Catalyzing Change, Amplifying Impact: A Conversation with the IRC and Schwab Charitable™

MARGARET KRAMER:  Hi, and welcome, everyone. We’ll just wait a few moments for others to join. 

Hi, and welcome, everyone. We’re so glad to have you all join us for this conversation between the International Rescue Committee and Schwab Charitable. Thank you for joining us, and please note that this briefing is being recorded. Additionally, if you would like to turn on closed captioning for this event, you can do so by clicking on the Show Captions button at the bottom of your screen. 

My name is Margaret Kramer, and I’m the Senior Internal Communications Officer for the International Rescue Committee’s Crisis Response, Recovery and Development work, or CRD for short. I’m based in New York City and in my work, I manage internal communications for CRD with a focus on building understanding of CRD’s programming and emergency response initiatives across all regions and countries in which IRC works. Today, I’m very excited to be facilitating our panel discussion in what I hope will be an insightful and engaging conversation. 

For those of you who are not familiar, the International Rescue Committee helps people affected by humanitarian crises, including the climate crisis, to survive, recover, and rebuild their lives. The organization works in over 50 countries around the world, and in 28 cities. 

Today, we will have the opportunity to hear from two leaders from the IRC to share about the various facets of the organization’s work in crisis-affected countries, as well as the ongoing resettlement and integration work that is happening here in the US. Alongside our speakers from the IRC, we’ll hear from a leader at Schwab Charitable, who will speak to how donors who choose to give through a donor-advised fund can increase their impact by supporting nonprofits doing important work such as the IRC. We’ll also have time for a Q&A with all of our speakers at the end of the program. You can submit questions for them using the Q&A function or the chat function at the bottom of your screen. 

I’d now like to introduce our three speakers. If you wouldn’t mind turning your cameras on. Thank you. 

Our first speaker is Ciarán Donnelly. He’s the Senior Vice President for Crisis Response, Recovery and Development at IRC. Our next speaker is Erica Bouris. She’s the Senior Director for Economic Empowerment at IRC. And lastly, we have Fred Kaynor, Managing Director, Relationship Management, Marketing, and Partnerships at Schwab Charitable. Thank you all so much for joining today. And because of the little time we have, I’m going to go ahead and jump into our first question. 

So Ciarán and Erica, this first question is for you. For those in the audience who are less familiar with the International Rescue Committee, could you briefly share who the IRC is and how we work both globally and domestically? Starting with you, Ciarán. 

CIARÁN DONNELLY:  Great. Thanks, Margaret. And it’s a pleasure to be able to speak to you all today, together with our partners from Schwab Charitable.

As Margaret said, the IRC aims to help people whose lives and livelihoods have been shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control over their lives. That’s our global mission today. We were founded in New York, where I’m speaking to you from today, back in 1933, helping people who fled from the crisis in Europe at the time to seek safety and to start new lives here in the US. And our mission and our footprint has grown consistently since then. Today, we have about 20,000 staff in over 50 countries worldwide. 

We like to say that we work… we think of our work as spanning the full arc of crisis. And what do I mean by that? When we know that humanitarian crises impact countries, impact communities in different ways, people are experiencing acute emergencies, rapid shocks, often active conflict, over time, that can evolve into a protracted crisis situation, or people can flee and seek safety in neighboring countries. Sometimes they seek safety further afield. They travel through other countries, and they reach safer, more developed places, like Europe and the US, and they’re able to build new lives. The IRC aims to be with those people, with people affected by humanitarian crisis, at every step of that journey, whether they’re trapped in active conflict today, whether they’re in a community that’s recovering from conflict, whether they’re temporarily seeking safety in a neighboring country, or whether they’re building new lives elsewhere. 

My department, Crisis Response, Recovery and Development, covers our work in about 40 countries that are directly or indirectly experiencing crisis and conflict today. That’s countries across Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and our programs in Poland and Ukraine. Our peer division covers our resettlement and integration work, and I’ll let my colleague Erica say a little bit about that. 

ERICA BOURIS:  Wonderful. Thank you. Yes, very nice to be here with you all today. 

Just to add on a little bit to what Ciarán was sharing, here in the US, we do indeed work with a very diverse population of individuals who are fleeing and seeking safety here in the US, and the opportunity to rebuild their lives. We do work in about 30 communities across the US, as well as a very dynamic portfolio of work that happens along our border regions and communities. 

I think one of the most important things to understand and really emphasize about the IRC approach is that it is holistic. It is multifaceted. We are working with people around initial resettlement, and helping them get situated in their new communities. But we are also over that longer arc of integration, working with people around health, their economic opportunity, we work with young people in youth programming and education programming, and really the IRC is focused on ensuring that these families have an initial good start, but that they also are able to develop the knowledge and skills and assets they need to really integrate into communities and become a part of the diverse regions in which they live. So very happy to be a part of this conversation with you all today. 

MARGARET:  Thanks, Ciarán and Erica. 

And Fred, can you share a little bit more about Schwab Charitable and your role? 

FRED KAYNOR:  Sure, I’d be happy to. And it’s a pleasure. I’m delighted to be here with everybody, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. 

