Giving Tuesday | I Go Over Several Different Organizations So You Can Find The One That Resonates With You! Ep 88
Nov 27, 2023
Jamie Truman
When people come together, they have the power to make a true impact in their communities. That’s why on this Giving Tuesday, host Jamie Truman invites listeners to join in the spirit of generosity because even the smallest donation can make a real difference.
In this special episode, Jamie looks back at some of her favorite charitable organizations featured on The Truman Charities Podcast and shares how your donation can help in their life-changing missions. She highlights various organizations with heartwarming stories, including The Napkin Network, ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation, Empower Her Network, Comfort Cases, Building Homes for Heroes, and more.
Whether you want to support veterans, children living in shelters or victims of trafficking, there’s an organization that’s right for you. If you want to get your children or community involved, or offer your own time by volunteering, there’s plenty of options for that too!
This episode is a great resource for finding an organization that resonates with you this Giving Tuesday. Tune in now!
Learn more about the organizations shared in this episode:
When people come together, they have the power to make a true impact in their communities. That’s why on this Giving Tuesday, host Jamie Truman invites listeners to join in the spirit of generosity because even the smallest donation can make a real difference.
In this special episode, Jamie looks back at some of her favorite charitable organizations featured on The Truman Charities Podcast and shares how your donation can help in their life-changing missions. She highlights various organizations with heartwarming stories, including The Napkin Network, ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation, Empower Her Network, Comfort Cases, Building Homes for Heroes, and more.
Whether you want to support veterans, children living in shelters or victims of trafficking, there’s an organization that’s right for you. If you want to get your children or community involved, or offer your own time by volunteering, there’s plenty of options for that too!
This episode is a great resource for finding an organization that resonates with you this Giving Tuesday. Tune in now!
Learn more about the organizations shared in this episode:
I am Jeannie Truman, your host. Today is Giving Tuesday and I know a lot of you are thinking I want to give, I want my family to get involved this holiday season, or my business and coworkers, but I'm not really sure what to do, where to find an organization that resonates with me and how can I give within that organization. So, as you know, truman Charities podcast I interview founders of nonprofits and it's sort of like a catalog for you and I ask all the questions that somebody would want to know before they were to donate and or get involved within an organization. So I do all of the work so you don't have to sit down with different founders for coffee chats and really dive into the organization. I do that for you. I chose a few organizations to talk to you about today and I put down the episode number where I interviewed them so you can go back and listen to that to get the more in depth look at that organization through the founder. But I just want to real quick go through a couple to give you some options for this Giving Tuesday. All right, so let's get right into it. And I made sure that I chose a couple from different types of organizations. So let's start out with the napkin network. I interviewed Lindsay Gill and that was episode 77.
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The napkin network is a growing social community of moms helping moms in need. They provide free and easy access to basic baby essentials just diapers, wipes, formula and all emergency food needs. They have this really cool thing called a pop pantry and Westfield Montgomery mall, the napkin nook. It's really neat. What you can do is go out with your kids, purchase large size diapers, pull ups, unsung wipes, cough and cold medicine for babies and make sure the adults do want to make sure that we are getting medicine for the moms to and $25 target visa cards, any monetary donations. Make sure to stop by the Montgomery mall and check out the napkin. That's a great, as I said, idea for you and your kids to go and help moms that are in need in this area. When I spoke to Lindsay, I was just floored of how many moms in this area were in need and also the cost of formula. I think it was somewhere around $150, $200 a month for formula, which is so incredibly expensive.
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The next organization is Chad Tough Defeat DIPG. That's episode 70. I spoke with co-founder Jenny Moser, who was a mother whose son, michael, was diagnosed with DIPG about a week after his sixth birthday. Dipg is a brain tumor with no effective treatment and a 0% survival rates. Michael passed away eight and a half months after his heroic battle. Since then, jenny and her husband have made it their life's mission to make sure to find a cure for DIPG and DMG and to help other families that are going through this diagnosis with their children. Typically, it affects children four to 11 years old. In recent years, researchers are understanding that biology of these tumors has significantly improved. Researchers now believe that a cure for DIPG is really within reach, but they need funding for more research. Please think about donating to Chad Tough Defeat DIPG for giving. Tuesday. You can go to ChadToughorg Then.
