood.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I just wasn't going to AA meeting. Was in all
of that that must have been So do you think
your dad dated her when she was drinking?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yes, Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think she quit drinking later in life than when
they were dating.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Probably when she started having kids.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
There's a stigma around mental illness for sure. And I've
had people very close to me that struggled with mental illness,
and oddly, I feel like, certainly I don't want to
brush with a broad brush, but that in a lot
(08:40):
of cases, chemical dependency and mental illness seemed to go
hand in hand. Did you experience that with your mom?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Absolutely? My mom, in addition to being a recovering alcoholic,
she suffered from depression. She also had very low self esteem.
An example of how that would surface is if my
parents were going to talk about what what do you
want to do on date night? Or what do you
want to do this weekend? And if my mom said
(09:10):
I want to go to a movie and my dad
said I want to try this new restaurant, my mom
would believe that her choice wasn't good enough, and so
it would sort of turn into this fight about it enough.
(09:30):
Then her whole view of the world is just heartbreaking
because when you understand that you don't feel as worthy
as basically anybody else, that's a really hard place to be.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Do you think the alcoholism was a function of self
medication at one time? So her inferiority complex and mental
not mental difficulties, but her the struggles that she had
probably predated the alcoholism, and maybe the alcoholism or so
way of self medicating.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
That's exactly true. What she said when she talked about
how she started with alcohol is that she was uncomfortable
in social situations. She would be uncomfortable going to a party.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
By contrast, my dad was a guy who never met
a stranger, he would touch.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
He was a national sales manager, of course he was.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
But like type A, I'm sure very type A, very
genuinely a lover of people, genuinely remembers everyone's story, wonderful
at making connections, like he was that guy. My mother
was beautiful, but she didn't think so, and very uncomfortable
socially now, way before they got together. In order for
(10:56):
my mom to go out to go on a to
go to a party, to go to wherever. What she
started to realize is if she drank at the event,
she relaxed, and it became more fun until she had
to drink before she went out, and then she had
(11:17):
to drink to cope.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And the cruel irony as I'm sitting here listening to
you and I'm by no means a psychologists. But then
she realizes she has a problem with alcohol, and then
she feels even worse about herself exactly, so sad, so difficult.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And in those days, not only was mental illness not touched.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Like the seventies.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
When we say those days, those days, I would say
at this point, I'm even talking early to middle seventies,
people didn't even talk about being an alcoholic. I mean,
if you weren't drinking, somebody would push you and be like, oh, come.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
On, you can have just one.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Come on, you know, lighten up. So it was not
easy being a recovering alcoholic, and it also was not
easy being somebody who struggled with mental illness, and none
of it was really talked about publicly.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, it's definitely a different time. So we're it's certainly
going to get to impact one hundred, okay, because that
is one of the coolest stories in the world and
redemptive and largely defines your legacy, and I'm so inspired
(12:35):
by what you've done. But to tease a little bit,
it's really about the strength of women as much as anything.
I mean, certainly it's about philanthropic endeavors, but the strength
of women. And so I'm teasing that for our listeners
and we are going to get to that. But as
I was thinking about you and your profile, I couldn't
(12:56):
help but wonder if maybe some of your incredible job
to pull off what you've pulled off stems from a
relationship that you have to have with watching a woman struggle,
and I wonder if that plays into it for you
at all.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, absolutely it does. There were a couple of things
that were happening in my life, even you know, in
these earlier days. One, from a really young age, my
parents said to us, not in any formal way, that
our job was to leave the world a little better
(13:36):
than we found it. And so it would be things
like if I was going down the street to babysit
the neighbor kids, I remember my parents saying, look, they're
going to pay you to watch those kids. So when
they're napping or when they're playing quietly, I want you
to get up and I want to make sure that
the kitchen counter's cleaned up, that you tidy, you put
(13:57):
toys away, that you wipe down the count so that
when those parents come home they're paying you to watch
their children, give them something so they realize that their
home and their kids are better now than when they
left the house to go do whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
They take great value. I'm gets carry with your whole
life and everything. When you borrow somebody's car, return it
with a full tank. Exactly, I'll let somebody borrow my
car once they returned it without a full tank. And
I'm going to tell you something. I was like, did
your parents raise you right? It was terrible.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So for all those listeners, if you borrow a car,
or or a lawnmower or anything else, return it with
full tank. And if you pick up a guest doing
a car, not an.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Uber words to live by.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
I really hope you'll consider signing up to join the
Army at normal folks dot Us. Guys, I'd really do
believe that this army can change the country. By signing up,
you'll also receive our weekly newsletter that has short episode
(15:08):
summaries in case you prefer reading about the army members
or celebrating each week, as well as fun and exciting
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(15:38):
You watched your mom, who you loved obviously, struggle mightily,
and then you turn around and become this strong woman
with this woman dominated thing we're going to talk about,
and I just I couldn't help, but wonder reading it
that had to have had some effect on you.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
What happens when you grow up in a household like that?
And when I say like that, While my mother was alive,
she could be very unpredictable. You don't You didn't really
know what might set her off. And when she got
set off, if you will, she would go into her bedroom.
(16:18):
She would keep the curtains low. She had migraine headaches,
and she would have a migraine headache that she may
not come out of her room for days. Really, she
would sometime and my dad traveled for work, so sometimes
my dad would come home on a Friday from a
business trip to a note from my mom saying I
(16:42):
had to get away for the weekend. So she wasn't
leaving us alone. But she was.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
If you have a migraine, you get away for the weekend.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, she had to get away.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Now as kids, so what would you come home to
an empty house? I had to been. That had to
have been hard.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
It was hard. It was hard. I think what ends up, Well,
a lot of things ends up happening. And by the
grace of God, I didn't inherit any of the addictive
personality that my mother had, and I, you know, I
wish that was something that I did. It wasn't. I'm
(17:25):
very fortunate in that regard. But what I did learn
in those early years is empathy. Because if as a kid,
if I could read how my dad's day was when
he comes home, Imagine he's high pressure, trying to provide
(17:46):
for this family, traveling all the time. The corrugated box business,
as you might imagine, is you know, not not a
clean straight road all the time. If I could anticipate
what he needed, if I could anticipate what my mom needed,
and later I did a lot of the parenting for
my little sister, we could keep peace, we could.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Things do realize that's not the job of a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen year old. That's hard it was hard.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
But it never occurred to me whether it was my
job or not. It was just what just what you did,
It was what needed to happen.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Well, that also explains a lot about how you are
where you are now, which again we're going to get to.
So sadly your mom took her own life and you
didn't even know it.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah. So that was the summer before my freshman year
in high school.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Oh gosh, and how Yeah, that's even not the gret
greatest timing for you. No, you're going through all kinds
of things.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, I was fourteen, and.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And everybody at that age is going through all kinds
of stuff, and you're doing with the loss of your mom, right.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Well, what happened at the time, So we were on
vacation in northern Michigan. My dad was traveling, my mom
was with us. She was an avid bird watcher and
a nature lover, and so on this given day she
left and said that she was going to go bird
watching and she was going to climb the sand dunes.
If you've never been to northern Michigan, they are spectacular.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Sand dunes in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Sand dunes in Michigan that are covered with the most
beautiful pine trees and bushes, and I mean, it's how are.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
There sand dudes with pine trees that grow on this
they do? Well, you'll have to come the birds up
there too.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Apparently there are a lot of birds. Yeah. So anyway,
on this given day, she put our dinner in the
crock pot, and my dad was coming home from a
trip that night. My grandmother, my dad's mother, was going
to also come for dinner, and she said goodbye, she
was leaving, so she drove away in her red station
(20:08):
wagon for the day. Well, my dad came in, my
grandmother arrived. Mom never came back.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
But you just told me that sometimes your mom would
go away for a couple of days. So I guess
you didn't really freak out because.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
We did not freak out go out, and.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Past behavior shows that she would do that, so I will.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
You're absolutely right, And as a kid, I wasn't worried
in that moment for exactly that reason. Now, my dad
was worried, but I didn't know it at the time.
And what ended up happening is my dad finally called
the police, and the police found her car quite a
(20:54):
distance from the sand dune where she was found Now,
my mother was deathly allergic to bees, and so we
were told that she had passed away. She was stung
by a bee and she had left her EpiPen in
the car two miles away or a mile and a half,
(21:15):
whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
And once again, because like alcoholism and mental illness, suicide
was a kind of a hands off thing, you didn't discuss.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
It was very taboo, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
And so for the children, that was the story right now.
And you were I was fourteen, I mean your sister.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Was seventeen and ten.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Oh gosh, I'm sitting My heart's breaking for your father
as well.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
And my father was forty four years old. So you
think about being in the prime of your career as
a salesperson, providing for the family with three girls, and.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
You have to travel. Who's going to watch my kids?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Exactly? It was Yeah, it was unbelievable. The other piece,
you know, you have something like this happened. Apparently it
was on the news, like the police scanner, Like apparently
people knew how mom really died.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
The neighborhood, and so we didn't know, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And and I again, I didn't find out any of
this until until much later. My older sister was and
is a woman who she's kind of a rebel. She
goes her own way. She's that person who like wanted
to be a grown up from the time she was
a young like a toddler. And so when I was
(22:54):
in eighth grade and all of my girlfriends were going
to go to this all girls Catholic high school. And
I'm not Catholic my family, no one in my family
is Catholic, and I tell my parents I want to
go to this all girls Catholic high school. My parents
wanted me to look at other options, and one of
those options was a boarding school in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Now,
(23:18):
I had great friends in the neighborhood. I wanted to
go to the Catholic school because that's where they were going.