And Ciarán, just to your point about the founding of IRC in New York in the ‘30s, my family actually fled Europe in the ‘30s to seek refuge in New York. So I suspect that they were, and by extension, I am, grateful recipients of the resources that IRC afforded them. So I just thought I’d share that with everybody. 

Schwab Charitable is an organization whose mission is to increase giving in the US by offering donor-advised funds and other philanthropic resources that really enable donors to be as efficient as possible with their giving. We were established in 1999, and as a service to donors and clients who really wanted to embrace philanthropy as a priority in addition to their other savings and investment strategies. And since our inception, we have seen that our donors have granted a remarkable $33 billion to over 246,000 charities throughout the world. So it’s a remarkable story of success, and it’s really an honor to be able to support those donors and their philanthropic goals. 

We also, in addition to the donor-advised fund platform, offer tools and guidance relationships and resources to really further empower those donors to make charitable planning a priority in their everyday lives, as well as incorporating into their sort of broader financial planning process. 

And in my capacity, I’m the Managing Director of Relationship Management, Marketing and Partnerships. So I’m responsible for engaging and building relationships directly with donors, financial advisors who support them, and other leading organizations throughout the philanthropic sector to really help them increase the impact and efficiency of how they give, what they give, where they give, and when. 

So it’s pleasure to be joining you for the discussion today. Thank you. 

MARGARET:  Thanks, Fred. And I’d love to ask you a bit more about Schwab Charitable. So let’s take a look at how Schwab Charitable donors are supporting increasing needs. So Schwab Charitable recently announced its 2023 calendar year granting activity, and donors exceeded $6 billion in grants, an increase of 31% compared to 2022, which is incredible. 

FRED: Incredible, yeah.

MARGARET:  Yes, absolutely. Can you talk about the giving environment last year and what is behind the increase in granting? 

FRED:  Sure, I’d be happy to. So you’re right. You pointed out that $6 billion figure. That is a historic level of granting that we have seen from our donors. We’ve seen that donors, our donors are more and more engaged. They’re engaged in a number of different ways. They’re engaged, Margaret, by, you know, giving on a regular basis to their regular charities, to their alma maters, to their houses of worship, schools, etc. So remarkable generation, in and of itself. 

We have also seen a significant spike in people that are donating to crises and disasters as they occur. And sadly, we’re seeing a spike in many disasters, be it humanitarian crises, storms, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and so forth. So we’ve just seen a remarkable increase in the amount that people are giving on an incremental basis to be able to support those disasters and crises as they occur. 

So last year we saw some volatility, right? We saw market volatility. We saw political turmoil. We saw economic uncertainty. And what we saw as being the ultimate benefit of our solution is that people had already really given, when they had the resources to contribute, to their donor-advised funds. So those… despite that economic volatility and despite the uncertainty that we faced politically, economically, they had already contributed many of the assets that they wanted to give to charity, but they didn’t necessarily know that they wanted… where they wanted them to go on an immediate basis. So the beauty of the solution enables those donors to give to the account, they’re already earmarked for charitable giving, and they can grant them to whatever charity they choose to, either as part of their ongoing annual or regular philanthropic plan, but episodically, as these crises occur. 

So it was really an opportunity for this type of structure to shine in affording those donors the flexibility that they wanted, where they may not necessarily have had the number of assets to contribute that they did in years past when the economy was stronger and the market was more robust, but they were already in the account when they contributed them, so they could grant them wherever they chose and however frequently they choose. So it was a really terrific way to see this type of a mechanism and structure in place that really affords them that flexibility and helps them maximize their charitable impact. 

And what’s also really interesting is from a contributions perspective, at the end of the calendar year, the market was very strong, and we see a direct correlation between the amount of contributions we see into accounts and the market performance. So if the market performs high, highly and effectively, then we see contributions come in correspondingly. And when the market was strong in the latter part of the year… for example, between Giving Tuesday and the end of the year, December 31^st alone, we saw that donors not only contributed in a robust manner, but granted… they made over 250,000 grants to charities that totaled almost $1-1/2 billion, just in that small window of time. 

So it’s a great story and we’re so proud that we can support these donors in an efficient and tax-smart way to achieve their goals. 

MARGARET:  Is a really great story. Thank you, Fred.

FRED:  Sure.

MARGARET:  And Ciarán, the next question is for you. I’d like to ask you about IRC’s annual Watch List Report, which was released in December 2023. This Watch List Report is an annual report that spotlights the 20 countries believed to be most at risk of a worsening humanitarian crisis in the coming year. Could you share with us some of the outcomes from this year’s report, and discuss how the IRC leverages this information to plan ahead? 

