The central theme of this podcast episode revolves around the historical significance and ongoing impact of the Tipp City Foundation, as articulated through the insights provided by Jackie Wall and Heather Bailey. I recount my personal journey and experiences, shedding light on the inception of the foundation and the evolution of its philanthropic efforts. As we delve into various projects and the legacy of contributions, we illuminate how each grant request reflects a story that contributes to the community's fabric. The discussions further reveal the importance of fostering a culture of philanthropy among the youth, emphasizing the need for active engagement in charitable endeavors. Our hope is to inspire listeners to recognize the profound influence of local philanthropy and to consider how they might become part of this enduring narrative.

Takeaways:

• In our examination of the Tipp City Foundation's history, Jackie Wall shared invaluable insights regarding her appointment as a board member, which occurred in the fall of 1986.
• During the podcast, we discussed the evolution of grant funding, highlighting the significant growth from $2,000 in 1986 to over $200,000 per year in recent times.
• The conversation emphasized the importance of understanding the impact of grants and ensuring that the funded projects genuinely serve the community's needs.
• Jackie Wall's contributions to the foundation have not only shaped its mission but also inspired future generations to engage in philanthropy and community service.

New York may be nice.

Give me paradise Give me my own hometown.

Tip City.

It's really rather small.

Its buildings aren't so tall, but it's my own hometown.

Welcome to so Far so Good.

I'm Jim Ramft.

And I'm Sarah Gillenwater.

And every grant has a story, and.

Every story leaves a legacy.

With us here today, we have Jackie Wall, who's our board member emeritus, just recently went off the board, and she's going to help us kind of learn about some of the history of the Tipp City Foundation, a little bit about the fund that she and her husband Bob started, along with her daughters.

We also have with us today Heather Bailey, who's our current fund development chairperson, a past president of the Tipp City foundation, and I'm going to be fined a dollar every time I don't put the word city in Tipp City foundation, apparently.

So keep track of that on your scoreboards at home.

Actually, if we put a jar right here.

Oh, there we go.

We could come up with a good fund.

That's true.

Every time we missay it.

Well, you know, because I get donated,.

Every episode's a chance to add to our blooper reel.

So it's an opportunity.

So for Jackie, tell us first of all, a little bit about how you were appointed.

Were you appointed or were you part of the trust?

I was appointed, yes.

This is back in the fall of 86, I got a phone call from Ruth Holly, who I believe was the chair of the foundation.

At the time.

I knew she had been a classmate of my father's, and I had had her in school for English when I was in junior high.

Of course, I learned more about her as things went.

But at that point, So I was 33, and she said they had an open seat, they needed to replace somebody, and they were wondering if I'd be interested.

And we talked a bit, explaining how the foundation functions and everything.

And I said, okay, let me talk to Bob and I'll touch base.

I remember that Thanksgiving that year, my dad and I talked about it, and of course, none of us knew he was going to pass in the following February.

In fact, later on, Ruth said to me she was so glad that he knew that I was.

I joined.

He talked about it.

You had previously talked about it or you talked about it with him after she asked you?

After she asked me during dinner.

It was one of our typical conversations my dad and I would have.

And I had been involved in a variety of things probably since I was 25.

So I was evidently Getting noticed by people, because the.

Ruth was the one.

When it comes to age, Ruth was the one closest in age to me.

Everybody else was older.

Now, there were only five members at the time of the original trust.

So at that point, were you really aware of the foundation's mission?

No.

No.

I can remember as a kid going out to get the mail for my family.

And I mean, when I say a kid, I'm talking about junior high and high school.

Get the Tip City Herald, which, as my father referred to it as the tip blabber.

And there would be this picture of this elderly woman who turned out to be Helen Timmer handing a check.

And there'd be something about the Tipp City Foundation.

And I would think, what in the world is the Tip City Foundation?

And they didn't have, at that point, I think, total, in a year's time, they had something like $2,000 that they had to split up four times.

So anyway, Helen had passed, and they were replacing Helen with me.

And at that point, there were, like I said, there were five.

One of the strictures, if you want to call it that, is that you could not hold an elected office and be on the foundation.

