At 30, Sybelle Moïse wanted to honor the Black women who had opened doors for her, a Haitian immigrant, by opening doors for others. She had her purpose. What she did not have was the amount she assumed someone needed to become a philanthropist.
“How do you even start?” Sybelle remembers thinking. “Who am I? I don’t have $30,000 to do this.”
She was still finding her footing after graduate school and the pandemic. Greater Hartford Gives seemed enormous, an institution built for donors with more wealth. She felt small in comparison to its long history and sizable endowment.
Her experience began with a question many prospective donors bring to their financial advisor, attorney, or the Foundation: I care deeply about something, but do I have enough to start a charitable fund?
Why did Sybelle want to start a charitable fund?
In Haiti, before the earthquake, her mother, Margareth, was a teacher; education was a responsibility shared by everyone in her community. When a child needed a Bible for communion, for example, a neighbor passed one along.
Sybelle remembers a special cool morning and the community rising. Children climbed onto their bicycles and rode to school together as their parents prepared for work.
“It was a moment in time where everything existed, and it was just us,” Sybelle says.
She cannot return to that morning. Her mother has passed. Those friends now live in different parts of the world. But the lesson remains: education could move one child forwåard, but it took a community to make the journey possible.
She created the Sybelle Moise Endowment Fund for Inspirational Black Women at Greater Hartford Gives Foundation. The fund honors three specific women who made room for her and expands educational opportunities for the next generation.
Her mother was the first of those women. Margareth taught Sybelle that education was one of the most universal tools a person could carry. Wherever life placed her, whatever problem stood in front of her, education was empowerment.
Former Connecticut State Treasurer Denise Nappier showed her what public service and history-making leadership could look like.
Andréa Comer brought Sybelle into the room, guided her and kept giving. Once, Comer asked her a question that stayed: Do you have older Black women as friends?
Sybelle had to sit with her answer. She began thinking more intentionally about the village around her: women who had already seen what she was only beginning to encounter and given so much of themselves to make sure she would thrive.
How did receiving scholarships through Greater Hartford Gives influence her decision to start a fund at a community foundation?
Sybelle arrived in Connecticut as a high school freshman without knowing English. A few years later, she entered the University of Saint Joseph, where she earned her undergraduate degree before completing a master’s degree in economics at Northeastern University.
When she began college, two scholarships from the Foundation helped her buy a computer, furnish her dorm, and get her foot in the door. To Sybelle, sometimes the first step was the key. “Without that support at the beginning, catching up becomes exponentially harder,” she said.
The donors who helped her may never know what grew from their decision to give.
That, she says, is part of the beauty. A person can place a gift into another’s life and never see how far it travels.
Do I need the full fund minimum before I start one?
The Foundation’s build-up option allows anyone to establish a fund and work toward the required balance over three years. Contributions and investment earnings accumulate during that period, and the fund becomes active once it reaches its minimum.
Sybelle had started attending Foundation events and giving circle gatherings, even when she could not afford to become a member. She listened. She learned how other people gave. She kept showing up before she believed she belonged.
Then her friend and Donor Experience Officer Ramonita García told her, “You could do this, too.”
With guidance from Greater Hartford Gives, Sybelle began shaping the fund around what mattered most to her.
“I can create an environment where I can bring other people together who have never felt they could be philanthropists,” she said.
How do I choose the right kind of charitable fund?
Sybelle began by identifying why she wanted to give, whom she wanted to honor, and what she hoped another person might receive.
The how and structure depend on the donor’s charitable intentions, desired level of involvement, available assets, timeline and financial or estate plan.
A community foundation can help translate the reason for giving into the structure that can carry your wishes forward and make the impact local. Greater Hartford Gives handles the administration associated with its funds and can work alongside a donor’s financial advisor, attorney or tax professional.
What is an endowed fund?
An endowed fund is intended to support its charitable purpose over time rather than spend the entire gift at once. The assets are invested, and distributions are made according to the Foundation’s policies, so the grantmaking can continue.
For Sybelle, that far goal post was appealing. She wanted to begin something she could keep building throughout her life. Her legacy and purpose.
Can family and friends help build a charitable fund?
For her 30th birthday, Sybelle asked friends and family not to buy her presents. She invited them to contribute to the fund instead.
What might have become one large party or trip became the beginning of a lifelong commitment. She saw gifts arriving from people who believed in her future. The willingness to bring others into the idea became part of how the fund grew.
“I could not have started this new decade of life in a better way,” she says.
What does the fund mean to Sybelle?
Sybelle calls herself a public servant, but service, in her telling, is deeply personal. It is bringing someone into a room built to keep them out. It is advocating for a younger colleague to be in a meeting. It is refusing to let the door close behind you.
She is living, she says, her parents’ wildest dream.
Her advice is simple: “Identify exactly why you want to do it and find the system or the entity that could house that dream.”
Sybelle says, “A tree does not appear one morning fully grown. It begins as a seed.” She decided that 30 was not too young and what she had was not too small. She planted it.
What grows from the fund may look like a laptop on a desk, bed sheets for a dorm room, or a young person, regardless of their ZIP code, who can begin college with one less thing to overcome.
The cool morning in Haiti is gone. But in her giving, Sybelle is practicing the values she was raised with.
If you are wondering whether a charitable fund could be part of your financial, estate or legacy plan, explore the Foundation’s current fund options or invite Greater Hartford Gives into a conversation with you and your professional advisor.
http://greaterhartfordgives.org/give-your-way/
Photography by Keith Claytor, Time Frozen Photography