CIARÁN:  Yeah. Thanks, Margaret. So as I’m sure folks in the audience will appreciate, trying to figure out how to plan for humanitarian crises is a challenge, such a dynamic environment in the countries in which we’re working, in countries in which are vulnerable to crisis, and there’s always the things that are really impossible to anticipate. But for an organization like ours, figuring out where to invest preparedness activities, figuring out how to preposition, how anticipate, and scale up, is critical to being able to respond effectively when crises do worsen. So for many years, from an operational planning perspective, we’ve invested in what we call a watch list, identifying not the 20 worst humanitarian crises in the world, but the 20 crises that are most at risk of significant deterioration in the year ahead. And that has really, as its origins, an operational planning tool. We’ve invested in building out, essentially, a kind of a database algorithmic approach, drawing on data sets from historic crises to be able to input key indicators, and then understand where we see the most vulnerability, the most risk of deterioration in the year ahead. 

But a number of years ago, we realized that much as this was useful as a planning tool for our own purposes. We were seeing consistent themes start to emerge, and the same countries start to come up repeatedly across the list, often countries that we had been in for many years. And so we started to accompany the kind of operational planning side of this with a more thematic analysis that helps us to better understand the drivers of crises and gives us, we think, critical insights to be able to share with wider audiences, with policymakers, with those who are directly working on resolving conflicts, but also with wider audiences to help people understand better what is driving some of these crises that from a distance can seem really intractable, hard to understand, impenetrable, hard to solve. 

What we’ve seen, for example, this year, and the theme that we’ve chosen to highlight, is the concentration between conflict and the climate crisis. So in our list of 20 countries we work in… excuse me, 20 countries that are on the watch list for this year, 14 of them also appear on a different list, the list of the 16 countries that are most vulnerable to climate and to conflict. A huge overlap in correlation there between those two things. In the 20 watch list countries, there’s not just a disproportionate concentration of international and internal armed conflict, there’s also a disproportionate concentration of climate hazards. People who live in one of the 20 watch list countries are 200 times more likely to be impacted by a natural disaster than somebody who lives outside those 20 countries. And the way in which conflict and climate, combined together, really creates a kind of perfect storm of humanitarian crises in many of these countries… we’re talking about 20 countries that make up 10% of the world’s population, but make up almost 90% of the people in need of humanitarian assistance around the world. They disproportionately represent numbers of people displaced. About 75% of the people displaced globally come from or reside in one of these countries. They also disproportionately represent food insecurity, acute poverty. Essentially, any indicator you can think of, there’s a disproportionate concentration in these countries. 

And so we’re really invested in then understanding how does the climate crisis and conflict, how do they interrelate, and how are they driving humanitarian need in these countries? What does that mean for organizations like the IRC? So, for example, we know that these countries are not the biggest contributors to the climate crisis. They account for about 2% of carbon emissions globally. But we also know that they are least well positioned in terms of accessing some of the global solutions to climate change. So climate financing solutions, for example, are generally tailored to be delivered in countries that have more stable, more functioning government and state systems. International financial institutions are better able to work with those kinds of environments. And so you have conflict exacerbating the effects of climate crisis, weakening the economy in these countries, and the governments are not in a position to be able to access the kind of international solutions that are intended specifically to address these kinds of climate solutions. 

So we as the IRC have been looking at both a policy perspective, but also operationally, how do we position… how can we act as interlocutors between the global providers of climate solutions and communities that are really at the front line of these kinds of challenges in the countries in which we work. 

MARGARET:  Thanks, Ciarán. And you touched on this in your answer, but I’d like to dive a bit deeper. So many of the countries on this year’s watch list are not new to the list, as you mentioned. Could you speak to some of the solutions that IRC is developing to help address some of these prolonged crises that may not get as much media attention? 

CIARÁN:  Yeah, so it’s both, I guess, a source of pride and a source of frustration that we have a pretty good track record of predicting which countries are going to deteriorate. Pride because it’s important that we do these things well, they’re not frivolous exercises. Frustration because it means things aren’t getting better in many of the countries we work in. On average, we have about an 85- to 95% kind of rate of getting things right in our projections in the Watch List. It doesn’t always go right. In this year, the 2024 report, the crisis in Palestine was signaled for the first time in quite a number of years, and that’s obviously now taking up a huge amount of our time responding to humanitarian needs in Gaza. But crises like Sudan and Afghanistan are countries….Sudan was number one this year, ranked at highest risk of deterioration… are countries that have figured consecutively for many years on our watch list. 

And so in Sudan, for example, obviously, the war that broke out there about a year ago has significantly accelerated humanitarian need, But that comes against the backdrop of weak governance, predatory governance, of food insecurity, of the impact of droughts, of the long tail of kind of all of the issues that Sudan has experienced over the years. The population of Sudan is about 47 million people. Today, over half that number, almost 25 million people, are in need of humanitarian assistance. Seventeen million people are at risk of acute food insecurity. And that’s a technical term, which basically means people don’t have enough to eat. They can’t get enough food to provide for their families. They can’t get enough calories to keep themselves and their children well nourished. 