And we've carried that forward.

Yes.

And I think it's important.

Yes.

Not that I had a lifetime of ambition, but if at 30, if you had said to me, where do you see yourself?

I would have said, I'll run for school board.

But what were you actually doing professionally or.

At that time, I was raising children.

Okay, Seriously.

She was at our house, actually.

All the time.

All the time with my kids.

Yeah.

So that's where we have to jump into your relationship with Jackie.

And she changed my diapers.

I mean, she's.

She was at the hospital when I was born.

Her folks are.

Are my closest friends.

Yeah.

Or some of my closest friends.

And that would be John and Marilyn Richards.

Yeah.

They like when.

On the occasional time that I land in the hospital for a reason, Marilyn is the one that shows up if.

Especially if my daughter Katie, who lives here, can't make it.

So, yes, I refer to her as a pseudo niece, and she refers to me as a pseudo aunt.

So.

Yeah.

So that makes her kind of a double second generation in some ways.

Board member.

Yes, because Marilyn was a board member when I first joined.

Yes.

It was an expectation.

They told us when we were two that this was an expectation.

You have tattoo.

Yeah.

You will TCF on our wrist.

Got to be careful.

You have to explain what that might mean.

Yeah.

So anyway, I still say it takes about A year to really be comfortable doing a whole series of meetings.

And especially when you're 33, 34 years old, you've got all these older people who don't know you and all that kind of stuff.

But, yeah, I became quite comfortable.

And I'm not.

I don't want to sound like a smart aleck, even though I am, but with the age of the people we were dealing with, within like two years, we were replacing members left and right.

Yeah.

So who were the board members when you started?

Maurice Kreider.

Let's see if I can come up with a name.

Helen Timmer had passed.

Penny Finch.

Ruth Holly.

And I'm not gonna come up with the last name.

So who is Penny Finch?

He had the newspaper.

Okay, very good.

And I don't remember what his actual name was.

And Ruth was a teacher.

Ruth was a teacher.

And now Ruth was a native.

I don't know about.

Maurice Kreider was in banking of some sort.

Yeah.

That started it.

And did that come from Helen's dad, a Timmer?

Yeah.

And then there was a larger donation in the 80s or 90s that really.

Kind of.

In her state.

Well, it was Helen's.

It was Helen's.

Yeah.

Do we know where that money.

What the first thing that money went to?

Well, I think the most.

The first significant thing it went to was a portable.

Where do you go to look at the stars?

Oh, planetarium.

Yes.

That we bought for the school.

Oh, like a solarium type thing.

Yeah, it was.

It.

It could blow up.

Yeah, yeah.

And there were different discs or whatever you call it that you could use for different science fields.

Planetarium.

Planetarium.

But that was the first, really, for me, exciting, being a science nerd.

The exciting thing we did.

So those early on grants that you did, mostly school stuff, or how did that.

Well, of course, it always depends on who requests.

Right.

But the school seemed to be more cognizant of us.

It might have been.

Kitty Lobo, who was the communications person for the school, was a good friend of mine.

So she was well aware of what was going on with the foundation.

Yeah.

And in fact, one of the things they started doing was when we would fund something significant, they would invite us, being the board, the foundation board, to.

Come visit the item.

Or the item.

Yeah.

Like whether it was a classroom or what.

Which was a great PR thing.

Tell me what a board meeting was.

Like.

Like when you first started, like, where did you have it?

I've heard stories of, like, food and.

Yeah.

Wait.

Yeah, those.

Well, not.

Not in the very beginning.

I don't remember food in the very beginning.

But when Jim Kyle got involved, we were meeting, like, in homes, and Jim Kyle came on.

I.

You know, it becomes a blur after a point, how many.

But we started meeting in their house and.

And June would always make something.

Cookies or something for us.

Spoiled us terribly.

But it was very comfortable.

And, you know, you're away from everybody and you could express opinions that need to be expressed and all that.

But.

So, yeah, talk about opinion sharing.

Were there contentious things in that era?

I wouldn't say contentious.

I would say, let's be realistic about personalities.

Frequently.

I was the one who was saying, I don't know that I agree with this request.

