The Leighty Foundation

Leveraging a Small Amount of Treasure, Large Amount of Time and Talent

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By Jane Leighty Justis, The Leighty Foundation, and Andrea Pactor, Women’s Philanthropy Institute, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

How can a small family foundation—with a small amount of treasure and large amounts of time and talent—change the culture of volunteer engagement in its community?

Jane Leighty Justis, board chair of The Leighty Foundation, set out to scale this mountain using a distinct assortment of gear. She experienced a powerful and transformative journey to the summit.

Jane’s experience as a trainer in the field of volunteerism contributed to her vision that high-impact volunteer engagement can sustain organizations, accomplish missions, and strengthen communities. Her passion led to creation of The Pikes Peak Volunteer Engagement Initiative, a multiyear effort to increase the effective use of volunteer resources in the Colorado Springs area.

As a philanthropist, Jane knew that today’s nonprofits and funders must engage communities in new ways to meet growing needs. Her goals for the initiative were to:

  • Strengthen the community’s ability to leverage volunteer resources as part of a critical strategy to meet its needs
  • Convene and build a cohort of organizations and individuals committed to effective volunteer engagement as a necessary element of organizational health and sustainability
  • Create a model to share with other funders

Read about the initiative’s impact

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12 Ways to Help Grantees Use Volunteers

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By Jane Leighty Justis, The Leighty Foundation 

hands raised

In her previous posts on PhilanthroFiles, Exponent Philanthropy member Jane Leighty Justis made the case for investing in volunteer infrastructure and shared her foundation’s efforts to increase the capacity of its local nonprofits to use volunteers. Here she offers ideas for helping grantees to use volunteers more effectively.

As small foundations, we are always looking for leverage. Where and how can we invest our assets in ways that will produce the best returns? Will organizations we funded in the past survive these times of shrinking resources and growing needs?

We must encourage and support our grantees as they reimagine how to accomplish their missions with fewer resources. The effective engagement of additional volunteer resources is an obvious part of the solution.  Continue reading →

Volunteer Energy: A Renewable Resource

/ Exponent Philanthropy / 4 Comments

By Jane Leighty Justis, The Leighty Foundation

The Leighty Foundation directors and advisors

The Leighty Foundation directors and advisors

In her previous post on PhilanthroFiles, Exponent Philanthropy member Jane Leighty Justis made the case for investing in volunteer infrastructure. Here she shares her foundation’s efforts to increase the capacity of its local nonprofits to use volunteers.

We are faced with new realities. Our world continues to move deeper into economic instability, and needs are increasing exponentially. The time has come to support and strengthen volunteer engagement, which has proven to be a high impact, renewable asset if mobilized and used effectively.

As funders, we have the opportunity to support our grantees’ capacity to reimagine how they can unleash this natural renewable resource to accomplish their missions, strengthen their communities, and increase the return on our investments.

At The Leighty Foundation, our actions changed from granting capacity building dollars to individual organizations to supporting an initiative that would involve many organizations. Our goal: to build the capacity of our community to engage its citizens.

Continue reading →

Philanthropy and Volunteer Engagement: A Dynamic Force for Social Change

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By Jane Leighty Justis, The Leighty Foundation

Jane Justis

For 20 years prior to the creation of our foundation, I worked in the field of volunteer management — both as a practitioner and national trainer. During that time, I saw firsthand the effect that well placed and equipped volunteers had on the accomplishments of many organizations. I also experienced how poorly many agencies utilized this resource, thus missing out on the potential of volunteers to greatly impact their critical missions.

When we created our small family foundation we committed to investing our limited resources in ways that provided the greatest impact and ensured the highest return on our investment. We agreed that supporting organizations in building their capacity to engage volunteers would increase their ability to accomplish their missions, and therefore, their long term sustainability. Too often volunteer engagement has been identified as a program area, thus missing its real value as a cost effective strategy in meeting the growing needs of our communities. Continue reading →