So one of the aspects of our response is a malnutrition response, in South Sudan, in many countries around the world, where we’ve invested in research to improve the cost-effectiveness of traditional malnutrition treatment that’s available. By changing some of the default ways of working the humanitarian system, we can deliver both better outcomes in terms of recovery from malnutrition, but also at lower costs. So we’re able to reach more people with the same amount of money. That’s a key part of what we’re doing in Sudan. It has to exist, of course, alongside a functioning health system. So we’re investing in supporting mobile health clinics, investing in community health workers, to be able to get these solutions. There’s no point having a good solution if you can’t get it to the people who need to access it as efficiently as we can. So working with local health workers and the local health system enables us to deploy things like malnutrition treatment and other solutions out into communities who are really at the center of the conflict and most affected. 

MARGARET:  Thanks, Ciarán. Really exciting solutions being developed by IRC.

Erica to turn to your side of the work at IRC. So these global crises on the watch list are creating a record number of refugees and humanitarian migrants around the world. Given your work with IRCs Resettlement Asylum and Integration Program in the US and our Economic Empowerment Program, I was wondering if you could give us some more details about their experience? So what is the economic journey like for a refugee or humanitarian migrant building life anew in America, and how does the IRC help them enter and thrive in their local community? 

ERICA:  Absolutely. Yeah, it very much is an arc of all of the volatility and challenges that Ciarán discussed. And a relatively small number of those individuals do indeed end up coming to countries like the US, and other European countries, and begin a process of resettlement. They are able to benefit, in many cases, from humanitarian protections and status in the United States. And they arrive here with a very daunting task of building their life anew. Again, it’s important to emphasize, you know, these are not families that chose to migrate. These are families who were subject to forced migration, and end up here in cities as diverse as, you know, New York City, but also Abilene, Texas, right? Atlanta, Georgia, but also Missoula, Montana. So they find themselves here in the United States with this daunting task of building life anew. And IRC is very proud to be able to work with these families as they begin that process. 

I think that, you know, the first thing that I would really point out is that during that initial reception and initial period of being here in the United States, we really have a focus on helping the family stabilize and ensure that their basic needs are met. So things like housing, things like ensuring that the family has a regular and consistent way to be able to get the food that they need, healthcare, those basic fundamentals, that’s a real priority in those first few months that we work with a family. But very quickly, the need to pivot towards economic considerations occurs. Families are very eager to begin participating in the local economy. There are significant financial pressures that also push them to do that. Just like any American family, they are facing the challenge of paying rent. And, you know, they need a car and transportation. They need to buy things for their children and family members. And so our approach really focuses on two large pillars of work. 

The first is we obviously need to work with families to help the individuals and the adults earn income. And there’s really two ways that we go about doing that. One, is our focus on helping people prepare for, in turn, advance in employment. For most of the families we work with, that is going to be the strategy that they use to earn income and build their economic lives. And so we have a strong focus on very rapidly helping individuals develop the skills that they need to be able to enter employment in their local communities. We definitely do this work with a strong eye to the unique needs of the clients that we’re serving. Many of them, the overwhelming majority, are English language learners. They may, indeed, bring skills and experiences from their home country, but those need to be adapted, and translated, and developed in the US context in order for them to serve as a conduit to the labor market. So we have a strong focus on helping people get ready to work and enter work. For some individuals, they’re extremely entrepreneurial, very resourceful, they’re keen to start small businesses. Many of you may know that, broadly speaking, in America, immigrants have a much higher rate of entrepreneurship than non-immigrant populations. And so we’re proud to be able to offer services and programming to help individuals develop their business ideas, help them access the capital that they need to start those businesses. And what’s so exciting to see in our entrepreneurship programming is how many of these individuals very rapidly start businesses that then actually begin to create more jobs in their own community in a very dynamic way. So that’s kind of the focus on earning income. 

The other piece that’s equally important is helping people learn about the US American financial system, helping them develop financial literacy, and an understanding of ‘What is a credit score?’ ‘Can I trust the banks and financial institutions in this country?’ Many of them are coming, as Ciarán noted, from countries where the entire economic system is collapsed, might be very corrupt, might not be functioning. And so it’s really important that in addition to helping these families get money into their households, we’re also helping families understand how to budget, how to plan, how to save. I mentioned credit score. That’s a critically important piece of it because without a credit score in the United States, it’s really hard to rent an apartment, or do many other basic tasks of life. And so we have that focus on helping people develop the knowledge and the skills and the assets they need to be able to function well within the US financial system. 

The last thing I would say, just to kind of lift up around our approach, is we have to remember the diversity of the individuals we’re working with. We’re working with men and women. We’re working with… last year we worked with people from over 140 different countries. They’re coming from an exceptionally diverse set of circumstances. And so a lot of what we do is also about tailoring our approach to work as effectively for, for example, a pre-literate Afghan woman who might have arrived as a part of Operation Allies Welcome in the last couple of years, as well as somebody who perhaps was a professional with two graduate degrees and an engineer who is coming to the United States and looking to start anew. So a big part of what we do in our economic empowerment program is really trying to tailor that journey, those supports, those program and services to meet the needs of the unique individuals that we serve each year. 

MARGARET:  Amazing. Thank you. Really incredible and comprehensive programming. And I would love to build on that a bit more, Erica, and hear more about what innovations you’re most excited about that increase economic inclusion and opportunity for refugees and humanitarian migrant populations in the US. 