I certainly was not going to go look at basically
anything else. Well, my older sister got to look at
this and she's like, wait a second, this is like
going to college when I'm still in high school. Bye bye.
And so when our mom passed, Joanne appropriately went back
(23:44):
to high school. My dad went back to work, and Tina,
who was ten, and I were at home. Wow, and
my dad only that's probably not the right word I was.
I think I was more broken than I ever really
(24:08):
let myself realize. But I wouldn't have called myself lonely.
I've been really blessed to have good friends, and may
sometimes not lots of good friends, but like a core
group of real friends. And I also found this interesting
(24:31):
community of women who kind of came in and helped
out me.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
You mean, when you were a kid, a community of
women from the neighborhood, the school, friends' moms, that kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
After my mom died, so when my mom was still alive,
they didn't have very much of a social life because
my mom wasn't comfortable. So I didn't see a lot
of women come to the house when my mom was alive.
But after she past you know, women kind of paid
attention and without being asked, without any fanfare, without any organization. Sure,
(25:10):
in the beginning we got cast roles delivered to the door,
and we got notes and all that.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, but that ends.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
That ends these women stuck around. I mean, in the
public school, I would have taken the school bus. In
the private school, you needed to carpool. And suddenly these
moms were saying, gosh, I have a reason to go
in that direction. I want to do extra days of
carpool or they would invite.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
You had a community that surrounded you.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, and my dad and my sister we were very
not you can't say very. But the people who stepped up,
they stepped up big and they did it even when
it was.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
The example of what was formative to you. Right in
terms of what you've ended up doing, I have a
did it ever? I mean, is it possible that on
those weekends that your mom split, that maybe she was
falling off the wagon and was trying to get away
from everybody with accountability.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
In hindsight, maybe, although she managed to come back. And
what I know about that is that it's possible that
she fell off the wagon, but for her to be
able to stop and then come back, that'd be tough.
That feels like maybe not, But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Bless your mom's heart, she just wasn't comfortable in her
own skin.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
No, No, she wasn't.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And your father had to have known that. And he's
traveling and doing a big job and trying to raise
a family and provide for family and three girls at home,
and then he deals with the suicide of his wife
at forty four years old. I mean a lot of trauma.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, he had a lot, but you know he was
and again, my mom died nineteen seventy seven. In those days,
dads really didn't didn't parent kids right. It was really
the mom and dads were not that outspoken. Our dad
(27:16):
told us he loved us every single day. He was
very emotionally present with.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Us, which that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Is a gift. Yeah, he I mean my dad really,
he really was amazing. He was not a perfect dad.
He was tough. We had a lot of chores, We
had all the things. You know, he was strict, he
was all that. But he was authentically a great guy
who genuinely loved us and genuinely loved the community. Like
(27:50):
he was just that larger than like I had to.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Put on this tough face when you know he was
done inside.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Right and didn't have anybody who he could really share
the worldwid right. He did go to a therapist, I
will say, I mean my dad did get some help.
And one of the early conversations after all this happened
was and I wasn't supposed to overhear it, but my
(28:18):
dad was in a conversation with his therapist whose name
was Paul, and Paul said, you know, you look at
what's happening to these girls. They are at risk. You've
got you. You are one of the yah us. You
(28:40):
are lucky that you can bring people around them. You
need to pay attention. And I remember very shortly thereafter,
I started to realize, like a I didn't feel very lucky.
Just to be clear, I didn't feel very fortunate. But
I also realized that, you know, I did have people
(29:03):
who poured into my life. I did have a dad
who genuinely cared. I mean, gosh, he could have you know,
said I can't do this, I'm done. There are a
lot of things that could have happened. And it was
in that time frame, you know, within the weeks after
my mom passed that I heard the quote there but
(29:26):
for the grace of God go I to this day.
In fact, the bracelet I took off says, there before
the grace of God go I. It is what grounds
me is that, first of all, yes, this terrible thing happened,
but I'm not so naive to believe that I'm the
(29:46):
only person who's had a terrible thing happen. I was
very fortunate to have my dad's mom and my mom's
parents really taken interest in us and really pour into
us in significant ways, and so did school, and so
(30:07):
did the moms, and so I wonder how people would
get through it if they didn't have that. And I
think the difference between people who are okay, whether that's
okay economically okay, with food secure, with emotional well being,
the difference between those who are okay and those who
(30:30):
aren't often isn't what anybody does or didn't do. It
is pure grace, and I was on the receiving end
of a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
We'll be right back. Your mom dies and you're entering
eighth grade and you're going to a new school, right,
And I think I read it was a Catholic school.
I'm not Catholic, so, but I have had friends that
go to Catholic school. And the uniforms and the brothers
(31:08):
and the nuns and the rulers on the knuckles and
the whole thing. You've heard, whether or not that's true
or not, But tell me about your experience at Catholic
school before you went to college.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Oh my gosh, So all the bad things about Catholic schools.
I experienced none of that. Now you have to understand
that my dad, his idea of the right place to
shop for girls clothes was.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Sears, skins, and gran animals.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Amen. Yes, so you've had my closet.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
My dad left while I was young. My mom had
worked hard but didn't have any money, and I hated
tough skins. But because they had this, they had this
plastic patch on the inside of the knee to keep
the knees from wearing out. But during the summer when
you sweat, stupid things would stick to your skin, and
(32:03):
then the stupid ger animals where if you got the shirt,
you match it the But it's where we went, and
I do remember, dude, the sears you shopped at in
the very middle of it have a little like snack
bar at all.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I don't remember that, Are you kidding? If there was
a snack bar, I would have been there.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Okay, well ours did, and they had warm cashews for
you could get a bag for a quarter. And the
only reason I would go try on tough skins because
my mom would cough up a quarter so I could
have some warm cashoes.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
They're so good, it sounds really good. That may have
swayed me.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
But so anyway, you're telling me, as a fourteen to
fifteen year old girl who's trying to figure it all out,
wants to be pretty and everything you getting, your dad
and his infinite wisdom is taking you to Sears for
your pretty clothes.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Exactly. So let me tell you I was probably the
only one in that ninth grade class that I was
thrilled with those you know.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, but you were.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Those uniforms were the great equalizer. To this day, I
have often said, and my younger sister and I often
talk about gr animals and often talk about because even
when our mom was like, we got our clothes at
Sears and they were animals.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
That's just what your dad said. It was just.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
As where we were going because it was good value
and so plus tools.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Oh yes, where else could you buy a wrench and
a pair of jeans.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
And a party dress?
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah? Perfect, let's go all.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
The good time. Yeah you got that too. We probably
did get our fridge.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Knockoff penny loafers were Pastwegians, but they had them because
I had to buy the cheek knockoffs too when I
came up.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
I remember all of its uniform was fantastic and you
what to wear. Yeah, it was better than gor animals,
you know, And and it was it was nice. It
was structure. I was there with my friends. I felt
the most alone. In the beginning of my time at
(34:05):
the Catholic school was called Saint Joseph's Academy, so Saint Joe.
In the beginning of my time at Saint Joe, I
felt very alone. I was literally the only non Catholic.
And I was the only one who didn't have a mom,
who was packing lunches, dropping them off at school, picking
up after school, doing slumber parties. I mean it was.
(34:28):
It was hard Massachusetts somewhere too, right, right. So I
went to my little sister's parent teacher conferences. I yeah,
I mean when my dad was out of town. I
mean not as no one mistook me for the parent,
but yeah, I went to represent my dad at those places.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
A lot for a girl going through her own trauma,
I mean a kid, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I think in part it was the way I'm wired
a lot. It It's not no one ever said to me, Wendy,
I need you to do this, and then this and
then this. It was just innately how I coped it
was just well, how.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
I small spart. What your mom taught to you is
that you were cleaning the counters, right, that was what
was expected, and so after you put the kid down
in their jammies, you cleaned the clean the counter. Still
the parents came home and you were acting that out
and later in life. All right, y'all, I promise we're
(35:34):
about to get to the story of Impact one hundred
and how the idea came to Wendy while she was
a banker in Cincinnati. But we're not going to do
it until we tell one last story about Wendy's family
and how her dad met her mom.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
He was up near wallow In Lake, but in the
off season, so none of his summer friends were around.
So we went down to the marine and there's a
woman named Esther Simpson who ran the marina my dad
used to work for. And he popped in. He said, Esther,
I'm up here, none of my friends are here. Is
there anybody fun? I can anything going on? Anything I
(36:12):
can do. She said, well, there's a local girl and
her name is Margo, and you should call her up.
And my dad called my mom.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
So your mom was from there.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
She was from Pataski, which is the town right next
to Walloon. She was there, that was home, that was home.
She was a local girl, and so they dated, and
of course you know the rest of the story. Years later,
Dad is up on Walloon Lake in the summer. He
(36:46):
goes to Esther Simpson. This about three or four years
after mom had passed. He goes to Esther Simpson, who's
still running the marina on the lake, and he says, oh, Esther,
my friends are all give me a hard time. I'm
supposed to ring a date to the country club dance.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
You're not going to tell me?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And she says, you really ought to look up Cynthia Badell.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And says, you kidding me?
