Synopsis
Ivan and Beth Misner talk about the BNI-Misner Charitable Foundation. Beth has “the greatest job in the world:” awarding money to charities. She and Ivan created the foundation 9 years ago because of their belief in the importance of giving back to the community.
- True to the spirit of BNI, grants are given out by referral only.
- The foundation’s grants benefit children and education.
- The foundation has given grants all over the world (e.g. a library and 2 preschools in Sri Lanka after the tsunami).
- BNI members can make directed contributions (designate a recipient for their donations).
- Mini-grants go to purchase books for school libraries and equipment for teachers.
Beth’s main goal for this year is to increase visibility of the Foundation within BNI and encourage members to contribute monthly.
Refer a school or charity for a mini-grant: have them e-mail bethmisner@bni.com.
Visit the Foundation Website.
Make a contribution through the California Community Foundation.
Brought to you by Networking Now.
Complete Transcription of BNI Podcast Episode 043 –
Priscilla Rice:
Hello everybody and welcome back to the Official BNI Podcast, brought to you by networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. I am Priscilla Rice coming from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chairman of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner, as well as a very special guest, Beth Misner. What are the two of you going to talk about today, Dr. Misner?
Ivan Misner:
We’re going to talk about the BNI Misner Foundation. It’s awesome to have my lovely bride of 19 years on the podcast. This is the first podcast that you have been on with me, right, Beth?
Beth Misner:
Yes, it is. I am really happy to be here. It’s really great.
Ivan:
It’s great to have you on. Most of the BNI members know — I have always said that it is the best referral that I ever got. Beth was a member of BNI. We met back originally in 1986. We got married in 1989, and Elisabeth and I have worked in BNI for many years together. In the last number of years, she has been very active in the BNI Foundation. I thought maybe we would start my having you share, Beth, what your role is within the BNI foundation.
Beth:
When you and I started this foundation in the late 90s, about 1999, I came on board as a foundation administrator. Part of what I do is I get to oversee where the funds go that we give out every year. I tell people that I have the best job in the world. It really is great to be able to go to work and give away money to deserving charities all day. I love it.
One of the things that I do is oversee the grant requests that come in. We have a couple of parties of folks who help me oversee that and vote for them as they come in. I receive the mini grant applications, oversee the voting approval or rejection of the grant, and then once it is approved, I actually fund it. Then, if I am able to, I go out to the charities and do the public gifting of the grant, if you will, which is a thrill. I really love that part.
Ivan:
It’s a combination of members of the Board of Advisors for BNI members and some directors who are involved in the selection of the grant. Is that correct?
Beth:
That’s right. Right now, we are basically doing an e-mail vote out to the Executive Board of Advisors and a new body that I’ve created which is the BNI Director’s Fund Development Committee. So we are getting BNI directors involved in getting these grants approved.
Part of my reason for doing that now, Ivan, as you and I talked about, is that we really want to move BNI’s foundation into a similar model as BNI is itself, in that the grants are given out by referral only. As directors and members become more aware of what charities there are in their own communities that could benefit from a grant from the BNI Foundation, they can then referrer those folks into us to apply for a grant.
Ivan:
I should have brought this up in the very beginning, but the BNI Foundation was created because we believe that it’s important to put back into the community from which we draw. That is why we formed it nine years ago.
I think that this podcast is really valuable for the average BNI member to know what the foundation is about because the average member doesn’t really know what the foundation is about and what its focus is. This podcast’s goal here is to really educate our members as to what we are doing with this foundation to contribute back to the local communities. That really leads me to my next question. Why have we started the foundation? Would you like to talk a little bit about that?
Beth:
Absolutely. I would love to. You and I both shared a common vision for the purpose of the foundation. We both really, when we were talking about it, agreed that equipping the leaders of tomorrow, or business leaders, community leaders, government leaders, with solid education was paramount. We’d like to provide for gaps that are present due to lack of funding sources in our educational system.
The Board of Advisors got together and kind of put together a mission statement for us, and basically, we have a two-pronged focus. That is children and education. Most of the grants that we do review are specifically going to benefit children and education in some way. We do get grants from time to time that don’t fall within those guidelines and if it is a directed grant by a BNI member who has themselves contributed over $250, then the grants can be directed back out.
We are part of the California Community Foundation as a fund within their governing body there. So we are able to give charitable grants to any nonprofit in the country. But for the BNI Foundation grants, we only sponsor those for children and education.
Ivan:
Just a couple of points. We can actually do grants anywhere in the world, and we have given grants all over the world. Correct?
Beth:
Yes, absolutely. The members really were supportive with major world events like the tsunami. We got grants coming in from all over the world and we were actually able to rebuild some preschools and a library in Sri Lanka. I am really proud of the members for coming up to the plate with funds and making contributions that helped make that possible.
Ivan:
Just so everyone understands a directed contribution, somebody may want to contribute money through the BNI Foundation and have it go to a specific charity. That is possible, but one of the things that we are really trying to do is build our general fund which goes specifically for mini grants for children and education. That’s really one of the reasons why we are doing this podcast to let people know what we are doing with this foundation and that we are contributing to mini grants.