ERICA:  Definitely. In some ways, this is an easy question, but a hard question. There are so many interesting and innovative things that are happening, but I’ll speak to just a few of them. 

One of the things that our team is quite excited about is an increasing focus on apprenticeship programming. And, you know, for those of you who are… maybe when you think of apprenticeships, you think of primarily work in the building trades, one of the really cool things that’s been happening in the United States, especially in the last 15 years or so, is a focus on how can we use an apprenticeship model, which is that earn and learn model, right, that you get a job and while you’re learning the skills of that job, you also have a paid wage, so it’s that really great earn and learn model. And what we are seeing is an increasing usage of that earn and learn model in lots of diverse industries, everything from healthcare to IT. And the reason I lift that up is something exciting… to be clear, this is happening in the United States with non-refugee and non-immigrant populations too… is because it’s a really powerful way to help ensure that a newcomer whose first job in the United States might be a relatively low wage, low skill job because they’re still trying to develop the skills they need to access better jobs, it’s a great model to help that individual have the chance to pivot into a real career pathway and develop the skills that they need for that career pathway while still earning a paycheck. So we’re super excited about that. We, for the last year and a half, for example, have been working in three states, helping to build out public health apprenticeships, right, in the wake of COVID, and seeing how much we need linguistic and cultural diversity in our public health workforce, as a model and as a practice to help these newcomers enter these in-demand and critical professions. 

The second thing I’m really excited about is IRC has a subsidiary lending arm, a community development financial institution. And through that, we’re able to integrate key financial products into the work that we do. And, in particular, I would lift up that we have been coupling a small credit building loan with our financial education classes. And the power of that credit building loan is that it tangibly helps families, individuals, establish a credit score, which, again, is such an asset in the US economy. We also do a lot of very innovative work around auto financing because of the critical importance in nearly all cities, maybe New York City notwithstanding, of having a car as part of your financial life. 

The last thing I would lift up is an innovation that we’re quite excited about, is a real programmatic focus on what does it mean to develop client-centered programming, right? That we really look at what is the best and strongest way for us to design programming that is easy, and clear, and comfortable for individuals to navigate through? And that might sound really obvious and basic and not all that innovative, but I can tell you that particularly in contexts like the US, where there are lots and lots of federal and state and local government partners, and lots of nonprofit partners, this idea of really stepping back and saying, how can we make this journey of programs and supports and services easy, culturally and linguistically accessible for the client, is actually a very important innovation and one that really cuts through a lot of the work that we’re doing. 

So I would lift up those three. And of course there are, you know, two dozen more that also get me excited, but we’ll leave it there for today. 

MARGARET:  Thanks, Erica. Really amazing. 

And I’d like to turn it back to Schwab Charitable now, actually. So Fred, some here may already donate to causes like IRC directly. So why should they consider a donor-advised fund, and what are the benefits for organizations like our IRC of receiving donations from a donor-advised fund? 

FRED:  Thank you. Yeah, so, really, our goal is to help our donors, and by extension, help organizations like IRC maximize the impact that they can have on these remarkable programs that they implement. That’s really our principle goal. We want to do whatever we can to ensure that our donors get as much as they possibly can to support these extraordinary programs that both Ciarán and Erica were just talking about. That’s our mission. That’s our goal.

Giving through a donor-advised fund, it’s a really comprehensive, simple, tax-smart solution for charitable giving. It really helps to make giving more convenient, more consolidated, and it ultimately helps to unlock assets that may not otherwise be top of mind for some of these donors that would be great assets to contribute to charity. So donors can contribute a variety of things, cash, publicly-traded, stock, restricted stock, etc. And they contributed to the account, we liquidate those assets on their behalf, then they put them in the account, or the assets from the liquidation event go into the account, and they’re invested for potential growth while they’re in the account, which means that, ultimately, when they recommend a grant, either on an immediate basis or over time, there’s theoretically more that’s available to go to charities like IRC than there otherwise would if they make just a direct donation by a credit card, or with cash, or with a check. 

So what’s remarkable, Margaret, is, to me, that over 70% of our donors consistently say that they give more than they otherwise would to charity because of the convenience and efficiency of their donor-advised fund account. And so for charities like IRC, really, we want to do whatever we can to empower IRC and organizations like them to focus on what they’re trying to accomplish with these remarkable programs and with their relief and recovery efforts for these incredibly in-need communities of people. And so we streamline the process for them. 

So, for example, many charities aren’t necessarily well equipped to accept non-cash assets, like stock, or real estate, collectibles, private business interests, and so forth, and we are. So they make those contributions to their donor-advised fund account… again, we receive them, we liquidate them on behalf of the donors, so IRC doesn’t have to deal with that, to potentially engage with a third party that charges a fee and so forth. So we do that as a free part of our platform and our solution. And because we are liquidating those assets on their behalf versus them selling them first and donating the proceeds, they avoid capital gains tax, which can mean up to an additional 20% more that’s available to go to these organizations like IRC that otherwise wouldn’t if they didn’t grant through… pardon me, if they didn’t contribute through a donor-advised fund. 

