A city with a heart: Charitable organizations and philanthropy

Due to such a large collection of historical materials and resources relating to philanthropy and charitable organizations in the Indiana State Library’s collections, I was stumped on where to start my search. By browsing the stacks, I could see many materials on various organizations that focused on the betterment of people, society and communities. Annual reports, brochures and newsletters from various societies and organizations fill our shelves. Ultimately, by pure serendipitous discovery, my starting point found me.

With the impending bicentennial of Indianapolis, I had been focusing on adding materials to our digital collections from, or about, Indianapolis. So, while browsing our vertical files, I stumbled across a hefty file with lots of pamphlets, brochures, reports and so on. I pulled the file, and one particular item caught my eye: one about a Red Feather campaign.

I recognized the name from my work digitizing company employee newsletters. The campaign was a way of gathering up monetary donations to give to the Indianapolis Community Chest. From there, I found myself searching our collections and unearthed a range of materials about the Community Chest from its beginnings in the 1920s up to the 1950s. This became the starting point for our newest digital collection, “Charitable Organizations and Philanthropy.” The collection’s focus will be on the various organizations across the state.

Currently, I’ve only added materials about the Indianapolis Community Chest.

The Community Chest began in the early 1920s as a unified way to raise money for various social agencies around the city. It eventually became the Community Fund, and by the 1950s, was renamed the Indianapolis Community Chest.

The Community Fund was the financial arm of the Indianapolis Council of Social Agencies. Eventually, the organization morphed into what is currently called the United Way of Central Indiana. Its goal was to provide funds for various social agencies and groups such as the YMCA, YWCA, Salvation Army and the Girls and Boys Scouts, to name a few. After their fundraising, the Community Fund would give the money to the Indianapolis Council of Social Agencies for distribution.

The Red Feather campaigns, popular in the ’40s and ’50s, were being promoted in many company employee newsletters, such as Ayrograms and the Serval Inklings.

In the future, I will be adding more materials about other similar organizations across the state, as well as information about the Indianapolis Council of Social Agencies.

This post was written by Christopher Marshall, digital collections coordinator for the Indiana Division at the Indiana State Library.

‘Building it the right way from the ground up’: An interview with Gvido Burgis

The Indiana State Library Foundation is excited to announce its new Executive Director Gvido Burgis. Gvido is no stranger to the world of philanthropy and has a number of successes with nonprofits and government organizations. His enthusiasm for Gvido_2_prefered_webphilanthropy is contagious along with his warm smile and engaging personality. I had the opportunity to interview Gvido about his vision for the Indiana State Library. The following is an excerpt from our conversation.

RB: Tell me a bit about your background and how you advanced in the world of philanthropy?

GB: I guess I would have to step back into another galaxy far, far away in another lifetime. [Chuckling] Actually, I worked for state government for a number of years. I worked under Lieutenant Governor John Mutz in the 1980s. After the election in 1988 I believe, a lot of people who worked in the republican administrations were out looking for jobs. Somebody approached me about doing philanthropy because it’s a real people business. I started on the road of fundraising working for a consulting firm doing feasibility studies and capital campaigns for several years. There was a lot of travel involved with that over two and a half years. I traveled all over the country.

I returned to Indianapolis and worked as the Director of Development for the Humane Society for a number of years. I worked as an executive for this national organization for economic education for clergy. After that I came to Visiting Nurse Service as the Vice President of Development and worked there for nearly 18 years. We built this tiny foundation they had with total assets of maybe three million and through a series of campaigns and events; we built it to an organization of around 18 million. Continue reading