DONOR SPOTLIIGHT Jana Good Boosts Her Impact with DAF Gifts and Sharing Our Work with Friends Please introduce yourself to our readers. I’m Jana Good, and I live in Oakland, California. I’ve been interested in environmental causes for as long as I can remember, perhaps because I feel so fortunate to live near our East Bay Regional Parks — in about ten minutes, I can be hiking in the hills, feeling miles away from civilization. How did you hear about Food & Water Watch, and what motivated you to make your first gift? When our daughter was in college, she was searching for an original topic for her environmental economics thesis. Her interest in factory farming issues led her to Food & Water Watch. She reached out and had a great conversation with with one of your researchers, who suggested she study whether California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard had inadvertently increased the number of dairy cows in our state. She was so impressed by your researcher and Food & Water Watch that she encouraged us to become donors. How do the issues Food & Water Watch works on impact you directly? Our family has become a vegetarian household. Our initial reason was related to climate change, but as we learned more about factory farming, animal cruelty and safe environmental conditions also influence our choice. The work you do on these issues is incredibly important to us. You donate through a donor-advised fund (DAF). Why is this method of giving attractive to you? I like that giving through our DAF has made us more generous and more impactful. Every December, we decide our "Giving Budget" and donate appreciated stock to our fund. It's advantageous from a tax standpoint, and it encourages us to make intentional decisions about how much we plan to give each year.
Jana and her husband Bruce hiking in the East Bay Regional Parks in California.
We’ve been so impressed with Food & Water Watch that we hosted an event in our backyard to introduce our friends to your organization.
What do you hope to accomplish through your philanthropy? We've been more intentional with our giving in recent years. We think about our giving as a portfolio, i.e., what causes do we want to give to? And we identify the organizations we believe are most effective, such as Food & Water Watch. We've been placing larger bets with fewer organizations, hoping to have a greater impact. If you were talking to someone about giving to and getting involved with Food & Water Watch, what would you tell them? We’ve been so impressed with Food & Water Watch that we hosted an event in our backyard to introduce our friends to your organization. We wanted them to hear firsthand from your experts about your important work and become donors themselves. It was an easy-to-plan, low-key event. I encourage others to share Food & Water Watch’s work with their community. What gives you hope for the future? Right now feels pretty tough, honestly. What gives me hope is young people getting involved. We need more young people activated around the work Food & Water Watch is doing.
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