When CSMC CEO Jenny Davidson updated her will recently, she knew exactly what she wanted her bequest to do. As a single mother, Jenny considered her amazing son to be her greatest achievement and was clear that she wanted supporting single mothers to be her lasting legacy. Yet there were three particular reasons she chose to leave a bequest to CSMC.
By Jenny Davidson
Having been CEO of Council of Single Mother and the Children for 10 years, the organisation is very close to my heart. Indeed, it is a whole chapter of my life that has formed me as I have formed it.
However, that is not why I left CSMC bequest in my will, now I have finally updated it.
There three reasons behind my bequest.
The first is to honour the many single mothers who are doing all they can to provide for their children, often in incredibly challenging and complex circumstances. It has been my privilege to represent single mothers in all their diversity, as I travel down this road myself. I’m still in the thick of it, with a challenging 14-year-old, but as I plan for his future, I have included this gift to acknowledge CSMC’s critical work of moving our society towards honouring single mothers as they should and providing support for their single mother journeys.
The second is that I make this gift in the knowledge that it will not be wasted on excessive fundraising overheads, extraneous expenses or poor management. CSMC runs a very tight ship now under my leadership – and always has. I have great confidence that the organisation will remain well managed, based upon our values, constitution and legacy, long into the future (I hope!) when they receive this gift.
Finally, after 25 years in the non-profit sector, I am keenly aware of the unique value of this type of untied funding – not attached to a program, outcome or set of deliverables. It is of greatest benefit to organisations. While my bequest is not massive, it could seed innovation, foster expansion, or fund a response to a crisis.
If other single mothers and our allies also make bequests of any size to CSMC, together we can create a powerful source of future resilience for the organisation – and it also represents my own resilience, my ability to provide for my family of two, and my pride in having done so.
Single mothers are amazing, resilient, determined, and widely undervalued. My bequest is a salute to the women fighting every day to give their children all they can, and to our children – may they have the shiny futures that we are working for.
0 Comments