Charitable Group Keeps Its Giving Simple

In two years, a group of Southern California women has donated more than half a million dollars to local charities.

And it’s been done without a single fund-raising dinner, without a request that anyone else donate.

The group’s leader, Jacqueline Caster, said she has found a simple way to help the less fortunate: She and 126 other women simply crack open their checkbooks at the end of the year and pay membership dues of $5,000 each to the EveryChild Foundation.

Then nearly all of the money goes to one nonprofit group.

It’s a novel approach to giving back to the community, Caster said recently from her Pacific Palisades home. Women who are interested in helping children without having to deal with the extra stuff that normally goes into philanthropy can do just that, she said.

And by pooling their money to aid one charity, the women are able to have a significant, visible effect.

EveryChild awarded its 2000 grant to QueensCare, which used the $230,000 to put together a mobile dental office. The facility serves children from lower-income families who wouldn’t otherwise visit a dentist.

Last year, with more dues-paying members, EveryChild awarded $385,000 to the Wonder of Reading to create libraries at Los Angeles-area elementary schools. The second library opened Aug. 9 at Union Avenue Elementary School near downtown.

This year, the group added even more members to its rolls and expects to hand out more than $500,000.

Caster said that, at this rate, she expects EveryChild to be handing out more than $1 million in just a couple of years.

The members might vote then on whether to offer two awards instead of one.

All of the awards go to a children’s charity to implement a new program or to fund a project that the charity wouldn’t be able to establish otherwise.

EveryChild grants cannot go toward regular operating expenses, Caster said. Each project must help children facing disease, abuse, neglect, poverty or disability, all part of EveryChild’s mission statement.

“We wanted to feel like we’ve made a really substantial difference,” Caster said.

“If we made a lot of little grants, it would be harder to monitor. When we make one large grant, we can really impact one of those needs.”

That’s been the case with the Wonder of Reading grant, which will fund 15 libraries in four years. It costs a minimum of $45,000 to convert an existing classroom into a library, said Beth Michelson, the director of Wonder of Reading.

The grant pays for shelving and 10,000 books. Because there isn’t money for full-time librarians in the Los Angeles Unified School District budget, trained aides will staff the libraries five days a week.

“This grant really helps us to go much further than we would have been without it,” Michelson said. The EveryChild grant was the largest donation the organization has ever received.

“Reading is the basic foundation of all learning,” said Union Avenue Vice Principal Fernando Cajero. “Our students deserve a big and wonderful library that allows them to enjoy the wonderful world of books at all times.”

The EveryChild approach was born partly out of Caster’s frustration with the usual fund-raising routine.

She had grown tired of traditional benefit dinners that were difficult to sell out, left organizers exhausted and reaped little gain in relation to the effort involved.

A graduate of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Boston University School of Law, Caster had tried two careers, but found fulfillment in taking care of her family: her husband, Andrew, and their two children.

When the children were ready to begin school, she stopped working outside the home and spent her days taking care of the household, she said.

One afternoon, while she soaked in a tub, the idea for EveryChild hit her. She dressed quickly, then ran across the street to her neighbor’s house.

In less than a day, Caster, 45, had assembled a board of directors.

Caster still runs the organization out of a post office box and her home office. Aside from a consultant, EveryChild has no paid staff. Caster said about 6% of the money raised covers operational costs.

Cynthia Alexander, one of the founding members, said Caster’s idea immediately struck a chord.

“I knew that I didn’t want to go back to the kind of work that I’d done before,” said Alexander, 52, who previously worked as a project manager for a marketing communications company. After having her children--now 10 and 12 years old, Alexander had become a full-time homemaker.

When Caster knocked on her door that day with the idea for the foundation, Alexander said, she knew she wanted to be involved. “Partly I felt that I wanted to do something that really gave back to the community and produced some kind of good results for the people around me.”

The women incorporated EveryChild as a nonprofit organization and hired the consultant to help them screen grant applicants.

The consultant is paid $40,000 a year, EveryChild’s largest operating expenditure, Caster said.

Membership grew mainly through word of mouth, Caster said. Every member has an equal vote at the end of the year to decide who will be awarded the next grant.

“I feel like I can, so why not do it,” said Caster of running EveryChild. “I have the time, I have the means and I have the organizational skills. I can’t think of a better use of my time.”