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Exactly married he married her? Oh my god, he married her.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
If it wasn't for Esther Simpson. Your dad man never
had a date.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Ever, at least not a good one, Sipson. Yeah, when
when she passed, we all teased my dad like, okay,
you better make this work out.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Because you're never going to another date.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
It's over.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
That is a hilarious story. Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
They were married in I think nineteen eighty four, and
Sinny is is what she goes by she's my stepmom
and amazing she's still living. My dad's been gone for
about ten years. But yeah, happily ever.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
After a crazy story. So sorry that was way off,
but well worth a story that's hilarious. So now we're
going to get to your philanthropy and tell me the story.
I think it's great about you heard a story once
(38:18):
about how I'm just going to say it candidly and
I'll let you unfold it so people don't think I'm
a misogynistic jerk. How you found out that men were
better fundraisers than women and you wanted to fix that,
So tell us that. So because you've made a farce
out of that misnomer, but I think it kind of
(38:39):
sparked you, so tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
It was definitely a part of the story. I had
heard a story about a church that had gotten in
financial trouble, and so the lead pastor called in the
senior staff, and they called in the head of the
men's guild and the head of the women's guild and
laid out the problem and they needed to raise a
lot of money really quickly. So the senior staff went
(39:02):
out and they collected receivables. They tried to get extended payments.
They did everything they could to cut costs, to sell things,
to downplay. The head of the women's guild went out
and she gathered her team. In my word, they had
bake sales, they had car washes, they had rummage sales.
(39:22):
They worked, and in two weeks she happened.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Point all of the all of the stereotypical women thing
to do, right, go.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Out and raise money. This is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I'm gonna work our fingers to the bone and do
all these school things at bake cookies and have a.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
And they all did it. They were all in, all
these women, and they worked harder than they had ever done.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yeah, working hard.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
She was so proud to deliver this big check to
the pastor of I think it was eight thousand dollars.
A lot of money, A lot of money.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
A lot of work. Well, that's a lot of bacon, a.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Bad there is a lot of bacon. Well, as she's
getting ready to walk out, the head of the men's
guild walks in, and she's curious, feeling probably cocky and
a little competitive.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, sure, why not?
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Sure they work their tails off. Well, he handed a
check to the pastor that was many times more than
what she did, like a number like twenty five grand,
like a lot of money. And she said, ego, killer,
I don't get it. I don't get it. How is
this possible in the.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
You guys cooked or baked exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I haven't seen you lift a finger.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
We've been working our butts off. What'd you do for
your twenty five dude? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
And he said, well, I thought about what I thought
my family could give, and I wrote that check. And
then I called my friends, and I saw Joe on
the golf course, and I saw so and so here,
and my friends are generous and they believe in the church,
and so you know, that's how I did it. And
(41:07):
what struck me about that is that the women, it
wasn't just one, this whole group of women, they all
knew the situation. Not one of them thought maybe I
can write a check now one of them thought that.
They all thought, we've got to roll up our sleeves
and we've got to find a way to make something
from nothing. And the men had an entirely different view. Now,
(41:34):
my banking background tells me that it was only in
the middle seventies that women could do anything outside the
home in a meaningful way. But it was like nineteen
eighty four that women could own their own credit card
without having a father, a brother, or a husband or
(41:55):
you serious sign.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
You're telling me? And up until nineteen eighty four, a
woman could not have her own credit card. What about
a single, unmarried woman, she.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Could not get bank credit?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
If you was kidding me.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
It took a law to change that in the wall
for a banking regulation. Is I guess it now?
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Now? See this is what I said. I mean, this
is not in my notes, So you're telling me in
nineteen eighty three, when I was Telborne High School, my
mom couldn't get a credit card unless her father co signed.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
So don't hold me to the exact day. I can
tell you this. She couldn't get alone if she wanted
to start a lumber company, or if she wanted to
start a dry cleaning business, or if she wanted to
fill in the blank. She tip she was typically unable
to get any kind of credit unless it was co
(43:05):
signed by a husband or brother, a father, by a man.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
So I looked it up after the interview, and what
Wendy was saying is absolutely true. And even shocking to me.
Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was signed into law
in nineteen seventy four. We're not talking nineteen twenty here.
Nineteen seventy four, banks could refuse to issue women a
(43:31):
credit card if they were applying for it on their
own without a man co signing for it. I know,
you know, I am flabbergasted at that.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
You had women who, now, we were able to work
outside the home, and we were making.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Our own miss starting to do that, and.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
We were able to do that. But when you look
at how philanthropy started in this country and everywhere, men
went off and worked every day. Women stayed home and
took care of the kids. And when the kids were
old enough to be in school for a little while,
women had free time. And the way they used their
(44:14):
free time, other than cleaning the house and doing all
the things that women did, is they would go out
and serve the community. They would go and volunteer, they
would help each other, they would check and knitting circles,
and they would do all of that.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Well, you know, I have to interrupt you. I'm going
to tee this up for you and let you work
on it. Okay, okay, some would say that was a
better time.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Oh gosh, I would not say that that was a
better time unfolded. Here's the thing. There are women for
whom that option is ideal, and so I believe when
we get too prescriptive about what a quote real woman
(45:08):
might be or not be, then I think there are
women who ought to be able to choose that path
and thrive and enjoy it and not be judged for it.
I also think that there are plenty of women who
would choose another option. So I believe that until all
(45:30):
women can live there to their fullest potential, right, we
are short changing society. Because what I can tell you
is better decisions are made when you have multiple lived experiences.
And so I'm not going to ask you this, and
(45:52):
you can feel free to cut all of this out
of whatever. But I don't know how many women you
have working with you. But if you have all white
men of a certain age, whatever your age I think
you said you're in your mid fifties, If you have
a bunch of fifty year old white men making all
(46:14):
the decisions, you are likely missing part of the story.
Because women who have different lived experiences bring different perspectives,
and so when and Frankly, although everything we've talked about
is how great women can be to each other, Unfortunately,
(46:34):
sometimes women are not great to each other, and sometimes
it's women fighting women like gosh, you shouldn't work outside
the home, or you you know you should work outside
the home. My chance on this is each of us
come with our own unique gifts. We have to make
sure that society, that the economy, that the places we
live work in play allow women to be who they
(46:57):
were born to be, whether that is to go be
an engineer, or to be a stay at home mom,
or to be a teacher, or a physician or a
scientist or fill in the blank. We need to do
that in the same way that we need to allow
men to be exactly who they were born to be,
whether that's stay home and raise kids, be a nurse,
(47:20):
be a teacher, be an engineer.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
So you're saying, there's gender stereotypes that existed in the
seventies and eighties that were rightly broken in our society,
but we still have a long way to go exactly Okay,
So back to your story. The guys made a few
phone calls, wrote a check and raised twenty five grand.
(47:44):
The women worked their butts off for three weeks and
raised eight And the difference was that the cultural norm
of the time was that a man could write a
check and a woman couldn't. Right now, See, I found
that interesting.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
And it wasn't make no mistake. There was no man,
at least none that I've ever heard of. There were
no men ever saying to women, don't you write that check?
I was the thing.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
It was a cultural monsense.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
It was inherent. And so the old ways of women
being involved in the community, it was all time based
because that was the asset they had, but not anymore.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
We'll be right back. So, Wendy, you decided that you
wanted to surround yourself with some check writing women, tell
me about it.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
What I knew is that So when I moved to Cincinnati,
I got involved in the community in a big way
because I didn't know anyone. And that's how I met people.
I was finding women who would tell me all the
reasons why they couldn't be involved in the community and
the ways that I was trying to bring them in.
So I was doing some work for a local for
(49:14):
the local zoo at one point and for a local
hospital at another, and we were either putting on a
gala because that's the way we raise money, or we
were working on another campaign to help raise money for
the Civic Garden Club and others. And the women, even
if they were interested in what I was doing, they
(49:36):
had reasons that they said they couldn't do it. They
would say, well, I can't really justify to pass sitter
ten dollars an hour because I'm a stay at home
mom so that I can go volunteer with you. Or
they would say I work for Procter and Gamble, I
travel all the time. I can't go to these regular meetings. Now,
in my world, I was still a private banker, but
every bank i'd ever worked for value community service. So
(50:01):
I never had to take a vacation day to go
serve my community. I never had to take time off
to serve on a board of a nonprofit. And that
was my discernment in a future employer.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
I hear that, and I think about the mom who
says I really can't afford I don't think it's right
to pay a sitter so that I can go, because
the amount of money they're paying a sitter is probably
not really the deterrent, but it feels like it, Oh understand,
(50:38):
but that is also to me cultural and even maybe
touches paternalism a little.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
I think you're right. I think that there are lots
of negotiations that happen in families when women choose to
stay home, that it's you know, they may be on a.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Budget because mean, it wreaks a barefoot and pregnant to me,
it just does.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah, And I don't know that that stay at home
moms would necessarily feel that way.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
I'm just saying that, but at particular instance, you can,
you can absolutely feel that.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Yeah, absolutely cultural.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Barrier, I guess for some folks, definitely. And so you
saw that and wanted to break through.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
I did, And during my time when my kids were little,
there were times in my life where I was a
full time stay at home mom, where I worked part
time or when I worked full time. But because community
service was always very important to me, when we built
the budget of can I stay home, there was a
(51:48):
component of community service. There was a component of me
not staying home all day every day, but getting help,
you know, help with kids, maybe help even sometimes with cleaning.
