Money
by Zach Leslie
“My family has always powerfully valued giving back to the community, and that urge did not stop once I was born.”
My name is Zach Leslie. From a very young age, the idea of tikkun olam, or philanthropy, is a value I hold highly, as a result of my parents’ and grandparents’ influence and encouragement to partake. My family has always powerfully valued giving back to the community, and that urge did not stop once I was born. My first memory of applying this concept is when my first grade class held a bake sale in order to raise money to further the causes of the organizations that work towards the restoration of the Amazon rainforest. Shortly after, I began receiving an allowance from my parents. In second grade, I was given $3 a week: one to spend, one to put in my savings account, and another to donate. As I got older, the amount increased and I began giving to other causes aside from school fundraisers and individuals begging for small change. As the amount of money I had to donate grew, my access to more prominent and significant nonprofits did as well.
By fifth grade, I had donated about $200 that year. One day when I was at a friend's house, we had the idea to bake cookies and sell them. We would donate the proceeds to an animal shelter called Pets in Need. Once we began selling the cookies, we were able to raise over $500 from the cookie sales within the week. After this, my friend and I decided to turn our cookie sales into a real company. We founded the company Cookies for Change. We continued to sell more cookies and donate the proceeds. Eventually we had to put the project aside for a bigger and more significant school project. In seventh grade, I began to work on one of the largest school projects I had ever undergone. It was called [inaudible 00:01:42] or Work for the World. Everyone in the class was responsible for researching a nonprofit that we were interested in and willing to fundraise for.
It was our job to make sure that the nonprofit we chose had a good reputation and used their money in a financially sound way. Once we decided on our nxonprofit, we were told to raise money to put into a large umbrella fund that would be divided among the organizations. By the end of the project, we had raised enough money for every organization to receive at least $1,000, with one receiving over $3,500. Following this, for my bar mitzvah, I decided to raise money for Camp Tawonga, the summer camp I attended. I wanted to bring the experiences I was fortunate enough to have to those for whom Camp Tawonga would have otherwise been inaccessible. I sent out letters and raised over $14,000, all of this to go towards scholarships called camperships. As I began high school. I decided to join a teen board called the Jewish Teen foundation.
The idea was very similar to what I did in seventh grade, but on a larger scale. A group with about twenty to thirty teens would raise around $60,000 and allocate grants in different organizations. Six organizations were chosen to receive $10,000 each. Once the year ended, I decided to come back for a second year and serve on a leadership council. My role change from a hands-on involvement to a mentor type involvement. I chose to do this in order to put my aptitude for leadership to a cause of purpose. Living out the mission statement of JTF, allowed me to serve underprivileged and marginalized communities in my own backyard and worldwide. By doing all of these things, I felt more connected to my family's lineage as well as the larger community of Jewish philanthropists manifesting the value of tikkun olam. My grandparents decided that in order to pass on this value, they would give their children the opportunity to participate by forming the Leslie Family Foundation.
This served as a platform for generations of my family to be a direct part of contributing to something larger than ourselves. My grandpa has stuck out to me as someone who started with so little, and committed his life to earning enough to give to others in his previous position. This transformation stuck with me from my grandfather coming from a family of immigrants with little resources, to becoming a prominent philanthropist working to pass on the values that he has obtained throughout life. I believe that philanthropy has been a rich part of my family's tapestry, and something I can proudly say I am a part of. In the future, I will be honored to pass down these values to my children, and the many people who I hope to connect with and touch their lives.