I was golfing with a friend recently and he asked me how our “One More Year Fund” is doing. It’s been a while since I gave an update so I thought I’d put together some thoughts on where we are at.
First, as background, I worked “One More Year” at MegaCorp compared with my original plans. In that year, we set aside the money I made (salary & bonus, after tax) in order to start a charitable fund. We felt blessed with all we had saved and thought it would give us something interesting to do as we kicked off this new chapter in our lives.
Link: Work “One More Year” As A Gift to Charity
How are we doing on our project? So far, we have “spent” about 83% of the fund. I say “spent”, but as you will see, much of the money has been invested in ongoing projects that haven’t played out. Overall we have learned that it requires time and effort to be a philanthropist. Even a small one. Here’s the update …
DIRECT DONATIONS: First, we’ve outright donated about 30% of the total fund. Some was increased giving at our metro Zoo, where I serve on the Board. That giving coincided with my time as Chairman & on the Executive Committee, so that worked out well.
Other giving went to our schools – high school, college, and graduate school alumni foundations. For our undergraduate college’s business department, I had the opportunity to be their honorary ‘Executive’ on campus a few years ago. It was fun to speak with students about my career (although they mostly asked questions my early retirement!).
Lastly, a meaningful share of our direct giving has gone to our church for various special capital campaigns over the last 10 years. They’ve done an exterior building renovation, bought new carpets, refreshed the parking lot, and even have a new pipe organ coming from Germany this Spring.
ANGEL INVESTMENTS: The biggest part of our giving – a little over 50% of the fund – has been invested in companies we thought were doing some “social good” in the world. This is a new approach to giving beyond only funding 501c3 charitable organizations.
I got involved in an angel investment group at the University of MN and made 6 investments in small pre-commercial companies. They were all doing work that roughly aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development focus areas.
Link: One More Year Fund – “Social Good” Start-Up Investing
So far, none of these angel investments have paid off in a big way. The research on angel investing says that for every 10 investments you make, about half will go broke, 3-4 will break even, and 1-2 will pay out well enough to deliver a double-digit return for the overall portfolio. We haven’t yet had one that has hit the big time.
We had an investor update on one of these companies a couple weeks ago that I tuned in on Zoom from our place in Florida. They are doing well with a new CEO. I’ve been invested with them for about 9 years now and they are hopeful that if they hit their expansion targets, they will be an attractive 9-digit acquisition opportunity for a big strategic buyer in a 2-3 years.
While that sounds great, that company hasn’t crossed the finish line, by any means. Still, three of our original investments are growing, vital, and have real payout potential like this one. All three of them have reached positive cash flow, even as they still take on new investors to fuel faster growth. They are exciting to follow.
The other three companies we invested in are finished. Two went broke and one only exists in terms of the intellectual property that the founder is hoping to sell. I wrote one investment off of my taxes a few years ago and will do another one with my 2025 returns.
We haven’t made any new angel investments in the last 5 years. In December of 2019, I had my heart attack and then the pandemic hit a few months later. The angel group continued to meet over Zoom, but that wasn’t ideal. For me, it was too much work to do due diligence and decide where we wanted to invest extra money over the computer & phone.
Link: Angel Investing Update – Taking A Break
At that same time, our son came home after finishing college and lived with us through the pandemic. At the point and our time became focused on him. He’s now gotten off to a great start in his career and at one point we bought a nearby townhouse for him to live in. Now that he is off to the big city and established in his career it’s probably time for us to start vetting some new giving opportunities.
REMAINING FUNDS: Beyond the money already donated and/or invested, we still have a little less than 20% of the original fund to do something with, but it still is a enough to do some real good.
If you think it should all have been spent by now, that’s a fair criticism. It’s been 10 years, after all. Honestly, the situation is that at least for us, there is actually a fair amount of time & focus needed to give away money to what you hope will be worthwhile causes.
We’ve wanted to get (somewhat) involved in the organizations that we fund – whether a charitable organization or business start-up. There are many organizations that are happy to collect your money and send you a thank you note, but if we are going to give a substantial amount of money (for us) to a group, I want to understand who they are and what they are focused on.
I don’t need or expect a decision-making seat at the table, but just want to make sure that we are informed and can fully support what they are doing and their strategic priorities. (After all, we could just give the money to our 28-year-old son to help him instead).
As a counterpoint, over the last few years I’ve read a number of articles about MacKenzie Scott, who has donated $20 billion of her Amazon fortune to over 1,200 organizations with a “no strings attached” approach. She just sends the money from her foundation with the minimum of restrictions or oversight on the money.
Her ‘Yield Giving’ Fund just expects them to spend the donated money on what the organization knows will work best for them. Her top donations go to well-known, well-established organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Planned Parenthood, the Boys & Girls Club, and the United Negro College Fund. Perhaps we’re being too self-important with our relatively small donations?
Regardless, our snowbirding time in Florida has started to open up some new opportunities for us to be involved in. My wife has joined the local Women’s Club and a guy from the Community Foundation reached out to me over breakfast about getting involved in some of their campaigns. I think if we start spending more time in Florida, we’ll get more seriously involved. We have already donated some small amounts to their projects.
How involved do you like to be in organizations that you significantly give to?
Image: Pixabay
MrFireStation 
Getting more involved in Florida will also be helpful if you decide to move your tax domicile from Minnesota to Florida.
I will play the guarding Doberman role again today. I worked at over a half dozen startups when I was young and stupid because I saw stories about how people got wealthy quickly at startups. What you don’t hear about is that most startups don’t do well. Founders’ Stock Grants did not contribute to my wealth acquisition. Direct investments in growing dividend stocks, 401-k’s, Deferred Compensation Plans and Real Estate helped me get ahead.