That feels off.

I know it does.

I didn't have my medicine that day.

But the.

If a valid point was made, and I do this with everything in my daily life, okay, I'll back off.

And that's been what I've learned over the years, is I.

Because I get the grant requests first, I'll review them and I'll see something that I think that's just never going to happen.

And then, fortunately, we have a diverse board that can say, chime in with something.

We had that actually at our last meeting where Sarah and Renee explained something about a grant request.

And I was like, oh, okay.

That actually makes sense.

Yeah.

The perspectives in the room are really important.

I think the voices are very openly expressed and openly welcomed.

And I basically made it to almost every meeting in the 39 years I was there.

We never had an argument that I would go home and think, oh, my God, what am I doing there?

Well, when I came in, I was told, hey, even if we disagree, when we leave this room, it stays.

This was a decision, in effect, a unanimous decision.

Yes.

Yeah.

And we don't have very many rules.

We have bylaws.

But in terms of rules, one of the only rules we have is that whatever is spoken at our meetings is strictly confidential.

And as a group, when it comes to grants, we only speak with one voice.

And that voice is always the chairman of the distribution committee, which right now is Jim.

But that takes pressure off of a board member also to get, you know, collared off to the side at a restaurant, like, why didn't you fund that?

Or why did you fund such and such.

And the answer to that.

Well, and the other answer to that is, it's a competitive process, and we've got X number of dollars.

Did you say 87?

Yeah.

So now we're at $200,000 or a little bit over in a year.

But that doesn't go as far as you would think.

No, no.

Because now the requests are bigger than they.

They were.

So when you talk about like more impact grants, the larger grants that you've been involved in, is there anything.

You kind of pick out the first one.

I remember, but I. I'm late to the game.

Was.

Did we do a pavilion?

Yeah, yeah.

Down at the canal park.

Well, at Kyle Park.

Okay.

And.

And maybe then we did too.

Yeah, that would have been.

But that was.

That was not requested.

That's.

This was Jim Kyle's idea.

Thus the park named after him for his foot family.

But so any other impact grants you can think of that really well paid.

A lot towards the updating of the current swimming pool so that the swimming pool has the splash pads and some equipment for people that are sensitive to sounds and harsh temperature changes and splashing water.

What's that?

The sensory experience.

Talk about that.

Jack.

I was gonna say.

Do I look blank?

Tell me more about that.

Okay, let's make a shift.

So obviously you were involved.

And unfortunately when Bob passed, you made the decision with your daughters that you were gonna.

And I think you made the decision with Bob.

Actually, I was gonna say Bob was the one who said, I would like to have a fund.

He originally was hoping to make it so that we could help adults who were looking at picking up a new background.

Employment.

Yeah, employment.

And we had made contact like with CTC to say because Bob ran a rigging company, they moved the big CNC machines.

Now I've just told you everything I understand about that because I'm not into that.

But anyway, could not get much of a response from ctc.

At first we were thinking narrowing it to Tip City, Monroe Township.

And then we were like, whatever.

And then one thing led to another.

The evolution of this was setting up the fund.

I have no say in it whatsoever.

Annie and Katie, our daughters do.

The money is intended to go where.

To wherever they want to put it.

It's a donor advised fund.

But there's been a special kind of focus on pets, I would say.

Well, for those of you who might have seen a fairly short, young looking woman with a big English sheepdog, that would be Katie.

And when, when she has her dog, she.

They walk literally a couple miles a day.

And so like at one point when the city was developing Canal Lock park, they.

Katie said, why don't you put in a.

They were talking about putting in a drinking fountain.

Katie said put one in so that the dogs can drink too.

And she actually still checks it somewhat.

Yeah, no, it works.

It's cool.

Yeah.

So anyway, and it's set up and Heather came up with this idea, and this is a wonderful idea because my grandchildren do not live in Tip City.

Their only ties to Tipp City is coming to visit me.

So when Annie and Katie pass, the money will revert to the general fund.

Very good.

Yeah.

So I guess I missed some of the background.

How many generations of your family in Tip City?

I am.

Well, in Tip City, Monroe Township.