But the idea was it's negotiated like on the front end,
but you have to know what you need in order
(52:10):
to do the math right, got it. So that's what
was happening. And ninety percent of what women were involved
in was time based, and when you don't have time,
you can't participate.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
And that's how the rise the twenty five thousand dollars
the men do when it's time based and you're squeezing
every little time you can out between a job, children, whatever, exactly.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
So so it's time to change that. Now. I sat
with the spiral notebook of every objection I'd heard, and
I started just figuring it out.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
And as a banker, I knew the part of the
equation was women had to give enough to remember it now.
Remember in these days there were workplace campaigns and you
would give pre tax and therefore you wouldn't feel it.
And what I know to be true and new then
(53:10):
is that it's important as a donor to be connected
to the gift. If you take it out of my
paycheck and I never missed it, I likely won't feel
connected to the organization that it's going to.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
That's a good point.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
So if I leave my place of employment and my
new job doesn't do that same thing, I don't necessarily
have an infinity.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
Got pretax take it out of my check too. Almost
feels like I'm checking a box to make myself feel good,
but not because I'm truly engaging in a philanthropic endeavor
in my heart.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Yeah. Well, and you can't really get connected because you
don't see it. And it's just like being connected to
your other taxes that get pulled out and your you know,
whatever goes into your IRA, like those things they just
go away, right, and your day to day thought is
about what you live on. So my theory was, if
(54:07):
I could gather at least one hundred women who each
wrote a check for one thousand dollars, one thousand dollars
is a stop and think gift. Now, I was thirty
eight years old, I myself had never written a check
for one thousand dollars to a single charity. I'd never
done it, but I figured I could, And I also
knew the power of that that if we could get
(54:31):
one hundred women to write a check for one thousand dollars,
pool one hundred percent of it, so there'd be no
talk of you know, what percent is going to this
and what percent is going to that. The one hundred
percent would be pulled in a grant and then offered
right back to the local community where these women lived,
(54:51):
worked and played. The nonprofits would then apply for those grants.
If women wanted to understand the process, if they wanted
to get involved, they would be trained how to read
a grand application, how to make a site visit. Ultimately,
we would through our membership, identify five finalists, one in
(55:13):
each focus area, so we would be women giving to community,
not necessarily women funding women and girls. And so these find.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Women given communities the way the men at the Catholic
Church did not by having a bakeoff exactly. And isn't
there ironically.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Some kind of power in that huge power, huge power.
Once you have written that check for one thousand dollars,
your worldview starts to change, right, But it also it
really changes when you're when you're giving away. In our
(56:00):
very first year, when this was just dreamt up, one
hundred and twenty three women wrote a check and we
gave away a single grant of one hundred and twenty
three thousand dollars. This is after fielding over one hundred
grant applications.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
And then we identified five finalists, one in each.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
Book is categories education. And these categories haven't changed.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
No, they haven't changed.
Speaker 2 (56:25):
By the way, what year are we talking. We're talking
twenty something.
Speaker 1 (56:29):
Two thousand and one. Summer of two thousand and one,
I had the idea and we so that was summer
nine to eleven happened. So everything really changed. At the
end of October, we met as a board for the
first time to say are we going to do this
or not do this? We decided to go ahead. We
(56:52):
got our nonprofit status five oh one c three by
March of two. By May, one hundred and twenty three
women at hand to us a check. We couldn't take
credit cards like it was literally a paper check. We
got about one hundred and twelve or one hundred and
fourteen grand applications across the five focus areas are education, Environment,
(57:12):
health and wellness, Arts and culture, and family. When all
those five areas.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
Are save those again, say those again.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
Education, Environment, Arts and culture, Health and wellness and family.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
So you got five grants five You got five of
these five categories and one hundred people applying for this
one hundred and twenty three grand yeap. How do you
decide who gets it?
Speaker 1 (57:40):
The women who joined, they signed up to serve on
one of these focusary committees. When the nonprofits applied, they
applied to one of these committees.
Speaker 2 (57:49):
Oh, the one hundred and twenty three check writing women
exactly are on each one of these committees, and each
committee as a committee chair exactly.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
So the idea is part of what impact one hundred
does is it democratizes philanthropy.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
So today and then that's cool, it democratizes philanthropy.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Well, if you can write a really big check to
let's just say the art museum. You can write a
really big check to the art museum. You can tell
them what to name the exhibit, you can tell them
what art is allowed to be brought in.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
I understand what you're saying. Though.
Speaker 1 (58:23):
You might even be able to design the architecture of
the room. If I write a check for one thousand dollars,
I'll get a tax letter. I might be listed in
the see of names of givers, maybe in their annual
report or on their website. I won't know when they
(58:44):
spend the money. I don't know how they spend the money.
And if I ask, I'll probably just hear crickets like
they aren't equipped to tell me what happens. Now if
in partnership with one hundred and twenty two other women,
we decide where the money goes. And so if a
(59:09):
woman has the time and the interest, she will learn
how to read an application, how to vet it, how
to do a site visit. But if she doesn't have
the time, it's still one woman, one donation, one vote.
So if someone's wealthy enough to write a check for
five thousand dollars, she can't buy her.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
Tell me about that first time there's one hundred and
twenty three votes and you tell it them up. Yes,
that is so cool.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
It was really cool.
Speaker 2 (59:34):
All of it went to one one cause, Yeah, phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (59:39):
Because the other thing that I learned, so I knew
what women needed, but I also knew what the nonprofit
world needed. And if you talk to anyone running a
nonprofit today fundraisers, they're out asking for money all the time,
and when they get it, they get ten thousand here
in fifteen thousand there. It's wonderful. It does move the
(01:00:03):
needle a little bit, but it's a lot like that
manna from heaven. You have it today, but tomorrow you
better be out there again gathering because but one hundred.
Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
And twenty three grand is a real number.
Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Now it's a game changer. Now they can really do
something that is sustainable and transformational. Those are the lenses
we look at.
Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
And that concludes part one of my conversation with Wendy Steele,
and I hope you'll listen to part two that's now available.
The Impact one hundred story is really just getting started.
And guys, I really want to take a moment to
stress one thing. While giving a thousand dollars sounds like
a lot, and I mean it is. It's a lot
(01:00:49):
of money for most of us. Maybe if you step
back and put it in context, it becomes more achievable.
If you take one thousand dollars and divide it by
three hundred and sixty five days in the year, that's
two dollars and seventy three cents a day, y'all's that's
less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And if
(01:01:10):
you consider what that two dollars and seventy three cents
a day has done for all the people throughout the organization,
maybe that context helps you think about how much a
thousand dollars is and really how much it isn't and
the impact of this type of gift upon ourselves is
(01:01:31):
way more than that dollar amount could ever account for.
Guys I'll see in Part two.
If I could gather at least one hundred women who
each wrote a check for one thousand dollars, one thousand
dollars is a stop and think gift. Now. I was
thirty eight years old. I myself had never written a
check for one thousand dollars to a single charity. I'd
never done it, but I figured I could. And I
also knew the power of that that if we could
(00:29):
get one hundred women to write a check for one
thousand dollars, one hundred percent of it would be pulled
in a grant and then offered right back to the
local community where these women lived, worked and played. In
our very first year, when this was just dreamt up,
one hundred and twenty three women wrote a check and
(00:51):
we gave away a single grant of one hundred and
twenty three thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur,
and I've been a football coach in Inner City Memphis.
And that last part it unintentionally led to an oscar
for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. I
believe our country's problems will never be solved by a
(01:21):
bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big words
that nobody really understands on CNN and Fox, but rather
an army of normal folks US, just you and me deciding, Hey,
I can help. That's what Wendy Still. The voice we
just heard is done. From this first grant from one
hundred and twenty three women in Cincinnati. Wendy's idea that
(01:44):
she called Impact one hundred has spread like wildfire, far
more than she could have ever imagined. There's now chapters
in sixty cities across four countries. And get this, they've
collectively given over one hundred and twenty three million dollars
(02:04):
through one one thousand dollars check at a time. I
cannot wait for you to meet Wendy right after these
brief messages from our generous sponsors. Wendy Steal, how are you?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
I am great, happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
I'm happy you are here. Thanks for I guess you
just got off a plane, didn't you, Yes, sir, flight
was well, not too bumpy.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
It was all good.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's good. I understand our producer Alex picks you up
in an uber.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yes he did.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
That's really impressive. So our producer doesn't even have a
car he's ubered to get you. Is that what I understand?
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yes, but it was a nice uber.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Oh well, thank goodness, is a nice uber apparently owning
and renting a car escapes Alex. So that's probably another
show an army of normal people who can't drive or
something like that. Anyway, thanks for being here. I'm sorry
I had to uber here. Maybe after this thing sells
(03:12):
some advertisements, he can come up with enough money to
get a car to actually pick our guests up rather
than ubering. We can dream, that's all right. I guess
I got to be fair to producer Alex. It wasn't
exactly his fault. He bought a new car and after
only five weeks it wouldn't start, and the stupid part
(03:32):
that was needed was out of stock, presumably a hangover
from the COVID supply chain issues, and the auto dealer
wouldn't take his car back because it was after four weeks,
which is ridiculous, but you know that's big car business
for you. And so Alex literally was ubering around picking
(03:55):
up our guests. I guess we talk about it on
the podcas as, but normal people face normal struggles and
normal problems, and Alex the producer is uh not immune
to it. So, Wendy, so much to talk about with you.
