Don Meaders may be our newest board member – having served only since July – but his involvement with Friends In Deed goes back several years to his and his wife’s generous support of our Jazz on the Green events. He also knows our Board President Emeritus, Pam Marx, through First United Methodist Church, Pasadena – and when Pam began looking for someone to replace her to provide input from FUMC to the FID board, Don’s name was suggested.
Professionally, Don is a Harvard-educated attorney who specializes in institutional retirement and health plans. He also has legal expertise in nonprofit governance, but alongside this, Don hopes he brings a philosophical outlook that will be a valuable contribution to the board. He wants to ask the difficult questions that get to the root of the matter in question. Is it a good thing that the Food Pantry is growing? Why are people getting food from us, rather than government programs? What is going on beneath the surface here?
Another part of Don’s philosophy is the sense that all people have the responsibility to contribute to help others in the community. This may be his most significant motivation for serving on the board – he feels that, as a 130-year-old organization with deep roots in the community, Friends In Deed is a logical choice of where to put in the effort to fulfill that responsibility. However, he also wants to explore how we can facilitate members of the broader community making small contributions that add up to something significant – in other words, “doing together what we cannot do alone”!
For now, Don says he is still in the “learning phase” of his involvement with Friends In Deed. He admires our staff’s dedication to our mission, and the wealth of expertise they have about the needs of our community. We look forward to seeing what Don has to offer us once he moves beyond the learning phase and into the doing phase!