Speaker: Georganne Nixon, First Lady of Missouri
November 5, 2009
Tony’s Restaurant – St. Louis, MO
Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to be here with such an impressive and accomplished group…and on such a happy occasion.
We are here to celebrate the generosity and leadership each one of you has shown in your community – and our state – through your commitment to the United Way Women’s Leadership Giving Initiative. And what better place to celebrate than Tony’s? Like many of you, Jay and I have often looked to Tony’s as a place for special celebrations.
And today is definitely a day to celebrate. This celebration is possible largely because of the vision of one special woman. She is a leader, a giver in all ways, a woman bubbling over with initiative, and our good friend: Ellen Sherberg, publisher of the St. Louis Business Journal.
Ellen started the women’s Initiative in 1996 to encourage and recognize women who make gifts of $1,000 or more to the United Way of Greater St. Louis. You are part of an even more generous group. Since it began, the Women’s Initiative has raised and invested more than $45 million dollars in the St. Louis area.
Today, the Initiative has nearly three thousand members. Last year alone, you raised well over five million dollars for the United Way. And this year - a year of historic economic challenges, a year when it’s needed most -- you are on track to do the same.
I’d also like to recognize this year’s chair, Deb Hollingsworth, vice president for external affairs with AT&T-Missouri. Deb has been a member of United Way’s Women’s Leadership Giving Initiative since 2001, and a member of the cabinet since 2006.
Yes, we are here to celebrate your generosity and the ways it has changed the lives of thousands of people in the St. Louis area.
You have given a lot personally to get a seat at the table today not only in dollars and cents, but in many other ways.
I’m talking about the hard work, self-sacrifice and courage it took to clear the bar, to break the glass ceiling, to step up to the power and responsibilities of leadership. Worth it? Yes. But not easy.
Throughout history, women have been a civilizing force. We have been the connective tissue of society. Raising children. Keeping house. Picking up socks and picking up the slack. Passing on recipes and traditions. Helping out at the school picnic, the church food pantry and the Temple fund-raiser. Holding everyone else together when life handed us heartbreak.
Saying “Yes” when we really wanted to say “No” -- because we knew somebody had to get things done… Thank goodness those two little X chromosomes that God gave us are tough as nails.
We remain a civilizing and connective force. But increasingly, women are part of the structural framework of society -- the bone and muscle that move us forward.
In our lifetimes, we have witnessed and been part of a profound shift in women’s roles and women’s work.
For much of our lives, especially those of us who are Boomers, women have been on the move.
Moving in unprecedented numbers through colleges and graduate schools, earning degrees in law and medicine, in business and government, in engineering and architecture. Moving into high-paying, high-profile jobs. Moving into corner offices and onto the top rungs of the corporate ladder. Moving into the uncharted waters of owning their own businesses. Moving also into courthouses and state houses, into Congress and the Cabinet.
In the second half of the 20th Century, the percentage of women in the workforce almost doubled -- from 32 percent to 62 percent. And over the past 30 years, women’s median income has increased over 60 percent. Those are stunning numbers. And something to celebrate.
Women like you didn’t get where you are today by yourselves, of course. You got here with the support of friends and family, role models and mentors. Look to your left and to your right. Many of the women who helped you are here today. Celebrate them.
We are even here to celebrate those who stood in your way, who turned you down for a promotion or a loan, who told you couldn’t do it. They only strengthened your resolve to succeed. And look who won: YOU are here today.
Education and financial success are the two biggest predictors of philanthropy. Today, educated women are acquiring more personal wealth – and sharing it – more than ever before. According to IRS statistics, 43 percent of the nation’s top wealth holders - people with assets of $1.5 million or more - are women. There are more than a dozen female billionaires. Women like them – and like you – not only have more personal wealth, but are controlling more corporate wealth than ever before.
You have arrived: successful and empowered. The power in this room today could light up the Arch for a year. And the power of the purse strings that you control is changing the face of American philanthropy.
There is a lot being written about how women give, and how that differs from the way men give. Here are a few of those ways:
- Women donors are strategic. They know what they want to achieve, and how to focus their assets to get the best results.
- Women are relational. They want to be involved with the organizations they give to, and with each other. Look around this room: Case in point.
- Women don’t care as much as men do about public recognition for their contributions: the big building with their names on it, the plaque on the door.
- Women want to know that they can make a difference in the lives of others.
And that is exactly what the United Way is doing with the gifts you have given.
The United Way funds nearly 200 health and human service agencies in 16 counties in Missouri and Illinois. When I looked at the list of agencies… and at the faces and the stories on your website… the word that kept popping into my head was “ecos.” As in ecosystem, and ecology, from the Greek word “oikos” meaning home.
You are strengthening your ecosystem – your home -- in significant ways. How?
By giving shelter to women and children who are the victims of domestic abuse.
By teaching women like Jeannie Small to live independently as a blind person.
By helping Shonta Blackmon, a former drug addict, find a job, a home and pathway back to her children.
By giving boys and girls a safe, after-school alternative to the mean streets they have known.
By helping unemployed breadwinners tune up their resumes, regain their confidence and reinvent their careers.
In my duties as First Lady of Missouri, I look into the eyes of those you’ve helped, and I see the difference you make. Whether it’s at sheltered workshops; child care facilities or domestic violence shelters, I see your blessing in action. I see how your gifts offer hope and dignity, especially in these difficult economic times.
No matter which direction the Dow Jones and your 401(k) are headed today, or what the economists tell us about the “R-word,” we know it’s not over yet.
Every CEO and CFO in this room – just like every M-O-M and D-A-D across Missouri – is waiting to exhale. Our belts are still pretty darned tight.
Last week, the Governor announced another round of deep – but necessary – cuts in the Missouri budget. Fortunately, as CEOs and M-O-Ms, we know how to weather just about any storm …After all; many of us raised teenagers, didn’t we?
These are precisely the times when women must come together, stand together and give together. And that is what you have done.
All of you are savvy businesswomen. You know that doing the right thing isn’t always easy, or painless. On behalf of the citizens of Missouri, I thank you for being not only kind, but wise. And I thank all of you for digging deep, because in these difficult times, I know it might be an honest-to-goodness strain.
In closing, I’d like to share one more thought with you, from another wise woman named Bernice Johnson Reagon.
She is a composer and scholar who founded the remarkable women’s singing group, Sweet Honey in the Rock.
Their songs are not warm and fuzzy, or romantic, or about life on Easy Street. Their songs celebrate women’s endurance, our ability to pull together in hard times, and to give one another strength for the heavy lifting that life demands.
She said: “Today, whenever women gather together it is not necessarily nurturing.
It is coalition-building. And if you feel the strain, you may be doing some good work.”
There’s no doubt about it. You have built a powerful coalition, and it is doing good work.
That’s something to celebrate.
Thank you.
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Sources: , Associate Director, Women’s Philanthropy Institute, Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN; Fern Portnoy, “PhilanTopic: Women and the Future of Philanthropy” April 4, 2008; United Way of Greater St. Louis.