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The next organization I'm going to talk about is Empower Herd Network. That is episode 73. I spoke with the co-founder, abby. Their mission is that they work with trafficking survivors and find paths to independence by removing housing barriers, providing advocacy, financial education and uncovering viable career paths. What I found really interesting when I was talking to Abby is how prevalent trafficking is here in the US. It is a great organization. If you want to help women that have been trafficked, you can go to EmpowerHerdNetworkorg and find out all the information on how you can donate there. This one is a close name to Empower for Herbets in power for life, episode 73.
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Now Empower for Life ensures children and homeless shelters in Baltimore and Harford counties to get and stay happy and healthy. They provide programming for six homeless shelters. And what I realized when I was speaking with Connie from Empower for Life is that we don't realize that our kids come home from school and then they go out and they play and they get all of that extra energy out so they can focus and do their homework, and then when they're doing their homework, they're in a quiet place in our house. These children go from school straight to the shelters, into usually a room, one area and full of a lot of other families, so they don't have that time to play like most kids, and then they're having to do their homework with so much noise and it's so hard for them to concentrate. So they're really focusing on helping these kids with different programs. Now this is a great one that you and your family can do. They are serving this year over 185 children that are living in the homeless shelters this holiday season, and they do expect that number to unfortunately rise. So you can adopt a child this year from the shelter and what you and your kids could do is you adopt the child, then you go out and you purchase items for them for the holidays, wrap them and send them to the organization and then they will give those items to the parents so they can give gifts to their children on Christmas. So you can also donate wrapping supplies, gift cards and, of course, your time and support. So please go to Empower for the number four life MDorg.
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Next organization is mentoring through athletics. I interviewed the founder, ashley Montgomery. That is episode 85. Their mission is to connect kids through sports programming, mentoring, tutoring and additional community support. When I interviewed Ashley, I really loved what this organization was doing to build kids self-esteem. I really was impressed by their athletic programs that they're offering for kids and their mentorship program. They have after school programs Also hold cleat drive that you can drop off. You know gently used cleats and a school uniform drive as well that you can help with that. So that is also a great organization that you and your family can get involved with. This is a local charity as well. You can go to mentoring through athleticsorg. You can donate, you can register, become a mentor or you can volunteer for a lot of their community outreach events.
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The next organization is Comfort Cases.
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I interviewed Rob Shear. This is episode 64. And I interviewed him, maybe, gosh, maybe a year or two ago. We ended up having a holiday party for Rob a couple years ago to help raise money for his organization. So many people were touched by Comfort Cases and Comfort Cases. What they do is they inspire communities to bring dignity and hope to youth and foster care. This is achieved by providing our Comfort case backpacks and Comfort XL duffel bags to youth entering foster care in every state in the US, puerto Rico and the United Kingdom, and their ultimate goal is to end that the horrific practice of black trash bags being given to the youth to store and transport their belongings and foster care. Jump on to this podcast. Listen to Rob's personal story about being in foster care himself and having to use a trash bag, and his story is very inspiring. Him and his husband have now adopted. They have five children that they adopted from foster care. They really are moving the needle for so many kids in the community. There's a lot of different ways that you can get involved within this organization. They have an Amazon wish list. Then this is something you can do with your kids and your neighborhood is. You can have a, you can organize a donation drive and you can actually volunteer, bring your kids in to volunteer at comfort cases and stuff the comfort case backpacks and duffel bags for the kids, and then you can also always just go on to the website and donate there. That's comfortcasesorg.
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The next organization I want to talk about is Interfaith. Now I spoke with Courtney Hall. This is episode 15. This is way back in the beginning, when we started this podcast, so you'll just have to bear with me with my very beginning stages of interviewing. But I really do love Interfaith and the reason why I love them so much is that they help people from A to Z. So they provide emergency shelter, then it's supportive housing and their essential needs, and they help with clothing and food and employment programs for over 35,000 residents of Montgomery County. So this is really, as I said, great. I love speaking with Courtney because really they're helping people, as I said, from A and needing housing to Z to finding employment. You can go on to IworkSMCorg. So IworkSMCorg if you want to help with Interfaith, okay. So now we have our next organization, and this is very near and dear to my heart as service members, as my son says that our veterans are our real life superheroes, and I 100% agree with him there.