(04:20):
I've read and listened to a lot of your story,
and I have a bajillion questions. But as you know,
it is an army of normal folks, and normal folks
seem to identify with normal folks. So tell me about
Wendy the little Girl. Where'd you grow up? And how'd
you grow up? And all of those things which start
start where you will start where you're born, and carry
(04:42):
me through Wendy the Kid.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Oh my gosh. Well, I was born in Connecticut. I
am the middle of three girls, and my parents. My
dad worked for a corrugated box company. When we lived
in Connecticut, he was a regional sales manager. My mom
stayed home, probably traveled a lot. Then he traveled an
awful lot. Yeah, he got promoted when I was in
(05:06):
elementary school. We left Connecticut and moved to Saint Louis, Missouri,
where so he could be closer to the head office. Exactly. Yeah,
so he went from being a regional sales guy to
a national sales guy. We moved to Saint Louis, and
that is where I grew up.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So how old were you and your sisters when you
moved to Saint Louis.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Gosh, I was probably in second grade.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
We was seven.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, little sister.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
She is four years younger, so she was just a.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Toddler three and your older sister.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Three years older, so she was so.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah. I mean, your dad gets a big promotion, goes
to Saint Louis, got a three year old, a seven
year old to ten year old, and live in the
American dream.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
It sounds like, yeah, it was. Saint Louis is a
nice place. You know, it's not that different from Cincinnati
in terms of the economics. Really works. It's beautiful place,
lots of rolling hills, but enough corporate headquarters so that
people can really make a living there.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, and the cost of living is not ridiculous like
on the coast right exactly coast really Yeah, it's a
lot like Memphis, Cincinnati, Saint Louis, Memphis, a lot on
Nashville not so much. I think National's cost of living
has gone through the arth, but a lot of towns
like that. And it is true that a lot of
corporate headquarters are there and so your dad's there, and
your mom was a stay at home mom.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
She was a stay at home mom.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, got it. So you grew up with that, and
I remember, I think up through eighth grade you went
to the local public school. Yep, and at what seemed
to be a great childhood and normal family and all
of that.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And your mom was an alcoholic. She was.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
She was a recovering alcoholic for all of my memory.
And so a recovering alcoholic is an alcoholic that recognizes
she has a disease, but that she's currently not drinking.
So I didn't know her as a drinking alcoholic, if
that's even the right way to say it. I don't
(07:17):
remember her drinking at all. But she had AA meetings
in the house. She was, I mean, her recovery was
very much a part of our daily life.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
How old was she when you were seven?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Oh gosh, so I have to do the math. So
when I was seven, my dad would have been thirty seven,
which means my mom would have been thirty five.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Then her alcoholism had to predate way appreciate me.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, although later in life I found out she actually
did relapse during our childhood.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I just wasn't going to AA meeting. Was in all
of that that must have been So do you think
your dad dated her when she was drinking?
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yes, Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think she quit drinking later in life than when
they were dating.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Probably when she started having kids.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
There's a stigma around mental illness for sure. And I've
had people very close to me that struggled with mental illness,
and oddly, I feel like, certainly I don't want to
brush with a broad brush, but that in a lot
(08:40):
of cases, chemical dependency and mental illness seemed to go
hand in hand. Did you experience that with your mom?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Absolutely? My mom, in addition to being a recovering alcoholic,
she suffered from depression. She also had very low self esteem.
An example of how that would surface is if my
parents were going to talk about what what do you
want to do on date night? Or what do you
want to do this weekend? And if my mom said
(09:10):
I want to go to a movie and my dad
said I want to try this new restaurant, my mom
would believe that her choice wasn't good enough, and so
it would sort of turn into this fight about it enough.
(09:30):
Then her whole view of the world is just heartbreaking
because when you understand that you don't feel as worthy
as basically anybody else, that's a really hard place to be.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Do you think the alcoholism was a function of self
medication at one time? So her inferiority complex and mental
not mental difficulties, but her the struggles that she had
probably predated the alcoholism, and maybe the alcoholism or so
way of self medicating.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
That's exactly true. What she said when she talked about
how she started with alcohol is that she was uncomfortable
in social situations. She would be uncomfortable going to a party.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
By contrast, my dad was a guy who never met
a stranger, he would touch.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
He was a national sales manager, of course he was.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
But like type A, I'm sure very type A, very
genuinely a lover of people, genuinely remembers everyone's story, wonderful
at making connections, like he was that guy. My mother
was beautiful, but she didn't think so, and very uncomfortable
socially now, way before they got together. In order for
(10:56):
my mom to go out to go on a to
go to a party, to go to wherever. What she
started to realize is if she drank at the event,
she relaxed, and it became more fun until she had
to drink before she went out, and then she had
(11:17):
to drink to cope.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
And the cruel irony as I'm sitting here listening to
you and I'm by no means a psychologists. But then
she realizes she has a problem with alcohol, and then
she feels even worse about herself exactly, so sad, so difficult.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
And in those days, not only was mental illness not touched.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Like the seventies.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
When we say those days, those days, I would say
at this point, I'm even talking early to middle seventies,
people didn't even talk about being an alcoholic. I mean,
if you weren't drinking, somebody would push you and be like, oh, come.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
On, you can have just one.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Come on, you know, lighten up. So it was not
easy being a recovering alcoholic, and it also was not
easy being somebody who struggled with mental illness, and none
of it was really talked about publicly.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, it's definitely a different time. So we're it's certainly
going to get to impact one hundred, okay, because that
is one of the coolest stories in the world and
redemptive and largely defines your legacy, and I'm so inspired
(12:35):
by what you've done. But to tease a little bit,
it's really about the strength of women as much as anything.
I mean, certainly it's about philanthropic endeavors, but the strength
of women. And so I'm teasing that for our listeners
and we are going to get to that. But as
I was thinking about you and your profile, I couldn't
(12:56):
help but wonder if maybe some of your incredible job
to pull off what you've pulled off stems from a
relationship that you have to have with watching a woman struggle,
and I wonder if that plays into it for you
at all.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, absolutely it does. There were a couple of things
that were happening in my life, even you know, in
these earlier days. One, from a really young age, my
parents said to us, not in any formal way, that
our job was to leave the world a little better
(13:36):
than we found it. And so it would be things
like if I was going down the street to babysit
the neighbor kids, I remember my parents saying, look, they're
going to pay you to watch those kids. So when
they're napping or when they're playing quietly, I want you
to get up and I want to make sure that
the kitchen counter's cleaned up, that you tidy, you put
(13:57):
toys away, that you wipe down the count so that
when those parents come home they're paying you to watch
their children, give them something so they realize that their
home and their kids are better now than when they
left the house to go do whatever it is.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
They take great value. I'm gets carry with your whole
life and everything. When you borrow somebody's car, return it
with a full tank. Exactly, I'll let somebody borrow my
car once they returned it without a full tank. And
I'm going to tell you something. I was like, did
your parents raise you right? It was terrible.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So for all those listeners, if you borrow a car,
or or a lawnmower or anything else, return it with
full tank. And if you pick up a guest doing
a car, not an.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Uber words to live by.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
I really hope you'll consider signing up to join the
Army at normal folks dot Us. Guys, I'd really do
believe that this army can change the country. By signing up,
you'll also receive our weekly newsletter that has short episode
(15:08):
summaries in case you prefer reading about the army members
or celebrating each week, as well as fun and exciting
updates about our movement. Think about it. We'll be right back.
(15:38):
You watched your mom, who you loved obviously, struggle mightily,
and then you turn around and become this strong woman
with this woman dominated thing we're going to talk about,
and I just I couldn't help, but wonder reading it
that had to have had some effect on you.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
What happens when you grow up in a household like that?
And when I say like that, While my mother was alive,
she could be very unpredictable. You don't You didn't really
know what might set her off. And when she got
set off, if you will, she would go into her bedroom.
(16:18):
She would keep the curtains low. She had migraine headaches,
and she would have a migraine headache that she may
not come out of her room for days. Really, she
would sometime and my dad traveled for work, so sometimes
my dad would come home on a Friday from a
business trip to a note from my mom saying I
(16:42):
had to get away for the weekend. So she wasn't
leaving us alone. But she was.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
If you have a migraine, you get away for the weekend.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, she had to get away.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Now as kids, so what would you come home to
an empty house? I had to been. That had to
have been hard.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
It was hard. It was hard. I think what ends up, Well,
a lot of things ends up happening. And by the
grace of God, I didn't inherit any of the addictive
personality that my mother had, and I, you know, I
wish that was something that I did. It wasn't. I'm
(17:25):
very fortunate in that regard. But what I did learn
in those early years is empathy. Because if as a kid,
if I could read how my dad's day was when
he comes home, Imagine he's high pressure, trying to provide
(17:46):
for this family, traveling all the time. The corrugated box business,
as you might imagine, is you know, not not a
clean straight road all the time. If I could anticipate
what he needed, if I could anticipate what my mom needed,
and later I did a lot of the parenting for
my little sister, we could keep peace, we could.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Things do realize that's not the job of a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen year old. That's hard it was hard.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
But it never occurred to me whether it was my
job or not. It was just what just what you did,
It was what needed to happen.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Well, that also explains a lot about how you are
where you are now, which again we're going to get to.
So sadly your mom took her own life and you
didn't even know it.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah. So that was the summer before my freshman year
in high school.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Oh gosh, and how Yeah, that's even not the gret
greatest timing for you. No, you're going through all kinds
of things.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, I was fourteen, and.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
And everybody at that age is going through all kinds
of stuff, and you're doing with the loss of your mom, right.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Well, what happened at the time, So we were on
vacation in northern Michigan. My dad was traveling, my mom
was with us. She was an avid bird watcher and
a nature lover, and so on this given day she
left and said that she was going to go bird
watching and she was going to climb the sand dunes.