I also saw a lot of fraud at the startups including three people including one company’s CEO, Sales Director and General Counsel go to Federal Prison for over a decade for SEC Securities Fraud. Another company had a CFO whose resume said he went to The University of Wisconsin about the same time I did. I met him at a party and tried reminiscing about Leon Varjan and the Pail and Shovel Partys’ antics including the Statue of Liberty Head and Hand holding the torch on frozen Lake Mendota, the Pink Flamingos on Bascom Hill and Varjan pushing a shopping cart filled with pink marijuana joints down State Street Mall and freely handing them out. The guy didn’t want to talk about crazy UW, which I thought was really weird. Two weeks later the dude was fired for faking his resume. Running into a Wisconsin towny who actually went to UW in Silicon Valley must have had him sweating.
One startup I joined provided technology that catered to non-profits, which I thought might be something different and altruistic. Instead, I ran into in many cases of entitled people who thought they deserve to do well financially because they are saving the whales or whatever. I did encounter several Christian Ministry related startups where the management were all retired from other careers and personally took no salary. They proudly pointed that their Charity Efficiency Rating was north of 90%, which meant that the majority of a donor’s funds went to the mission they cared about.
One concerning practice I observed at this technology startup was the company provided wealth screening services. This service enabled Development Officers to run a wealth screen on people they encounter to discern who has the most wealth, so they can chase them. I saw hospitals doing this. Think about it, you are in a hospital visiting a sick loved one and the Development Officer is wealth screening you to see if you are a target for donating.
I would like to end by including this link to an interview with former LA County Sherriff Alex Villanueva where he describes the “homeless industrial complex”. The homeless industrial complex are non-profits where the CEO pays themselves $800,000, with much of the funding coming from State and Local Government. The non-profits provide campaign financing for politicians and well-paid make work jobs for the politicians’ family members. The homeless are not actually helped because the CEOs would be out their cushy $800,000 salary and the politicians would be out their quid pro quo.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/where-is-californias-homeless-funding-going-5987200
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There are always bad apples and incompetents. I would guess that they get found out quicker at the small companies. As a corporate officer at MegaCorp, I would get a report from security annually of all of the fraud they caught and the status of each case. Some really appalling stuff. Still, in most cases the person was simply fired and the circumstances swept under the rug.
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The problem with small organizations is that it is often the Top Dog who is the fraudster and they don’t have to go through SEC SOC 2 Audits like publicly traded companies.
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I have typically been involved in organizations which I helped out financially, churches, Scouting, and performing arts. We are not giving anything at this time.
It isn’t that we are unwilling to help, but rather the bloat and waste that we see at non-profits and universities cause us to think twice. Also, in our area the needy are often those who are not legally allowed to be here and if I provide food or shelter assistance, I feel that I am abetting a crime.
We are also in the shadow of Altadena 14 months after the fire and I am continually bombarded with pleas for help from people who had homes valued at $1M plus and whose lots could bring $500,000 and up if sold. If that is the needy then I don’t want to help.
We do fund 529 plans for our grandchildren and annually gift to adult children to make their lives better and perhaps help with the cost of real estate.
My father left his 401K to a university for scholarships and a decade on we still receive acknowledgement from the recipients. I have thought of doing something similar, however the layers of administrative largess and wasteful programs which I see cause me to pull back. As an example, my son is driving a charter this week for community college students touring four year universities….but included in the trip is two days at Disneyland. I guess the poor deprived young people of the Central Valley need to experience Disneyland as part of their government funded education.
I will now step down off my soapbox rant.
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Your post matches my observations. Here is an example that hit the news today that is a twofer. It is a good example of the non-profit bloat you described where Gov. Newscum’s wife Jennifer Siebel paid herself over $300,000 per year over the past ten years at her non-profit. She is also the bagperson for Newscum Quid Pro Quo.
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Whoops, forgot the story link.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/03/09/report-gavin-newsoms-wife-pocketed-over-3m-from-her-charity-for-herself-her-company/
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when I read the word “intersectional”, I know that the person who wrote it likely has a graduate degree and they don’t understand 8th grade math
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when I read the word “intersectional”, I know that the person who wrote it likely has a graduate degree and they don’t understand 8th grade math
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when I read the word “intersectional”, I know that the person who wrote it likely has a graduate degree and they don’t understand 8th grade math
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Wow – a charity that includes a trip to Disneyland. That’s really frustrating to hear. Schools have been a small % of our giving and I agree that the “bloat” you see is a bit disconcerting. Even non-profits that help people in need require oversight as well. My wife supports a Christian organization that allows you to “sponsor” a child in Haiti and we look now and then to ensure they are maintaining their 4-star (out of 4) rating on Charity Navigator.
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It takes a graduate school level of indoctrination to be concerned about “intersectional” or even know what it means.
Here’s another great local non-profit that I learned about yesterday that explains why California keeps funding the homeless and the problem only gets worse. LA City is providing grants to a non-profit that pays attorneys $1,025 per hour to sue the city to hinder efforts to cleanup homeless encampments. What a great use of taxpayer funds!
LA awards $106M to nonprofit whose lawyers hinder city’s ability to clean up streets
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That’s is so twisted.
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The only explanation that makes sense is that the politicians are receiving campaign donations back and quid quo pro jobs for family members from the non-profit that pays attorneys $1,025 per hour to sue the city. Many US politicians need to be incarcerated for decades for corruption. But who is going to prosecute them when the thieves themselves hire the police and prosecutors who would need to arrest and prosecute them?
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Agree – the corruption is everywhere and seems impossible to root out because it is so ingrained. Transparency – “sunshine is the best disinfectant”.
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