I am the seventh generation.

Right.

And so that means Katie, who lives here, is the eighth.

And I have nieces with children, so they're the ninth.

And so track back your family name.

My maiden name was Wells.

And that's the name that.

That goes back.

Yes.

Where English.

Old English gun shop is on Ginghamsburg.

That land was part of my ancestors farm.

Very good.

Which was interesting because for whatever reason, well, my dad was a very quiet soul, dear man, but the things I know about him did not come from him.

And so I grew up on Tip Colesville, just south of where Ginsburg Road.

Ginghamsburg dead ends.

So the township.

Yeah, in the township.

And.

And.

But we were like no more than a mile and a half from the original farm.

Who knew?

Yeah.

I mean, cool.

And there was a family cemetery.

Okay.

On.

On the land, because the interstate split the farm.

And so on the land that was on the east side of the interstate, there's a famous cemetery.

So the other thing I have, we all, like, I have found distant cousins that like, they didn't know their great grandmother's maiden name was Wells.

You know, people don't necessarily know these things.

So.

Yeah, there are women out there who have Wells bloodlines, but they have different last names and we don't know.

So did anybody do the ancestry thing?

And do you know the first generation and Tip, where they came from?

Virginia.

Okay.

Yeah, I learned something new every time I talk to you.

Can we back up a second?

Yeah.

Why did Bob want to do the fund you said he wanted?

You talked about it before he passed.

What was the original.

I suspect because of my involvement as long as it had been because I joined.

See, when he became ill, I had been on for 10 years.

Okay.

And of course he was ill, 17, so.

And it was amazing to me, the people who.

One of the options we gave them in the obituary was that they could make a donation and people did.

I mean, that.

Which was nice.

So how long prior to his passing had he decided to do that?

It was probably halfway through the whole thing.

Yeah.

I think that's interesting because my grandfather, we also have a family fund.

That decision was made way early as well.

Where is this money going?

How is this legacy going to continue?

And I think it's really interesting, those legacy funds, how early those decisions are made.

Of course, there are some that are made because the passing is abrupt, but, you know.

Well, the best ones, though are the ones like that where the estate's already, you know, they're going to have some money in there.

So so often with a sudden passing, somebody does that and the fund gets a big chunk of money and then kind of levels off.

So that's a great point.

And to your, to your point with the girls, you know, you're still living.

The girls are running it.

The grandkids will run it.

That's what's happened in our family.

Well, my grandkids won't run it because they have no ties to Tiffany.

It will go to general funds.

Yeah.

But for our family, the generations is set up to pass to generations.

So my grandma ran it, my mom ran it.

So.

So what's the focus of your family's fund?

It doesn't have.

It's kind of generalized.

We did focus more on, you know, how does this affect.

My grandparents were farmers, so we always take that into consideration.

First, schools are huge and would this make our grandparents proud?

That's.

I mean, would this be something that they would say yes to is typically the question, you know, and we gave money toward that sign.

My.

There wasn't a soccer game.

My grand.

Both grandpa's did not show up to.

So they, I mean, but they didn't pay.

I will say they sat on the outside of the gate.

They did not buy a ticket.

Lawn chair, right?

Yes, they brought their lawn chairs and they sat on the outside of the gate.

But they did not miss a soccer game.

And so for me, I was like, you know what?

Both my brothers played, my cousins played.

It felt like this might honor them in a way that, you know, they would say, yeah, we would.

They would have said yes to this.

So, yeah, so you have like a mini distribution committee meeting among the family.

It's not even many.

We have.

It's all of us.

So it's my mom, my uncle, and then all of my siblings and cousins.

There are four of us and three of them.

And so it is A group decision.

It's.

I don't get.

Even though I am the communicator now and it's pointed at me, I still have to have all of the yeses on our side.

So you.

You don't go with the same format we do, where you all agree and walk out of the room.

Yeah.

I mean, it's majority rules.

So there can be a no, and there was a no.

You know, but that's great.

Typically that's like, okay, whatever.

It's kind of neat that you mentioned, you know, would our grandparents have approved?

Because when Jackie misses a meeting, the terminology not to offend anybody was, what would Jackie do?