If you've never been to northern Michigan, they are spectacular.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Sand dunes in Michigan.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Sand dunes in Michigan that are covered with the most
beautiful pine trees and bushes, and I mean, it's how are.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
There sand dudes with pine trees that grow on this
they do? Well, you'll have to come the birds up
there too.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Apparently there are a lot of birds. Yeah. So anyway,
on this given day, she put our dinner in the
crock pot, and my dad was coming home from a
trip that night. My grandmother, my dad's mother, was going
to also come for dinner, and she said goodbye, she
was leaving, so she drove away in her red station
(20:08):
wagon for the day. Well, my dad came in, my
grandmother arrived. Mom never came back.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
But you just told me that sometimes your mom would
go away for a couple of days. So I guess
you didn't really freak out because.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
We did not freak out go out, and.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Past behavior shows that she would do that, so I will.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
You're absolutely right, And as a kid, I wasn't worried
in that moment for exactly that reason. Now, my dad
was worried, but I didn't know it at the time.
And what ended up happening is my dad finally called
the police, and the police found her car quite a
(20:54):
distance from the sand dune where she was found Now,
my mother was deathly allergic to bees, and so we
were told that she had passed away. She was stung
by a bee and she had left her EpiPen in
the car two miles away or a mile and a half,
(21:15):
whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
And once again, because like alcoholism and mental illness, suicide
was a kind of a hands off thing, you didn't discuss.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
It was very taboo, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
And so for the children, that was the story right now.
And you were I was fourteen, I mean your sister.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Was seventeen and ten.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Oh gosh, I'm sitting My heart's breaking for your father
as well.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
And my father was forty four years old. So you
think about being in the prime of your career as
a salesperson, providing for the family with three girls, and.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
You have to travel. Who's going to watch my kids?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Exactly? It was Yeah, it was unbelievable. The other piece,
you know, you have something like this happened. Apparently it
was on the news, like the police scanner, Like apparently
people knew how mom really died.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
The neighborhood, and so we didn't know, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And and I again, I didn't find out any of
this until until much later. My older sister was and
is a woman who she's kind of a rebel. She
goes her own way. She's that person who like wanted
to be a grown up from the time she was
a young like a toddler. And so when I was
(22:54):
in eighth grade and all of my girlfriends were going
to go to this all girls Catholic high school. And
I'm not Catholic my family, no one in my family
is Catholic, and I tell my parents I want to
go to this all girls Catholic high school. My parents
wanted me to look at other options, and one of
those options was a boarding school in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Now,
(23:18):
I had great friends in the neighborhood. I wanted to
go to the Catholic school because that's where they were going.
I certainly was not going to go look at basically
anything else. Well, my older sister got to look at
this and she's like, wait a second, this is like
going to college when I'm still in high school. Bye bye.
And so when our mom passed, Joanne appropriately went back
(23:44):
to high school. My dad went back to work, and Tina,
who was ten, and I were at home. Wow, and
my dad only that's probably not the right word I was.
I think I was more broken than I ever really
(24:08):
let myself realize. But I wouldn't have called myself lonely.
I've been really blessed to have good friends, and may
sometimes not lots of good friends, but like a core
group of real friends. And I also found this interesting
(24:31):
community of women who kind of came in and helped
out me.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
You mean, when you were a kid, a community of
women from the neighborhood, the school, friends' moms, that kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
After my mom died, so when my mom was still alive,
they didn't have very much of a social life because
my mom wasn't comfortable. So I didn't see a lot
of women come to the house when my mom was alive.
But after she past you know, women kind of paid
attention and without being asked, without any fanfare, without any organization. Sure,
(25:10):
in the beginning we got cast roles delivered to the door,
and we got notes and all that.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, but that ends.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
That ends these women stuck around. I mean, in the
public school, I would have taken the school bus. In
the private school, you needed to carpool. And suddenly these
moms were saying, gosh, I have a reason to go
in that direction. I want to do extra days of
carpool or they would invite.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
You had a community that surrounded you.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, and my dad and my sister we were very
not you can't say very. But the people who stepped up,
they stepped up big and they did it even when
it was.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
The example of what was formative to you. Right in
terms of what you've ended up doing, I have a
did it ever? I mean, is it possible that on
those weekends that your mom split, that maybe she was
falling off the wagon and was trying to get away
from everybody with accountability.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
In hindsight, maybe, although she managed to come back. And
what I know about that is that it's possible that
she fell off the wagon, but for her to be
able to stop and then come back, that'd be tough.
That feels like maybe not, But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Bless your mom's heart, she just wasn't comfortable in her
own skin.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
No, No, she wasn't.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And your father had to have known that. And he's
traveling and doing a big job and trying to raise
a family and provide for family and three girls at home,
and then he deals with the suicide of his wife
at forty four years old. I mean a lot of trauma.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Yeah, he had a lot, but you know he was
and again, my mom died nineteen seventy seven. In those days,
dads really didn't didn't parent kids right. It was really
the mom and dads were not that outspoken. Our dad
(27:16):
told us he loved us every single day. He was
very emotionally present with.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Us, which that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Is a gift. Yeah, he I mean my dad really,
he really was amazing. He was not a perfect dad.
He was tough. We had a lot of chores, We
had all the things. You know, he was strict, he
was all that. But he was authentically a great guy
who genuinely loved us and genuinely loved the community. Like
(27:50):
he was just that larger than like I had to.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Put on this tough face when you know he was
done inside.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Right and didn't have anybody who he could really share
the worldwid right. He did go to a therapist, I
will say, I mean my dad did get some help.
And one of the early conversations after all this happened
was and I wasn't supposed to overhear it, but my
(28:18):
dad was in a conversation with his therapist whose name
was Paul, and Paul said, you know, you look at
what's happening to these girls. They are at risk. You've
got you. You are one of the yah us. You
(28:40):
are lucky that you can bring people around them. You
need to pay attention. And I remember very shortly thereafter,
I started to realize, like a I didn't feel very lucky.
Just to be clear, I didn't feel very fortunate. But
I also realized that, you know, I did have people
(29:03):
who poured into my life. I did have a dad
who genuinely cared. I mean, gosh, he could have you know,
said I can't do this, I'm done. There are a
lot of things that could have happened. And it was
in that time frame, you know, within the weeks after
my mom passed that I heard the quote there but
(29:26):
for the grace of God go I to this day.
In fact, the bracelet I took off says, there before
the grace of God go I. It is what grounds
me is that, first of all, yes, this terrible thing happened,
but I'm not so naive to believe that I'm the
(29:46):
only person who's had a terrible thing happen. I was
very fortunate to have my dad's mom and my mom's
parents really taken interest in us and really pour into
us in significant ways, and so did school, and so
(30:07):
did the moms, and so I wonder how people would
get through it if they didn't have that. And I
think the difference between people who are okay, whether that's
okay economically okay, with food secure, with emotional well being,
the difference between those who are okay and those who
(30:30):
aren't often isn't what anybody does or didn't do. It
is pure grace, and I was on the receiving end
of a lot of it.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
We'll be right back. Your mom dies and you're entering
eighth grade and you're going to a new school, right,
And I think I read it was a Catholic school.
I'm not Catholic, so, but I have had friends that
go to Catholic school. And the uniforms and the brothers
(31:08):
and the nuns and the rulers on the knuckles and
the whole thing. You've heard, whether or not that's true
or not, But tell me about your experience at Catholic
school before you went to college.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Oh my gosh, So all the bad things about Catholic schools.
I experienced none of that. Now you have to understand
that my dad, his idea of the right place to
shop for girls clothes was.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Sears, skins, and gran animals.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Amen. Yes, so you've had my closet.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
My dad left while I was young. My mom had
worked hard but didn't have any money, and I hated
tough skins. But because they had this, they had this
plastic patch on the inside of the knee to keep
the knees from wearing out. But during the summer when
you sweat, stupid things would stick to your skin, and
(32:03):
then the stupid ger animals where if you got the shirt,
you match it the But it's where we went, and
I do remember, dude, the sears you shopped at in
the very middle of it have a little like snack
bar at all.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
I don't remember that, Are you kidding? If there was
a snack bar, I would have been there.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Okay, well ours did, and they had warm cashews for
you could get a bag for a quarter. And the
only reason I would go try on tough skins because
my mom would cough up a quarter so I could
have some warm cashoes.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
They're so good, it sounds really good. That may have
swayed me.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
But so anyway, you're telling me, as a fourteen to
fifteen year old girl who's trying to figure it all out,
wants to be pretty and everything you getting, your dad
and his infinite wisdom is taking you to Sears for
your pretty clothes.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Exactly. So let me tell you I was probably the
only one in that ninth grade class that I was
thrilled with those you know.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, but you were.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Those uniforms were the great equalizer. To this day, I
have often said, and my younger sister and I often
talk about gr animals and often talk about because even
when our mom was like, we got our clothes at
Sears and they were animals.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
That's just what your dad said. It was just.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
As where we were going because it was good value
and so plus tools.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Oh yes, where else could you buy a wrench and
a pair of jeans.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
And a party dress?
