Tracy Gary says she starts every day as a “grateful activist.” That’s a good way to approach the morning, and an attitude that infuses the 66-year old Gary’s now 40-year career as philanthropy advisor, non-profit leader, donor and consultant.

A founder of nearly two dozen non-profits, Gary heads Unleashing Generosity and Inspired Legacies, and is on the road 40 days per year working with non-profits, foundations, and donors.

First, Gary is a donor herself: she gave away most of the $1.3 million ($7.5 million in 2017 dollars) that she inherited when she turned 21. She also donates a third of her yearly earnings to progressive organizations and causes. Over the course of her working life, this sum has totaled about two million dollars. Second, Tracy Gary has served as a non-profit worker, founder and leader, and so knows a thing or two about starting, growing and maintaining organizations. A “serial non-profit entrepreneur,” Gary says she would start an organization, “raise that first million,” hire staff, and then move on after five to seven years. Two of her early efforts were helping establish the Women’s Foundation of California (a model for the now well over 100 women’s foundations around the country) and the Women Donors Network.

There is a lot of rancor and division in the country, but Gary says the only way to combat it is through love, tolerance and a focus on justice. Women are key to resisting the ever-increasing flow of money into the coffers of the 1 percent, to the detriment of the poor, and the planet. Trump did not start this trend, but Gary sees Trump’s regressive policies as accelerating it. “We have to be the counterbalance,” she says, not just in the U.S., but globally. "The UN has years of data showing that if you invest in women, you improve towns and communities.”

Her message to the wealthy is presented with love, but with a point: “You can give much more than you already are.” To this end, over the last 40 years Gary has sought to build an infrastructure of giving, particularly for women’s philanthropy. One of her chief aims is get donors into the community, to make them less passive.

I try to bring wealthy people out of their cocoons,” she says.

Read the full article by Tim Lehnert about philanthropy insights from Tracy Gary from Philanthropy Women