One of my favorite examples of the mini grants that we have given — and may be you can get a couple of others — we have actually done this now, I think, with a number of schools. There are many schools where there are so many cutbacks in the schools that it’s either hard to get students into the library, there’s not enough books in the library or the library isn’t a library open, if you can believe that. The library is not open enough hours.
A number of the grants that we have done have been to provide books. We have bought hundreds or many, many thousands of books for teachers so that they have a mini library of books in their classroom. I remember one teacher saying, “I can’t teach math. I can’t teach science. I can’t teach reading. I can’t teach anything if they don’t have books. And I can’t get books in their hands and less I have some in my classroom.” That was one of the first mini grants that we did directly for a class which was to buy books.
I love that as an example. Do you want to give a couple of other examples of some of the mini grants that we’ve given?
Beth:
Absolutely. One I got really excited about what’s a school whose computer aid teacher applied for mini grant for computer software program, some video equipment. She was equipping her students to be able to do video presentations. I could see how this would be used for them in a profession or a career. They put together video diaries, and they played it for the school and uploaded it to the school website. It was just phenomenal.
Those were items that she wanted to purchase that fell outside of the school budget. When we were reviewing the grant we took a look at it and said this is really going to benefit these kids in the future. And in libraries for schools area, we had a special school at a boys and girls home in our local area. These kids don’t have access to the public library. They have no way to get there. The BNI Foundation has through the years, year after year, granted gifts to them of $1000 at a time, and they are building out their library, which is phenomenal.
Ivan:
Yeah. These are really exciting grants that we are getting out. Again, it’s not just in the United States. It’s not just in California where BNI headquarters is. We’re giving these grants out all over the United States and all over the world. I would estimate that we’ve given grants out in at least 10 countries. Is that probably fairly close?
Beth:
I think you’re right. Yeah.
Ivan:
We are running out of time. I want to give two links and then ask you to wrap up with what your goals are for the foundation. These are links that are important for BNI members. One is to foundation website, BNI.org. You can also get there from BNI.com where it says “Foundation” on the left. If you go to BNI.org, that will take you to the BNI Misner Charitable Foundation website.
Then there will be another link if members or directors would like to make a contribution to the foundation which will take you to the California Community Foundation. As Beth mentioned earlier, we are part of this very, very large foundation. We are a sub foundation under that. You can actually make credit card contributions to the California Community Foundation which the BNI Foundation is a part of. Then, just to wrap up, what are your goals for the foundation? We have about a minute left.
Beth:
Okay, I will try to give you all of my goals in less than a minute. I was so inspired by meeting Richard Branson this summer. Seeing the attention that he pays to charitable work really inspired me to treat the foundation as more than just a personal hobby. One of my main goals is to increase the visibility for the foundation within BNI.
I am putting together a program called BNI Monthly Heroes. This will be a program that is targeting BNI members, directors and anyone involved with our organization that you want, to get involved and contribute a minimum of $50 a month to our general fund. Last year, we gave out $140,000 in mini grants but we only received $40,000 in contributions. We want to do what we can to encourage members to contribute on a monthly basis.
I want to really get our whole corporate culture moved over to having referral only receipt of mini grant applications. I really want to let members know to contact your local schools, your local charities that benefit children and invite them to connect with us to apply for a mini grant. My e-mail address is BethMisner@BNI.com. When you want to make a referral, you just have that referral e-mail me and let me know that you referred them to me, and I will take it from there.
And then I have some personal goals — in developing my role as administrator and networking with people like Richard Branson’s Virgin Unite coordinator. Jean and I have already had a couple of conversations. I am working with the Drucker School of Management. Their Dean there is formerly from a charity in Boston. I just want to get better at what I do so that we can help more kids in their educational programs.
Ivan:
Thanks Beth. We will make sure that your e-mail address is on there so that any BNI members who have any questions about the foundation or how to contribute or support it can do so.
By the way, you talked about Richard Branson. For listeners of this podcast, I did an entire podcast on the butterfly effect of networking. If you have an opportunity, go back and listen to that podcast because I talk about Beth and I having an opportunity to meet Richard on his island, Necker Island, in the Caribbean. It’s a great story and a good segue.
Well listen, for all of you who are listening to this podcast, I just want to say you really are part of the great organization. BNI is not just about generating business for ourselves but we are also about supporting the local communities. I firmly believe that you may not be able to make a world of difference but you can make a difference in the world.
BNI is changing the way the world does business through givers gain and supporting other businesses through relationship networking, but we’re also helping local communities through these mini grant programs. I urge you to take a look at the website and connect with Beth. Become one of our monthly heroes that she’s creating where you make a contribution on a regular basis that goes to children and education. Thank you very much for being on this podcast and join me on some future ones.
Beth:
I would love to. Thanks for having me here, Ivan.
Ivan:
Alright. Back to you, Priscilla.
Priscilla:
That was just great. It makes me really proud to be a part of this organization. I think probably there are a lot of members who don’t even know about the foundation. Thanks, both of you, for letting us know about that. This podcast has been brought to you by networkingnow.com, the leading site on the net for networking downloadables. Thanks for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we look forward to having you join us again next week for another exciting episode of the Official BNI Podcast.