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah? Perfect, let's go all.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
The good time. Yeah you got that too. We probably
did get our fridge.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Knockoff penny loafers were Pastwegians, but they had them because
I had to buy the cheek knockoffs too when I
came up.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
I remember all of its uniform was fantastic and you
what to wear. Yeah, it was better than gor animals,
you know, And and it was it was nice. It
was structure. I was there with my friends. I felt
the most alone. In the beginning of my time at
(34:05):
the Catholic school was called Saint Joseph's Academy, so Saint Joe.
In the beginning of my time at Saint Joe, I
felt very alone. I was literally the only non Catholic.
And I was the only one who didn't have a mom,
who was packing lunches, dropping them off at school, picking
up after school, doing slumber parties. I mean it was.
(34:28):
It was hard Massachusetts somewhere too, right, right. So I
went to my little sister's parent teacher conferences. I yeah,
I mean when my dad was out of town. I
mean not as no one mistook me for the parent,
but yeah, I went to represent my dad at those places.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
A lot for a girl going through her own trauma,
I mean a kid, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
I think in part it was the way I'm wired
a lot. It It's not no one ever said to me, Wendy,
I need you to do this, and then this and
then this. It was just innately how I coped it
was just well, how.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
I small spart. What your mom taught to you is
that you were cleaning the counters, right, that was what
was expected, and so after you put the kid down
in their jammies, you cleaned the clean the counter. Still
the parents came home and you were acting that out
and later in life. All right, y'all, I promise we're
(35:34):
about to get to the story of Impact one hundred
and how the idea came to Wendy while she was
a banker in Cincinnati. But we're not going to do
it until we tell one last story about Wendy's family
and how her dad met her mom.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
He was up near wallow In Lake, but in the
off season, so none of his summer friends were around.
So we went down to the marine and there's a
woman named Esther Simpson who ran the marina my dad
used to work for. And he popped in. He said, Esther,
I'm up here, none of my friends are here. Is
there anybody fun? I can anything going on? Anything I
(36:12):
can do. She said, well, there's a local girl and
her name is Margo, and you should call her up.
And my dad called my mom.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
So your mom was from there.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
She was from Pataski, which is the town right next
to Walloon. She was there, that was home, that was home.
She was a local girl, and so they dated, and
of course you know the rest of the story. Years later,
Dad is up on Walloon Lake in the summer. He
(36:46):
goes to Esther Simpson. This about three or four years
after mom had passed. He goes to Esther Simpson, who's
still running the marina on the lake, and he says, oh, Esther,
my friends are all give me a hard time. I'm
supposed to ring a date to the country club dance.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
You're not going to tell me?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And she says, you really ought to look up Cynthia Badell.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
And says, you kidding me?
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Exactly married he married her? Oh my god, he married her.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
If it wasn't for Esther Simpson. Your dad man never
had a date.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Ever, at least not a good one, Sipson. Yeah, when
when she passed, we all teased my dad like, okay,
you better make this work out.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Because you're never going to another date.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
It's over.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
That is a hilarious story. Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
They were married in I think nineteen eighty four, and
Sinny is is what she goes by she's my stepmom
and amazing she's still living. My dad's been gone for
about ten years. But yeah, happily ever.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
After a crazy story. So sorry that was way off,
but well worth a story that's hilarious. So now we're
going to get to your philanthropy and tell me the story.
I think it's great about you heard a story once
(38:18):
about how I'm just going to say it candidly and
I'll let you unfold it so people don't think I'm
a misogynistic jerk. How you found out that men were
better fundraisers than women and you wanted to fix that,
So tell us that. So because you've made a farce
out of that misnomer, but I think it kind of
(38:39):
sparked you, so tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
It was definitely a part of the story. I had
heard a story about a church that had gotten in
financial trouble, and so the lead pastor called in the
senior staff, and they called in the head of the
men's guild and the head of the women's guild and
laid out the problem and they needed to raise a
lot of money really quickly. So the senior staff went
(39:02):
out and they collected receivables. They tried to get extended payments.
They did everything they could to cut costs, to sell things,
to downplay. The head of the women's guild went out
and she gathered her team. In my word, they had
bake sales, they had car washes, they had rummage sales.
(39:22):
They worked, and in two weeks she happened.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
Point all of the all of the stereotypical women thing
to do, right, go.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Out and raise money. This is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
I'm gonna work our fingers to the bone and do
all these school things at bake cookies and have a.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
And they all did it. They were all in, all
these women, and they worked harder than they had ever done.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yeah, working hard.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
She was so proud to deliver this big check to
the pastor of I think it was eight thousand dollars.
A lot of money, A lot of money.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
A lot of work. Well, that's a lot of bacon, a.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Bad there is a lot of bacon. Well, as she's
getting ready to walk out, the head of the men's
guild walks in, and she's curious, feeling probably cocky and
a little competitive.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, sure, why not?
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Sure they work their tails off. Well, he handed a
check to the pastor that was many times more than
what she did, like a number like twenty five grand,
like a lot of money. And she said, ego, killer,
I don't get it. I don't get it. How is
this possible in the.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
You guys cooked or baked exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
I haven't seen you lift a finger.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
We've been working our butts off. What'd you do for
your twenty five dude? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (40:46):
And he said, well, I thought about what I thought
my family could give, and I wrote that check. And
then I called my friends, and I saw Joe on
the golf course, and I saw so and so here,
and my friends are generous and they believe in the church,
and so you know, that's how I did it. And
(41:07):
what struck me about that is that the women, it
wasn't just one, this whole group of women, they all
knew the situation. Not one of them thought maybe I
can write a check now one of them thought that.
They all thought, we've got to roll up our sleeves
and we've got to find a way to make something
from nothing. And the men had an entirely different view. Now,
(41:34):
my banking background tells me that it was only in
the middle seventies that women could do anything outside the
home in a meaningful way. But it was like nineteen
eighty four that women could own their own credit card
without having a father, a brother, or a husband or
(41:55):
you serious sign.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
You're telling me? And up until nineteen eighty four, a
woman could not have her own credit card. What about
a single, unmarried woman, she.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Could not get bank credit?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
If you was kidding me.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
It took a law to change that in the wall
for a banking regulation. Is I guess it now?
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Now? See this is what I said. I mean, this
is not in my notes, So you're telling me in
nineteen eighty three, when I was Telborne High School, my
mom couldn't get a credit card unless her father co signed.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
So don't hold me to the exact day. I can
tell you this. She couldn't get alone if she wanted
to start a lumber company, or if she wanted to
start a dry cleaning business, or if she wanted to
fill in the blank. She tip she was typically unable
to get any kind of credit unless it was co
(43:05):
signed by a husband or brother, a father, by a man.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
So I looked it up after the interview, and what
Wendy was saying is absolutely true. And even shocking to me.
Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was signed into law
in nineteen seventy four. We're not talking nineteen twenty here.
Nineteen seventy four, banks could refuse to issue women a
(43:31):
credit card if they were applying for it on their
own without a man co signing for it. I know,
you know, I am flabbergasted at that.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
You had women who, now, we were able to work
outside the home, and we were making.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Our own miss starting to do that, and.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
We were able to do that. But when you look
at how philanthropy started in this country and everywhere, men
went off and worked every day. Women stayed home and
took care of the kids. And when the kids were
old enough to be in school for a little while,
women had free time. And the way they used their
(44:14):
free time, other than cleaning the house and doing all
the things that women did, is they would go out
and serve the community. They would go and volunteer, they
would help each other, they would check and knitting circles,
and they would do all of that.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Well, you know, I have to interrupt you. I'm going
to tee this up for you and let you work
on it. Okay, okay, some would say that was a
better time.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Oh gosh, I would not say that that was a
better time unfolded. Here's the thing. There are women for
whom that option is ideal, and so I believe when
we get too prescriptive about what a quote real woman
(45:08):
might be or not be, then I think there are
women who ought to be able to choose that path
and thrive and enjoy it and not be judged for it.
I also think that there are plenty of women who
would choose another option. So I believe that until all
(45:30):
women can live there to their fullest potential, right, we
are short changing society. Because what I can tell you
is better decisions are made when you have multiple lived experiences.
And so I'm not going to ask you this, and
(45:52):
you can feel free to cut all of this out
of whatever. But I don't know how many women you
have working with you. But if you have all white
men of a certain age, whatever your age I think
you said you're in your mid fifties, If you have
a bunch of fifty year old white men making all
(46:14):
the decisions, you are likely missing part of the story.
Because women who have different lived experiences bring different perspectives,
and so when and Frankly, although everything we've talked about
is how great women can be to each other, Unfortunately,
(46:34):
sometimes women are not great to each other, and sometimes
it's women fighting women like gosh, you shouldn't work outside
the home, or you you know you should work outside
the home. My chance on this is each of us
come with our own unique gifts. We have to make
sure that society, that the economy, that the places we
live work in play allow women to be who they
(46:57):
were born to be, whether that is to go be
an engineer, or to be a stay at home mom,
or to be a teacher, or a physician or a
scientist or fill in the blank. We need to do
that in the same way that we need to allow
men to be exactly who they were born to be,
whether that's stay home and raise kids, be a nurse,
(47:20):
be a teacher, be an engineer.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
So you're saying, there's gender stereotypes that existed in the
seventies and eighties that were rightly broken in our society,
but we still have a long way to go exactly Okay,
So back to your story. The guys made a few
phone calls, wrote a check and raised twenty five grand.
(47:44):
The women worked their butts off for three weeks and
raised eight And the difference was that the cultural norm
of the time was that a man could write a
check and a woman couldn't. Right now, See, I found
that interesting.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
And it wasn't make no mistake. There was no man,
at least none that I've ever heard of. There were
no men ever saying to women, don't you write that check?
