CHICAGO TRADER PROVIDES CHARITY ON THE CHEAP
The wife of Howe Barnes trader Steve Roy was passing through a rough area of Chicago near the Loop. She was amazed. A kind man named A.J.-who it turned out was poor-was ladling out soup from an old station wagon.
"She immediately gave him a few dollars and told him she’d be back," says Roy, first vice president of trading at Howe Barnes.
"My wife, Christine Delizer, convinced me we had to do something," he says. Initially reluctant, Roy eventually became an enthusiast for the project, the Whirling Rainbow Kitchen for the Needy.
The charity is run on the cheap with a yearly budget of less than $5,000. "Thank God for Costco," he says.
Roy and Delizer provide a Saturday meal for about 90 people-a meal he cooks and that they finance through just a few contributions. It is the little engine that could of charities. Owing to lack of accounting and legal help, the charity doesn’t even have nonprofit status.
No matter.
Roy is no longer on the street, where soup could sometimes freeze. He feeds people at a Catholic church in the Pilsen neighborhood.
Why do it? In part it is a tribute to A.J., who himself did it in tribute to his own wife, who couldn’t leave her home because of her health. A.J. died several years ago, Roy says, but his and his wife’s charity go on. Roy fondly remembers A.J.
"He was a wonderful man," Roy says.
A RUN UP A HILL THAT MADE A BIG DIFFERENCE
John Budzyna went running up a hill with his friend Rob Davis in 1998. When they got to the top, they agreed that the maligned hedge fund industry would become an advocate for neglected children.
Davis, an institutional equity sales veteran with Concept Capital, was a former public schoolteacher. He saw the problems of child abuse. He wanted to help, as he saw few charities truly addressing the problem.
He also thought, in the wake of the LTCM debacle, that hedge funds were unfairly portrayed in the mass media. Hedge fund officials were depicted as avaricious, uncaring, not the kind of people who were interested in anything other than the bottom line.
"That’s just not so. The hedge fund industry is the most generous on the planet," Davis says. Therefore, he set out to change that public image.
So he founded Hedge Funds Care. Thirteen years later, the group has 11 chapters in the United States and Europe.
"The hedge fund industry wanted to help people with no voice," says Budzyna, chairman of Hedge Funds Care and CEO of Cutting Edge Consulting.
Budzyna says the group aims to be an advocate for children who were bullied or sexually abused. It also wants to make people aware of the extent of the problem. Hedge Funds Care helps fund both education and therapy programs. Since that uphill run, the charity has raised $38 million dollars.
FROM AN ECONOMIC TO A PERSONAL COMMITMENT
Historian Henry Adams once said that one can never measure the ultimate impact of the teacher, since his or her effect can last far beyond a single lifetime.
RBC Capital Markets’ efforts to raise money for a local charity have gone far beyond the original goal, ensuring the financial stability of the local Ronald McDonald House on the East Side of Manhattan, which enables children with cancer to stay with their families. RBC, whose Canadian parent contributed money to fund the house, wanted to do the same in New York.
But then, says Bobby Grubert, RBC’s head of trading in New York, the commitment to the charity went beyond the monetary: So many RBC employees volunteered to play with and be with the kids that work schedules had to be changed, he explains.
"They’ve gotten behind this and become so passionate about it," says Grubert, who says some 50 RBC employees volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House. "It’s impressive to see how deep this goes within the organization."
"They have been remarkable. We are very grateful," says William Sullivan, who heads the Ronald McDonald House effort in New York.
In part, the volunteerism is the result of a company commitment, Grubert says, noting it wouldn’t have happened without the support of his bosses.
But the volunteerism has at least one unexpected benefit that helps RBC. "Volunteering," he says, promotes camaraderie within the company. "It makes for better employees."