We never quite got the little bracelets made for that.

But.

But that was kind of an ongoing theme.

Well, it was back when I was ill. Yep.

And yeah.

In fact, Jim mentioned that to me, and I thought, oh, dear Lord, this is.

Might be a good time to jump in with a quote that we could pick up from Jackie often over the years, whether she was there or not.

And when we were thinking about grants and there you have a stack of grants in front of you, more grant requests than dollars available, Jackie would come back and say, we can't fund everything.

So can we look at this as the icing on the cake?

What are the things that are being asked for that are an item that will come into our community, that there's no other way to pay for it.

It's just the icing on the cake.

And I've always enjoyed that perspective of Jackie.

So what would Jackie do?

She would start with the icing.

She would start with dessert first.

The icing on the cake.

Well played.

Yeah.

You know what, What I like about our fund is my kids don't communicate about that.

It is until something happens.

Like when I went to the author visit from date Literary Peace Prize, and Lisa Sanchu, she gets up and she's talking about the funding, and she says, and we got money from the.

From the Wall family fund.

And I'm like, what?

Really cool.

So, yeah, that I like being the fact that I'm completely out of it.

So if you had to give some advice long term to board members, kind of wrap this up, what would you tell them to do?

As she looks at Sarah lovingly in the eyes.

Well, what Heather just said is true.

99% Of the requests we get are worthy of being funded, but we don't have the funds.

So what you begin to have to be really realistic as to what's going to impact the community, what's going to impact the agency that's requesting the funds, do they have other avenues of funding?

That's the kind of stuff you have to look at.

You gotta remove your.

Like, I'm a reader.

Anytime a book request came from schools or anything, I was like, okay, let's do it.

And there are times you just can't, so you gotta go outside of yourself.

May I add one thing?

Something I have always appreciated is the Youth Philanthropy project we do in June that teaching kids who are going to be seniors that have requested to be there about philanthropy.

Yes, it's enjoyable to give money away, but there's some work involved in this.

And then the fact that the foundation sets money aside for them to make decisions is a great learning tool.

And I really think that's one of the best things we do.

Yeah.

And I learn a lot from those kids every year.

It's amazing how filled in they are on things in the community and their volunteerism.

One of my last times being there, you hadn't made it there yet.

You were on your way.

And this one young man who seemed to think he was in charge says, well, we have.

I can't remember now how many requests, doesn't matter, but we have, you know, $5,000.

So you divide 5,000 by such and such, and I say, that's not the way it's done.

Dr. Graft will handle this when he gets here.

The urge to say shut up was almost overwhelming, and he was so full of himself.

And then on Friday when they did the Czech presentation, because there were only, I think, two boys that year.

Anyway, the one boy who I really liked was sitting beside me, and I said, I got to ask you, is this the way he is?

And he went, huh, Okay.

I hope you learned something from it.

And I'm sure he did.

Well, you see, you're a positive.

I'm not.

All right, well, thank you so much.

Thanks for.

For coming in and sharing your perspective.

And I'm sure as we move further with these podcasts, we'll be doing some more historical type of events.

So we'll make you trot back in here and keep us informed.

I want to thank Greg Enslin and Clock Tower Media for being our engineer and our host and kind of actually triggering a lot of the idea to do this.

Thank Heather and Sarah for being here with us this morning.

It is morning.

Our hope is to bring the stories of the people behind the philanthropy to the forefront and maybe inspire a few more people to become part of the story.

Thanks for listening and thanks for being part of our community.

Hi, I'm Jim Ranft.

And I'm Sarah Gillenwater.

Every grant has a story?

Every story leaves a legacy.

Keep listening as we continue sharing the people and stories making a difference.

So far, so good.

City?

It's really rather small?

Its buildings aren't so tall?

But it's my own hometown?

Tip City?

You know your next door neighbor?

Your friends are always true?

If you have need of favors?

They'll do their best for you?

When you get back home?

You'll never get lost?

Or think of the cost?

When you're in your hometown?

I was time to settle down?

I know I'll pick this town?

For it's my own hometown?

Tip City?

City, City?