I was the thing.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
It was a cultural monsense.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
It was inherent. And so the old ways of women
being involved in the community, it was all time based
because that was the asset they had, but not anymore.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
We'll be right back. So, Wendy, you decided that you
wanted to surround yourself with some check writing women, tell
me about it.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
What I knew is that So when I moved to Cincinnati,
I got involved in the community in a big way
because I didn't know anyone. And that's how I met people.
I was finding women who would tell me all the
reasons why they couldn't be involved in the community and
the ways that I was trying to bring them in.
So I was doing some work for a local for
(49:14):
the local zoo at one point and for a local
hospital at another, and we were either putting on a
gala because that's the way we raise money, or we
were working on another campaign to help raise money for
the Civic Garden Club and others. And the women, even
if they were interested in what I was doing, they
(49:36):
had reasons that they said they couldn't do it. They
would say, well, I can't really justify to pass sitter
ten dollars an hour because I'm a stay at home
mom so that I can go volunteer with you. Or
they would say I work for Procter and Gamble, I
travel all the time. I can't go to these regular meetings. Now,
in my world, I was still a private banker, but
every bank i'd ever worked for value community service. So
(50:01):
I never had to take a vacation day to go
serve my community. I never had to take time off
to serve on a board of a nonprofit. And that
was my discernment in a future employer.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
I hear that, and I think about the mom who
says I really can't afford I don't think it's right
to pay a sitter so that I can go, because
the amount of money they're paying a sitter is probably
not really the deterrent, but it feels like it, Oh understand,
(50:38):
but that is also to me cultural and even maybe
touches paternalism a little.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
I think you're right. I think that there are lots
of negotiations that happen in families when women choose to
stay home, that it's you know, they may be on a.
Speaker 2 (51:01):
Budget because mean, it wreaks a barefoot and pregnant to me,
it just does.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
Yeah, And I don't know that that stay at home
moms would necessarily feel that way.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
I'm just saying that, but at particular instance, you can,
you can absolutely feel that.
Speaker 1 (51:16):
Yeah, absolutely cultural.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Barrier, I guess for some folks, definitely. And so you
saw that and wanted to break through.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
I did, And during my time when my kids were little,
there were times in my life where I was a
full time stay at home mom, where I worked part
time or when I worked full time. But because community
service was always very important to me, when we built
the budget of can I stay home, there was a
(51:48):
component of community service. There was a component of me
not staying home all day every day, but getting help,
you know, help with kids, maybe help even sometimes with cleaning.
But the idea was it's negotiated like on the front end,
but you have to know what you need in order
(52:10):
to do the math right, got it. So that's what
was happening. And ninety percent of what women were involved
in was time based, and when you don't have time,
you can't participate.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
And that's how the rise the twenty five thousand dollars
the men do when it's time based and you're squeezing
every little time you can out between a job, children, whatever, exactly.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
So so it's time to change that. Now. I sat
with the spiral notebook of every objection I'd heard, and
I started just figuring it out.
Speaker 2 (52:47):
That's funny.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
And as a banker, I knew the part of the
equation was women had to give enough to remember it now.
Remember in these days there were workplace campaigns and you
would give pre tax and therefore you wouldn't feel it.
And what I know to be true and new then
(53:10):
is that it's important as a donor to be connected
to the gift. If you take it out of my
paycheck and I never missed it, I likely won't feel
connected to the organization that it's going to.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
That's a good point.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
So if I leave my place of employment and my
new job doesn't do that same thing, I don't necessarily
have an infinity.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
Got pretax take it out of my check too. Almost
feels like I'm checking a box to make myself feel good,
but not because I'm truly engaging in a philanthropic endeavor
in my heart.
Speaker 1 (53:44):
Yeah. Well, and you can't really get connected because you
don't see it. And it's just like being connected to
your other taxes that get pulled out and your you know,
whatever goes into your IRA, like those things they just
go away, right, and your day to day thought is
about what you live on. So my theory was, if
(54:07):
I could gather at least one hundred women who each
wrote a check for one thousand dollars, one thousand dollars
is a stop and think gift. Now, I was thirty
eight years old, I myself had never written a check
for one thousand dollars to a single charity. I'd never
done it, but I figured I could, And I also
knew the power of that that if we could get
(54:31):
one hundred women to write a check for one thousand dollars,
pool one hundred percent of it, so there'd be no
talk of you know, what percent is going to this
and what percent is going to that. The one hundred
percent would be pulled in a grant and then offered
right back to the local community where these women lived,
(54:51):
worked and played. The nonprofits would then apply for those grants.
If women wanted to understand the process, if they wanted
to get involved, they would be trained how to read
a grand application, how to make a site visit. Ultimately,
we would through our membership, identify five finalists, one in
(55:13):
each focus area, so we would be women giving to community,
not necessarily women funding women and girls. And so these find.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
Women given communities the way the men at the Catholic
Church did not by having a bakeoff exactly. And isn't
there ironically.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Some kind of power in that huge power, huge power.
Once you have written that check for one thousand dollars,
your worldview starts to change, right, But it also it
really changes when you're when you're giving away. In our
(56:00):
very first year, when this was just dreamt up, one
hundred and twenty three women wrote a check and we
gave away a single grant of one hundred and twenty
three thousand dollars. This is after fielding over one hundred
grant applications.
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
And then we identified five finalists, one in each.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
Book is categories education. And these categories haven't changed.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
No, they haven't changed.
Speaker 2 (56:25):
By the way, what year are we talking. We're talking
twenty something.
Speaker 1 (56:29):
Two thousand and one. Summer of two thousand and one,
I had the idea and we so that was summer
nine to eleven happened. So everything really changed. At the
end of October, we met as a board for the
first time to say are we going to do this
or not do this? We decided to go ahead. We
(56:52):
got our nonprofit status five oh one c three by
March of two. By May, one hundred and twenty three
women at hand to us a check. We couldn't take
credit cards like it was literally a paper check. We
got about one hundred and twelve or one hundred and
fourteen grand applications across the five focus areas are education, Environment,
(57:12):
health and wellness, Arts and culture, and family. When all
those five areas.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
Are save those again, say those again.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
Education, Environment, Arts and culture, Health and wellness and family.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
So you got five grants five You got five of
these five categories and one hundred people applying for this
one hundred and twenty three grand yeap. How do you
decide who gets it?
Speaker 1 (57:40):
The women who joined, they signed up to serve on
one of these focusary committees. When the nonprofits applied, they
applied to one of these committees.
Speaker 2 (57:49):
Oh, the one hundred and twenty three check writing women
exactly are on each one of these committees, and each
committee as a committee chair exactly.
Speaker 1 (57:56):
So the idea is part of what impact one hundred
does is it democratizes philanthropy.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
So today and then that's cool, it democratizes philanthropy.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Well, if you can write a really big check to
let's just say the art museum. You can write a
really big check to the art museum. You can tell
them what to name the exhibit, you can tell them
what art is allowed to be brought in.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
I understand what you're saying. Though.
Speaker 1 (58:23):
You might even be able to design the architecture of
the room. If I write a check for one thousand dollars,
I'll get a tax letter. I might be listed in
the see of names of givers, maybe in their annual
report or on their website. I won't know when they
(58:44):
spend the money. I don't know how they spend the money.
And if I ask, I'll probably just hear crickets like
they aren't equipped to tell me what happens. Now if
in partnership with one hundred and twenty two other women,
we decide where the money goes. And so if a
(59:09):
woman has the time and the interest, she will learn
how to read an application, how to vet it, how
to do a site visit. But if she doesn't have
the time, it's still one woman, one donation, one vote.
So if someone's wealthy enough to write a check for
five thousand dollars, she can't buy her.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
Tell me about that first time there's one hundred and
twenty three votes and you tell it them up. Yes,
that is so cool.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
It was really cool.
Speaker 2 (59:34):
All of it went to one one cause, Yeah, phenomenal.
Speaker 1 (59:39):
Because the other thing that I learned, so I knew
what women needed, but I also knew what the nonprofit
world needed. And if you talk to anyone running a
nonprofit today fundraisers, they're out asking for money all the time,
and when they get it, they get ten thousand here
in fifteen thousand there. It's wonderful. It does move the
(01:00:03):
needle a little bit, but it's a lot like that
manna from heaven. You have it today, but tomorrow you
better be out there again gathering because but one hundred.
Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
And twenty three grand is a real number.
Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Now it's a game changer. Now they can really do
something that is sustainable and transformational. Those are the lenses
we look at.
Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
And that concludes part one of my conversation with Wendy Steele,
and I hope you'll listen to part two that's now available.
The Impact one hundred story is really just getting started.
And guys, I really want to take a moment to
stress one thing. While giving a thousand dollars sounds like
a lot, and I mean it is. It's a lot
(01:00:49):
of money for most of us. Maybe if you step
back and put it in context, it becomes more achievable.
If you take one thousand dollars and divide it by
three hundred and sixty five days in the year, that's
two dollars and seventy three cents a day, y'all's that's
less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And if
(01:01:10):
you consider what that two dollars and seventy three cents
a day has done for all the people throughout the organization,
maybe that context helps you think about how much a
thousand dollars is and really how much it isn't and
the impact of this type of gift upon ourselves is
(01:01:31):
way more than that dollar amount could ever account for.
Guys I'll see in Part two.
Host
Bill Courtney
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