Kerry Alys Robinson believes that the most inspiring, effective and impactful examples of philanthropy and development share commonalities — “and this is the especially true in the context of religious philanthropy and faith-based ministries,” she wrote in Imagining Abundance: Fundraising, Philanthropy, and A Spiritual Call to Service.
Robinson, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA, will close the 2024 Interfaith Lecture Series and its Week Nine theme of “All Rise: Save Us and Look Beyond,” when she speaks at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, discussing her work in faith-based philanthropic organizations.
Robinson was the founding executive director of Leadership Roundtable; she now serves on its board of trustees. Leadership Roundtable is dedicated to promoting excellence and best practices in the management, finances, and human resource development of the Catholic Church by harnessing the managerial expertise and financial acumen of senior level lay executives. She’s also served as the executive director of the Opus Prize Foundation — an organization responsible for an annual, international million-dollar prize honoring people of faith whose lives are dedicated to the alleviation of human suffering.
Fundraising, development, philanthropy — like faith — can change lives: “the more seriously we live out our faith,” she wrote, “the clearer the call to be generous and to live lives that inspire generosity. No one is excused from the responsibility and invitation to be generous and other-centered.”
“Philanthropy and development, when done faithfully and well, invite people into a relationship of common purpose, fulfill a noble purpose, point to meaning and transcendence, offer hope, and contribute to the lives of others, often those in great need,” Robinson wrote in Imagining Abundance. “Both demand a radical generosity of spirit, time, effort, money, faith, tenacity, and conviction. One is not possible without the other. Both require a relinquishing of self, a disposition of humility before the great potential at hand, and the shared goal of blessing other people’s lives.”
A member of the Raskob Foundation for Catholic Activities and of Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities, over the course of her career Robinson has been an adviser to and trustee of more than 25 grant-making foundations, charitable nonprofits, and family philanthropies.
Notably, she served as the director of development for Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale University and led a successful $75 million fundraising drive to expand and endow the chapel’s intellectual and spiritual ministry and to construct a Catholic student center, designed by Cesar Pelli, on Yale’s campus. This work wasn’t a job, Robinson wrote. It was a chance to live out her vocation, and the success of the campaign wouldn’t just impact Yale’s campus ministry, but Catholic campus ministry across the United States. This was what motivated her and her team — that the work would “extend hope to campus ministers, expand the programmatic imagination, highlight the possibilities at hand, and present an irresistible and concrete example as a viable beacon.”
It’s a mistake, Robinson wrote, to assume that philanthropy is the “provenance of the very wealthy. This lets the rest of us off the hook.”
“But a core tenet of faith is the call to live lives of authenticity, honesty, vulnerability, and generosity. Central to Christianity is the conviction that one finds life by giving it first away,” Robinson wrote in Imagining Abundance. “Generosity, other-centeredness, mercy, compassion, relinquishment: these are constitutive qualities of being Christlike. Everyone has something to give others. We do a profound disservice to most of the world and to ourselves when we relegate philanthropy and giving only to the domain of the very wealthy.”