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Building Homes for Heroes that is episode 63. Building Homes for Heroes builds or modifies homes and gifts them mortgage-free to injured veterans and first responders and their families. Building Homes for Heroes provides services to their recipients and their families, including counseling, financial literacy, team building to build better lives within their community and help with finding employment as well. This holiday season, please think of helping injured veterans and first responders. When I spoke with Tony Building Homes for Heroes, what I was blown away with is that they custom designed these homes to the needs of that specific injured vet or first responder, down to the last detail, and they bring the community in to help these injured vets and first responders. It's amazing and I can't speak more highly of them. It's a wonderful organization and they're helping vets and first responders all over the United States. So that is a great one too, and that's Building Homes for Heroesorg.
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Then we have another military organization Luke's Wings. I spoke with the co-founder, fletcher Gill. That was episode 86. And Luke's Wings provides emergency travel planning services and airplane tickets for families and loved ones of wounded, ill and injured service members, veterans and fallen officers during hospital recovery and rehabilitation. If you listen to that episode of 86, you're going to find out that the government only will give the loved ones of these service members one or two plane tickets. And for a lot of these wounded, ill and injured service members it's a very long recovery and rehabilitation process. So their holiday campaign is no service member spends the holiday alone, so their goal is to make sure that every service member has a loved one with them during the holiday season. Wonderful organization. So please think about donating to them. That's lukezwingsorg.
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The last one that I'm going to talk about is CAST. That's castwatersafetyorg. I spoke with the founder, liz Hubert. That was episode 56.
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Did you know that the number one cause of death for children ages one to four is drowning? And drowning happens under a minute, it's quiet and it's fast and it happens before you know it. Most of the time it happens on off swim and pool times and it can happen within just a small amount of water. So what I found? I didn't know anything about self rescue swim lessons until I had my second son. I signed him up for ISR immediately when he was six months old, with a wonderful instructor, kaylee, in the Bethesda area, and what they do is it takes six to eight weeks and they go Monday through Friday and after that six to eight weeks depending on when your child picks it up they learn how to roll on and float. So they roll onto their back and they can float water. So that gives you time the precious minutes to find your child, and what they do at the very end because most of drownings happen on non swim hours they make sure that the child is in their pajamas or like in a full outfit when they're making sure that they can float on their back. It really is quite amazing.
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My son's been doing ISRs and he was six months, as I said, and now he's three years old and he's jumping off the diving board and swimming half the length of the pool and when he gets tired he just flips on his back and then swims back over. They have instructors all over the US that provide scholarships for families that cannot afford the classes. That's the first thing that they do, and the second thing that they do is bring awareness to water safety. I'll give you one example. I had absolutely no idea that the puddle jumpers that all the kids wear are not safe in the water. You should never have your kid in a puddle jumper. I didn't know that. It gives your kid a false sense of security when it comes to water, and that's the number one thing that they shouldn't have. They should know that it's dangerous and they should know that if they jump in the water, that they cannot swim. It's things like that that I was completely unaware of and that can save lives. So CAST is a great organization, too, to think about, because what you're gonna be doing is providing these scholarships for families that can't afford for these lessons, and these are life-saving lessons for children.
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I hope this gives you some good options for Giving Tuesday, and make sure, too, to scroll through, I think, on that episode like 88 or 89 at this point of interviews. So there are plenty of organizations for you to choose from. These are a couple that I grabbed. I wanted to grab all different types of organizations so I could make sure that I find one that resonates with everyone. I wanna know what organization you've decided to give for Giving Tuesday, so please jump onto my Instagram at geniecom, I'm a score.
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Truman Charities. Find her Giving Tuesday video and put in the comments what organization you decided to give on for Giving Tuesday, because I'm curious, I wanna know. I wanna know what organization resonated with you. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Truman Charities podcast. Until next time, if you liked this episode, please make sure to rate and review our podcast. That is how more people learn about the Truman Charities podcast and our organization. And to make sure you don't miss any of our future episodes, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. If you'd like to follow Truman Charities, you can follow us on Facebook at Truman Charities, instagram at Jamie underscore Truman Charities and check out our website, truitoritiescom. Thank you.