And then of course, donors can give to really any qualified US public charity of choice provided it’s in good standing with the IRS and it’s a 501(c)(3) designated charity. They can give immediately. They can give over time. They can give episodically when issues and crises and disasters occur. So it’s in the flexibility and in our ability to accommodate multiple needs of the donors that we can help them be as generous as possible in their support of organizations like IRC. 

MARGARET:  Thanks, Fred. That is very cool, very exciting. 

This is our last question before the audience Q&A. And Fred, this is for you, as well. And I’d like to lean in a bit more on what you last touched on. So how does Schwab Charitable facilitate grants to charities during humanitarian or climate crises? And what advice do you have for donors, both new and experienced, who wish to provide sustainable, long-term support of recovery efforts through their donor-advised fund? 

FRED:  That’s a great question. It’s a great question, and we do a lot in that. We recognize that it’s becoming more and more of a priority for our donors to really have the resources and the wherewithal to give not only to their sustained philanthropic charities and organizations, but to do so when these crises occur, because it’s critically important for them to have an impact just as much on them as it is their ongoing charitable efforts. 

So we partner, Margaret, with an organization called the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. When crises occur, when disasters occur, we engage with CDP to provide us with a list of organizations that are vetted and providing boots on the ground service to those that are impacted by these crises when they occur. And we offer a list of organizations that is provided to us by the Center for Disaster Philanthropy immediately, or within 24 hours, posted on our website, and make our donors available that these are organizations pre-vetted and providing, you know, maximum value to those individuals that have been impacted or displaced as a result of those crises and disasters. Donor-advised funds, again, are designed structurally to make it simple and convenient for donors to give, and in this case to give when these disasters strike, so that they can have maximum and immediate impact by recommending grants to these organizations that are already vetted and recognized as, you know, really efficient support mechanisms for the people that are impacted. 

We often hear from charities, as it relates to giving when disasters and crises occur, that the charities have a need that goes beyond the initial need. It’s a sustained need that requires, you know, a long-term lens. So we find that there’s sort of a cycle, and emergency management cycle of these disasters. So when the disaster occurs, there’s immediate mitigation, there’s preparedness, there’s response, and then, finally, there’s recovery, ongoing recovery. Not just recovery in the immediate near-term, but ongoing, sometimes for years. And we really provide guidance… it’s up to the donor, ultimately, to give however they choose, but we provide them with information that suggests that, you know, they should give with that perspective that it’s not just the immediate near term when crises occur, but there’s a need that’s ongoing, and that they consider that when they give. 

And in terms of how they give, the less restrictive the giving, the more that the charities can take advantage of those resources when they need them most. So rather than earmarking it for a particular need or for a particular program, if they designate it for where the need is greatest, which is one of our opportunities or options in our dropdown menu, it really affords the charity the flexibility they need to really achieve maximum impact on those impacted by the disasters. And what’s really pretty remarkable to us is that 71% of our donors that make recommendations do so on a non-restricted basis, which is an amazing thing. That is a testament to donors recognizing not only what they want to give, but how they choose to designate it, so that the charities really can have the maximum impact on those people that are affected by these disasters. 

MARGARET:  It’s really incredible. 

Thank you, Fred, and Erica and Ciarán for answering these questions. Really informative and interesting. 

And we’ll move to the audience Q&A now. And just a reminder to all our attendees to please use the Q&A function or chat function to submit questions if you have any. We’ll be sure to monitor and share them live. 

But I do already have a question, and this is for Ciarán and Erica. So ‘I believe IRC works with local partners for their work, as well. How does the IRC find these partners and how do you collaborate to ensure sustainable provision of services?’ 

CIARÁN:  Thanks, Margaret. Erica, do you want me to start off and then you can follow? I know it’s a slightly different perspective in the US, where we’re very much part of the local fabric of civil society. 

And so in many of the countries we work in, we’ve, obviously, been there for a very long time… or I say ‘obviously.’ Maybe that’s not obvious to all of our audience. We have been in many of the countries we work in for many years responding to crises. And it’s really important to us that as we do so, we’re not substituting and undermining local capacity, but instead contributing to, complementing, and overtime, building local capacity. And very often that takes the form of civil society, but sometimes it involves partnering with government and private sector and actors in the places in which we work. We emphasize very much in our planning and the question of added value, what’s our added value in a given context? Can we bring skills? Can we bring expertise? Can we bring resources that aren’t available locally? And then how does that relate to the capacities and priorities of, for example, local NGOs, local organizations that may have similar interests? We do landscape mapping, actor mapping. We identify potential partners. We go through a process of due diligence. Obviously, we want to make sure we’re working with organizations in good standing. Sometimes they will want to do some due diligence on us. They want to make sure that we’re going to, you know, bring… we’re bolster their efforts and not create risk to working with them. So that’s kind of how we go through the process of identifying them. 

