Fund for Idaho is working on things that are meaningful to me in a place that is meaningful to me.

You could say I’m a “wannabe” Idahoan. I lived in Boise in the 1980s. As I drove around the state, I fell in love with the place.

At that time I became aware of social justice and equality issues in Idaho, and I saw isolation and cultural racism, but I wasn’t actively doing anything about it politically.

Then I moved to Latin America in the 1990s. As a member of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, I was involved in labor organizing in Brazil. I worked with displaced farmers who were promised jobs and ended up in urban slums and with women who washed clothes for other people. They were marginalized and unaware of their rights to form unions and sign up for social security. As we did skits to reach illiterate people at outreach meetings, I got a lot more politicized.

After returning to the United States and leaving the order, my partner, Kathryn Whitney Stephens, and I lived in Fresno, Calif., where she worked with AIDS patients and started the Whitney Foundation. We wanted to come back to Idaho and eventually built a vacation home here, where we spent as much time as we could until she passed away in 2005.

We met with Fund for Idaho directors in 2003, not long after the Fund began. We found that we shared the same vision of philanthropy: Grants would not fund direct services, but rather would support only those programs that develop selfdetermination and self-reliance.

Fund for Idaho fulfills a mission that other Idaho public foundations don’t: providing support to organizations working for transformative change. To think that something like this could even start in Idaho is amazing!

Money and facts alone do not change the world. Only when they are set in motion by love do they make a lasting difference. Together Doug and Ann Christensen have put their hearts, resources and efforts into making our state and the world a better place.

Doug and Ann also promote philanthropy as a family value, teaching their daughters to be active, engaged citizens who are making the world a better, more sustainable place. Eloise and Aimee Christensen are living testament to their parents’ lifetime commitment to social justice and environmental protection, and many community activists have benefited from their nurturing.

Doug and Ann have invested their time and resources in so many organizations throughout their lives. Fund for Idaho celebrates the Christensens as living examples of excellence in philanthropy. It is their spirit, attitude, and love that sets them apart.

All of us at Fund for Idaho will miss our good friend Doug who passed away this spring (2012). Although he will be deeply missed, his memory will live on in the great work our grantees have and continue to do through Doug’s generosity and commitment to support lasting change in Idaho.

Thank you Doug! Our heartfelt condolences go out to Ann, the entire Christensen family and all of those who loved him.

Fund for Idaho is the only Idaho-based 501(C)(3) public foundation focused on serving grassroots Idaho groups working for tolerance, justice and environmental and economic sustainability.

We are all in this together. Life is not sustainable in a world divided between haves and have-nots, a place where the haves must defend their lion’s share of resources ever more aggressively, and the have-nots lose hope for the future. The principles of compassion, mutual respect and justice must be part of any effort to make our world a better place.

Donors to Fund for Idaho empower those most affected by the injustice and inequity in our society by encouraging them to make their voices heard. The power of our grants, now totaling over $120,000, is being felt, little by little, in many Idaho communities, as people use these resources to organize, counter the forces of intolerance and build a more civil and just society.

Fund for Idaho walks its talk. Social change activists help run this foundation and sit on the grantmaking committee that decides where donors’ gifts should be applied.

This is a radical departure from traditional, more “comfortable” philanthropy, where money is given but power is not.

Fund for Idaho is committed to being here for the long haul. By supporting Fund for Idaho, I become part of a family of like-minded people who support REAL democracy and believe that a just and civil society IS possible.