THE BIG QUESTIONS: A tribute to Sir John Templeton
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The passing of Sir John Templeton provides an opportunity to reflect on “The Big Questions” that were the focus of his philanthropic work.
Templeton, one of the world’s leading investors and philanthropists, died today in Nassau, Bahamas. He was 95. A native of Tennessee, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 for the philanthropic work he pursued in his encore career.
In 2006, the John Templeton Foundation helped establish The Purpose Prize to recognize social innovators over 60 with awards of up to $100,000, and remains a major funder. (The Purpose Prize is a project of Civic Ventures, publisher of Encore.org.)
Templeton’s philanthropy underscored his belief that spirituality, creativity and purpose should be cultivated and pursued across the life span. The Templeton Foundation supports scientific research on love, gratitude, forgiveness, creativity, cosmology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and the nature and origin of religious belief.
The Templeton Foundation has convened broad-ranging discussions on “The Big Questions” such as:
- Does science make belief in God obsolete?
- Will money solve Africa’s development problems?
- Does the universe have a purpose?
As a tribute to the life and work of Sir John Templeton please contribute to the discussion of our own Big Question:
What is the purpose of your encore career?
- Alexandra Kent's blog
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- by Alexandra Kent
Giving of ourselves, our time, our treasure and our wisdom
I think the human purpose is to leave the world a better place than we found it, to give Glory to God and to celebrate the journey through life everyday.
I think the true joy in our lives comes from giving of ourselves, our time, our treasure and our wisdom. Those are the things most important to me now – sharing my time, treasure and wisdom gained over 65 years and celebrating each day of life and the people I meet each day.
The encore career creates the exciting possibility of leaving the world a better place by sharing wisdom with others, encouraging and strengthening them to make a difference in the world long after I am gone.
I am most grateful to Mr. Templeton for helping to make the encore career a reality!
Connecting Encore members with Social Benefit Organizations
Sharon, I think Andrew Carnegie, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie , would have agreed with you. There are millions of people in this country who are in their Encore years, and who may be thinking of ways to leave life without a dollar in their pockets. My goal is to create a portal that enables those people to shop for social benefit causes, using maps of the world that show different issues, such as poverty, environment, health, etc. so they can choose what cause, what country, what zip code and what organization they want to give their time, talent and treasure to.
I am already building a platform for this. In the Program Locator at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org people can see maps of the Chicago region, showing where poverty and poor schools are most concentrated. They can click on a zip code map and get information about organizations offering various forms of tutoring and/or mentoring.
They can also view web sites of many different tutor/mentor programs, so they can build their own knowledge of what good programs look like, and make informed decsions on which they want to support.
If I can find ways to increase the number of people looking to make Encore giving decsions who look at this information, I can increase the number of people who fund these programs, and lower the costs of fund raising for each of the programs at the same time.
What I’m describing is not a middle-man platform, where we take a percent of donations, or moderate decision making. We want donors to go directly to non profits, and we want to encourage a distribution of donors, and good tutor/mentor programs, into all high poverty neighborhoods, not just a few.
We raise our own revenue from the same system. Donors who value our role will fund it because they value what we do to help an entire city of programs. People who set up systems like this in other cities, should earn their funding the same way, based on the good work they do to help an entire sector of programs grow.
If we can make this work in Chicago, it can work in any city, and in any social benefit cause.
Instead of random acts of kindness, more Encore dollars will become fuel in the gas tank of progress for organizations all over the world who need on-going flexible support to constantly improve the impact of what they are doing.
I hope you and others at Encore will become advocates for this idea, encouraging others to consider incorporating it into their own philanthropy plans.
Dan Bassill
President
Tutor/Mentor Connection
Cabrini Connections