And then it really is about co-creation, about… you know, Erica spoke about client-centered programming. That’s very much how we try to approach all of the work we do at the IRC. And a spirit we bring to this process of partnership, as well, of thinking about how do we work together in a way that leverages the strengths of two organizations in order to deliver the best possible services and outcomes for the people we serve? And that looks like, you know, very different things in different places. We have local organizations who are part of our emergency response efforts, reaching areas that are hard to reach and very insecure in some countries. In other cases, they’re part of our outreach to local farmers, developing climate-smart agricultural practices. In many countries, our partnerships are with women-led organizations, recognizing that women and girls are disproportionately impacted, negatively impacted by humanitarian crises, and so helping us to provide tailored and specialized services to women and girls in their community. 

So there’s a range of formats, but we’re really pleased that we’ve been able to grow that element of our work, and over time reduce the dependency on IRC employees delivering services, and instead, think about how we can amplify the capacity and leverage the capacity of the organizations that we work with. 

ERICA:  Happy to speak in the US context a bit as well. I would definitely acknowledge, I think it is different in the US context, because as Ciarán noted, we really, in the communities in which we work in the US, we have been in these communities for a very long time, and are often sort of understood and recognized as a community-based organization, as opposed to sort of the big global humanitarian organization that we also are. In my brain, I always kind of think we are, indeed, kind of both in these communities. 

But the two things that I would emphasize in terms of our work with partners is, one, we absolutely work extensively with partners. And especially in this space of economic empowerment, we have to in order to do our work. So, for example, as we’re helping people prepare for in-demand careers in their communities, we are absolutely working with local workforce development systems, local community colleges, local industry and employer partners, because that’s the way you build these programs. We are not independently, you know, in a vacuum going to build a career pathway program in renewable energy like we have in, for example, San Diego and Atlanta. But we’re going to work with the partners, the employers, the community colleges, the training partners to do that in a very localized and contextualized way. 

The other thing I would share is… you know, I made brief mention of it, but, you know, America is very much a place that is increasingly diverse. About one in six individuals are foreign-born immigrants in the US. And what we are seeing is that we work a lot with partners, whether they’re public sector partners, like state and local governments, or other organizations, to help strengthen their capacity to serve these diverse populations that are now in their communities. For example, for almost the last two years, we’ve been working as a lead partner with the US Small Business Administration to help existing small business centers and SBA resources in places as diverse as, you know, rural Iowa, the Cog County, Georgia, Phoenix, Arizona, Utah, lots of interesting places to help build the capacity of that local ecosystem that is already designed to support entrepreneurs and small business owners be better equipped to serve the increasingly diverse community in which they’re working. And so that’s kind of another really key way that we work with partners, is really strengthening that capacity to serve diverse communities more effectively. 

MARGARET:  Thanks, Ciarán and Erica, 

Fred, we have a question for you. ‘What advice would you give to those of us who are just beginning our philanthropic journey, and are trying to decide what causes and charities to prioritize?’ 

FRED:  It’s a great question and it’s a really tough question because, needless to say, you know, there’s a wealth of remarkable organizations that are committed to supporting a variety of different kinds of needs. So there’s a whole host of different things, I would say, and it’s a big question that I could spend an hour answering. But what I might suggest is there are tools that we offer and resources that we offer to help people really take a thoughtful approach to how they want to embrace philanthropy. When they use the donor-advised fund, there’s really no minimum. You open an account, you can put a di minimis amount in, and you can, you know, contribute over time. But you could also use some of the resources that we offer to help not only use a vehicle for giving, but think about how to give, what to give, budgeting for giving, identifying the causes that are most important to you. 

And on our website, you have access to something called the Charitable Giving Guide. And, basically, that’s a resource that’s sort of modular in format that takes people through a journey of how they define their charitable giving goals, and how they identify, potentially, those organizations that most effectively support what they identify as the needs that are most relevant to them. And when they utilize this resource at the end of it, it produces a fillable .pdf, which provides them with a plan on when they should give, how should give, how to budget for giving, vehicles to consider—donor-advised funds, foundations, remainder trusts, combinations thereof—as well as providing them with some thoughts and guidance on organizations that best support needs that they feel are highest priority for them based on their particular goals and objectives. 

MARGARET:  That’s great. Thank you. And I have another question for you, actually. ‘So philanthropy is one of my passions, and I’m hoping to pass that passion onto my kids. Do you have any advice on getting them involved?’ 

FRED:  Yes. Do it, quickly. They are… needless to say, philanthropy is one of my passions, too. We have another set of resources that are a really terrific benefit to families that are really trying to embrace philanthropy holistically as a family practice. And it’s a series of guidebooks and videos that we’ve developed in conjunction with a wonderful partner called the National Center for Family Philanthropy, which, again, helps people to understand how to sort of navigate a philanthropic discussion and that journey as a family practice, as opposed to doing it as an individual. So, again, I would encourage you to take a peek at those resources on our website. 

