LisaSonneGiving's profile

"We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give." -- Winston Churchill   To Life !

For short summaries on  GIVING blogs so far- http://www.eons.com/blogs/blog/LisaSonneGiving Your comments and wisdom are welcome.

I was excited when the EONS Editor asked me to be the site’s blogging expert about Giving. At first, I was uncomfortable about the idea of including my name in the blog title and using a close-up photo of myself. Some of the most powerful Giving is anonymous. I was willing in this “branding era” to go along though, since it provided this platform to connect to EONS members about Giving.

Giving is something we all have some expertise in-we can learn from each other.  It’s not something you get a degree or certification for. It is innate, learned, & inspired. I can understand that some professional experience may lend credibility to this blog though, so here’s a quick sketch of some of my relevant nonprofit and writing life.  Please forgive anything that sounds like tooting horns.

My work with nonprofits spans 30 years including

*Media (PBS – New York; DC; Madison; Kentucky; and Southern California),

*Education (Director of Development for Stanford University),

* Arts (American Conservatory Theater when it was our country’s largest repertory theater),

*and Sciences (most recently as a consultant for Buzz Aldrin’s ShareSpace) .

In 2000, my husband and I co-founded the nonprofit Charity Checks (www.CharityChecks.us) which innovated Giving Certificates, good for any nonprofit in the US.  They are tools for people to use to do good &  “give the joy of giving.”

We also developed a Charitable Literacy program that started in 2000 to help kids become thoughtful philanthropists in public and private schools from New York to Los Angeles and even in an American School in Korea. 

So far, over 700 charities have been helped. The movement of giving a gift that lets other people give to charities of their choice has grown enormously.

Charity Checks have been written about in the WALL STREET JOURNAL, USA TODAY, WASHINGTON POST, READERS DIGEST, NEW YORK POST, LOS ANGELES TIMES, PARADE, and EONS giving blog. The school programs have been covered by television news teams in LA and NY. We would love to expand the program  to schools in other parts of the country. Let me know if you are interested.

I first wrote publically about Giving when I was 11 years old and our class had collected clothes for orphans in Vietnam. I sent a pice into  our local newspaper, THE SOUTH PASADENA REVIEW, and they ran it before Christmas.

Since then, my professional writing has covered a broad range of subjects for national magazines (LIFE,  and cover stories for STANFORD and AMERICAN WAY), for nonfiction TV series  (for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC,  DISCOVERY, CBS and PBS)  as well as for an Academy Award winning documentary. 

I’ve also written some travel pieces for EONS. www.eons.com/blogs/blog/EclecticGleam. More of my travel videos and writing are at www.WorldTouristBureau.com 

Please write me a personal email if there are additional topics you would like me to cover in the Giving Blog. Or write me with Giving stories and art that you would like to share. I am currently working on a book called GIVING POWER.

Thanks to EONS for having a GIVING BLOG and to all those who have read it, written me, and added to the dialogue and learning.

Thanks for Giving,  Lisa