Giving Together: Philanthropic Family Tradition Leads to Legacy Gift in Will

By Bunny McBride

Every Christmas morning for the past 25 years, my small extended family has gathered together to talk about charities around the globe—aiming to expand our awareness and widen our circles of compassion. Each year, on a rotating basis, one of us researches a range of charitable nonprofits and selects one to present to our little group. After they tell us about it and read a letter they’ve drafted to the organization on behalf of us all, we chime in with questions and comments and have a vigorous discussion on the merits of making that particular choice in that particular year. Once we’ve agreed on the decision, the lead person places the letter into an envelope and everyone slips in a check. We never know how much each person gives, but that’s not the point. The point is doing it together.

We have two rules: Whoever is in charge of leading the selection cannot choose a charity they already give to, and we cannot choose the same charity more than once.

The first year my father led the way, he chose Smile Train. He told us how he loved the life-transforming impact of the organization, the gleeful faces of the children who received help, the generosity and skills of the doctors and community volunteers, and the fact that a relatively small gift could change a child’s life trajectory and uplift their entire family. What especially moved me is the obvious fact that Smile Train makes it possible for people to SMILE, which is one of the most fundamental aspects of being human—a universally understood signal of joy, contentment, approval, welcome, celebration, and conciliation.

We started this tradition at the suggestion of my Dutch husband, who was baffled and bothered by the consumerism of Christmas in the United States. In his homeland, Christmas is a true holy-day and is totally separated from the celebration of Saint Nicholas (also known as Sinterklass)—which includes modest gift giving, such as sweet treats and playful original poetry on the evening of December 5. With that in mind, he proposed that we stop giving presents to each other and instead reach out to people with significant needs.

My mother got teary eyed at this suggestion because we had a tradition of carefully and enthusiastically buying or making gifts for one another. But we found a compromise, scaling down our usual gift giving and selecting a charity to support together. Eventually, we began drawing “Secret Santa” names within the family so that each of us had just one person to shop for. Our consumerism diminished, leaving room for our focus on charity to increase.

Despite our rule that we can’t choose the same charity more than once, we all nodded when Dad chose Smile Train for a second time toward the end of his life. By then some of us had started to give individually to Smile Train, which became a kind of standard bearer for the qualities we look for in the organizations we support.

Our donations have not signaled deep pockets, but there’s deep thought and appreciation behind those gifts—so much so that my husband and I just added Smile Train to our wills. That decision gives us great joy, all the more so because we know how it would please my dad.