Personally, Margaret, what I’ve done with our children, with my wife and our children, is that we have embraced it early on. And what we do is we identify a small amount of money each year at Christmas time for our children, and it’s one of their gifts. And, in fact, they can’t open any other gifts until they figure out what to do with that gift, what charity to give to. They provide us with a summary on why they’re giving to the charity, why it’s important for them. You know, we ask them to research it to make sure that it’s a charity that’s in good standing, and delivering maximum value to the recipients of the services that they provide. And so we sort of… I guess it’s kind of bribery, but what we do is we sort of… we give them from our donor-advised fund each a hundred dollars at Christmas time, and before any other presents are open, those hundred dollars are meant to… they need to come to us with proposals on how to give that hundred-dollar gift away to one or more charities, why, and start the process of thinking about it. So we’re planting the seed early, if that makes sense. 

MARGARET:  That’s great. Thank you. 

And we’re close to time. So I have one final question for all three speakers. So throughout all tragedy and compounding crises, what gives you hope? I think this is something very important for everyone right now. 

FRED:  Who would you like to start? 

ERICA:  I’m happy to take a first crack at it. You know, I started my career at IRC many years ago, working in our San Diego office, working with newly arrived families very directly. And I think the thing that continues to give me hope is how much families… you know, Fred was just telling the story of his family, and, you know, I’ve had the chance to work with thousands of families through my work at the IRC. And at the end of the day, families are families. And that’s actually what gives me hope, that when we are working with newcomer families, just like any other family, they want to build a better life for their children, they want to be a part of their community, they want to be safe and happy and healthy, they want to be friends with their neighbors, you know, that sense of continuity and just basic humanity of how families operate. Whether they are a newcomer family that is fleeing, you know, the DRC and terrible conflict there, or any other kind of family, that there is that desire to build anew, they love their children, they want their children and communities to grow and thrive and flourish. And absolutely, that’s what gives me hope every day. 

CIARÁN:  Happy to go next because my answer will build, or resonate, I think, a lot with Erica because I’ve also been with IRC for quite a number of years. And, you know, I do think that sense of supporting humanity and finding hope in humanity is incredibly important. I mean, Fred, you shared your family history at the beginning of this call, and I think for Erica and I, and for our colleagues around the world, I think many of us kind of feel a very strong sense that but for an accident of birth, what’s happening to the people that we serve could very well be happening to us and to those that we love. And so seeking to find the humanity in the midst of some of these horrendous situations and stories that we feel I think is really important for us. 

And then our boss, our CEO, Dave Miliband, likes to say, when you look at the numbers, you risk getting overwhelmed and feeling despair, but when you look at the people behind those numbers, that’s where you find the hope. I was in rural Somalia just about three weeks ago, visiting communities… actually, where we do less work now than we used to. And it was incredibly affirming because I met women running a women’s center where they were providing education literacy programming for young girls that we had started. We had helped them get it up and running, helped  them get it off the ground, but they were continuing even after IRCs support had dried up. The program was continuing, and they had really taken ownership and were moving forward. And there was, you know, a classroom full of young girls eager to learn, a thirst, an appetite for learning. And that’s the future of countries like Somalia right there. And so it was really, really inspiring to be able to witness that. 

FRED:  Ciarán, that sounds amazing. Do you have any pictures? I would love to see that. That just sounds extraordinary. 

CIARÁN:  I’ve got great pictures of camels, as well, Fred. 

FRED:  [laughter] Good. Yeah, that’s just remarkable from the both of you. 

I guess, Margaret, to your question about what gives me hope is to see… two things here. 

I’ve been at Schwab Charitable now for going on 10 years. And to see the consistent increase in generosity of our donors. You know, regardless of, you know, economic uncertainty, and political turmoil, and market volatility, there has been a consistent trajectory, for the most part, of growth in giving. So it is a testament to, and gives me great hope to see that despite the challenges that the world presents us on a daily basis, people are committed to giving back. People are committed to helping others. And to see that reflected in the generosity of our donors truly gives me hope. 

Another thing that gives me hope, also, is to see the level of engagement of sort of next-gen donors. You know, people tend to unfairly suggest that, you know, the younger generation is disconnected, and they’re really not that philanthropically-minded, and they’re sort of more focused on themselves and their career. It’s just not the case. Not only do we find are they as committed, if not more, but they are holding people and organizations to account. They want to see the impact that their giving is having because they want to have that impact themselves. So we’re seeing a deeper level of engagement than we’ve ever seen before, in terms of, you know, what exactly are their goals? How can they not only just give money or give resources, but how can they do it in a way that helps them achieve maximum impact based on what they feel is most important? And it’s humbling, and it really, really gives me a great deal of hope to see it. 

MARGARET:  Really fantastic.

And thank you, all three of you, for leaving us on a really wonderful note, a very hopeful note. 

But I do think we are almost out of time, so I just want to thank you, all, again, Ciarán, Erica, Fred, for a really wonderful conversation. Thank you to our audience for attending and for participating. We hope you found the conversation today valuable, and that you better understand IRC’s work around the world and here in the US, as well as Schwab Charitable’s. 

If you would like to follow up with additional questions or receive more information, you can contact us at irc.events@rescue.org. 

So we thank you all again for your support. Thank you, again, speakers. And we hope you all have a wonderful day. 

FRED:  Thank you very much. 

CIARÁN:  Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Margaret. 

ERICA:  Thank you.

MARGARET:  Thank you.

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