Lang Family Foundation Grant
Many years ago I made a pledge that I would donate 10% of any money I made from writing to charity. At the time, this was a meaningless pledge; the only income I made was from my columns in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which appeared a half-dozen times per year, and from occasional essays for newspapers or magazines. 10% of all of that would never have amounted to more than a few hundred dollars.
I don’t remember exactly why I made this pledge. Maybe I was hoping to trick God or the universe into making me a successful writer. But my parents also donated generously to charity throughout their lives, and instilled in their five children the importance of helping others through both your time and your treasure.
When my first books were published, and I received very modest advances for them, I duly donated 10% of those funds to charity, as well as any royalties that followed. But once again, we are talking about very small amounts of money. I don’t think I ever even earned back the $3000 advance on royalties I received for my first book.
In 2008 and then again in 2013 I published my first nonfiction books on higher education, the result of which was that I began to receive invitations to give lectures and workshops on other campuses. These invitations usually came with speaking fees, and early on I decided that I still owed 10% of that money to charity. Any money I earned from speaking had come about as a result of my writing, after all, so that felt to me like it still counted as writing income.
In 2016 Small Teaching was published, and over the course of the next year or two my life underwent a substantial change. As of this date the book has sold more than 60,000 copies, and a second edition will be published this month. Small Teaching Online appeared just before the pandemic, when everyone was looking for help in getting their courses online, and sales of that book skyrocketed throughout 2020. In 2022 the next iteration in the series will appear, a version of the book for K8 educators, written (with a tiny bit of help from me) by a very talented writer and elementary school teacher.
Not long after the original Small Teaching appeared, the speaking invitations began to pour in. Over the past few years I have received many dozens of invitations per year to give conference keynotes, on-campus lectures, and faculty workshops at institutions around the globe. I have only ever been able to accept a portion of those invitations, but even that portion has been enough to make a substantial difference to my writing and speaking income.
In short, the amount of charitable donations generated by that early pledge has now become a meaningful amount of money. For the first years post-Small Teaching, I made my required charitable donations somewhat randomly. Like everyone, I receive plenty of solicitations for charities, and always have friends who are walking and riding and doing other things to raise money for their favorite causes. When I received a royalty check or speaking fee, I would slice out the 10% and donate it to whomever was asking me for money at that moment.
But eventually I decided that if I could save the money and donate it in larger chunks, we’d be able to make a real difference to local charities that we really cared about. In 2020 we started the Lang Family Foundation, which means that we make our charitable gifts to a mutual fund (managed by Renaissance Charitable Giving), where it can accumulate interest until we’re ready to donate it to the causes we want to support. (These are called donor-advised funds, in case you’d like to learn more about them.)
The Foundation’s largest gift to date has been to the renovation of the Worcester Public Library Foundation, on which my wife serves as a board member. I have fond memories of visiting our public library in Cleveland when I was a kid, and I made it a regular habit of taking my children to the local public library when they were little. The largest piece in the Worcester Public Library’s renovation is a massive new children’s room, a gorgeous space filled with light and activities and books. I almost wish I had little kids again so I could take them there. Almost.
In gratitude for the pledge we made, which will span five years, the library recognized our family in the signage for the new digital studio that was also part of the renovations. The studio gives people the tools they need to convert other forms of media to digital files (including cassettes and VHS tapes), and has computers loaded with design programs of many kinds. We were thrilled to see the space at the ribbon-cutting ceremony on August 13th, and to tour the new facilities.
Of course it seems right that money generated from writing should circle back to a library. But a large public library is not just a storehouse for books; libraries serve as engines for social and economic opportunity for people across the income spectrum. The Worcester Public Library has provided especially robust opportunities for newly arrived immigrants, helping them study for the citizenship test, meet with advocates and helpers, and find jobs and social services. The library helps make new Americans, as well as providing free services of many kinds to people across the income spectrum.
Seeing how the funds from the Foundation can make a difference to our community has become one of the great joys of my life. If you have purchased one of my books or invited me to speak, you have contributed to the Foundation, and helped create this opportunity for me and my family—so thanks to all of you with whom I have connected in the past few years through writing or speaking, and who have helped make the Foundation possible.