Embracing Generosity in Retirement with Alison Patterson

Welcome Alison. I'm excited to chat with you today. So to start, tell us a little bit about yourself. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to just be here, so I am. Been in the not for profit world for over 25 years, the last 25 years grew up in a small town in southeastern Kentucky. And, you know, through my journey going into college and beyond that, generosity was kind of always just a part of my life. My life. I was working in Washington, DC, right out of college. And I had this moment of clarity where I was like, this is not where I want to be. So I moved to Kansas city, Missouri and got my master's degree in nonprofit development and started working in that. Section of work, and I spent 25 years with small to medium nonprofits, just helping them, you know, as a development officer, asking folks for money doing this. And and so finally, there became a point where I just kept saying, something's not right. This doesn't feel right. authentic, there's got to be a better way. And that's really what I always kind of say, which is, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a way. And so I started looking at the women in particular, but humans that I really admired in the way they were giving. And how they were doing things differently. And so I started Patterson philanthropic advisors in 2019, just before the pandemic to you know, just empower everyday people with the resources that they have, to go out there and create change in the world. That's my story. I love it. I love that you're in that second phase, as we were talking about, that second chapter. So I hope people are inspired even just by that. So your overall approach, talk about philanthropy and financial planning and values. And tell us about your approach and how you work with individuals. So my approach is a little different because most people start with how, how am I going to give? I'm going to give 100 here. I am going to start a donor advice fund. I am going to do this and what strategy will I use to do that? Or I am going to. I'm going to be talking about how to join a board. What, how I like to start with people is really coming up with their why, you know, that full Simon Sinek, what's your why? And creating their own generosity statement, manifesto, whatever that's going to be for them. And really beginning to own that with confidence because generosity really is your superpower, but. You have to understand that within your own self. So first, whenever I start with, with folks Whether we're talking about giving their time, using their voice as a resource using their financial resources, whenever we start, I always start with, okay, let's, let's ground this in a statement. I value community education you know, and start getting people into those nitty gritty moments of these are the things that I value. And this is the way that. I want to today in this moment drive what I have. So I do work with financial advisors and financial planners, especially when we're talking about financial resources, but I try and take a holistic approach to what are the resources that you have. Yeah. And I love that you know, time and Talents and gifts. Besides just money you want to talk a little bit about that before we dive into the money? Absolutely. Well, I even in my own journey, we talked about this is, this is my next and I don't like to call it my retirement. I call it my next. And so I specifically sought out different boards. To serve on and to think about because I have leadership skills that I knew they could utilize and it keeps me relevant. In what's going on in our world. It helps me to connect with different generations. It brings innovative ideas into my world. So, as the world evolves, the most relevant leaders are giving forward. And so in my own retirement, I'm looking at, how am I giving forward? What does that look like in terms of the time that I have to utilize? or even my voice. How do I, how am I using my voice around the things that matter to me? When I work, I work with a lot of folks who are in that trajectory to retirement, in that five year runway. Because I say to them, What does your day look like? What does your day look like? Because I love it if you want to go out and play mahjong and pickleball. But it might also look like once a week, I'm going to go with my husband who's also retired, or I'm going to go here and I am going to volunteer at the food pantry, or I'm going to give my time to this local, I worked with him and she's an attorney. And one of the things that I talked about is I said, well, let's take these five years and test some things to see what you truly love. So she's been working with a, a local gardening collective, because she's really a master gardener. So she goes and they create community gardens all over the city. I've worked with another woman. To join a board because she is an accountant and had specific expertise that this small organization really needed. So that's how I, work with folks who are sort of in those in between spots or in the runway moment of how they, how they're going to give not just their money. Yes. I love that because, you know, I think a lot of us are like, Oh, give. I feel pinched already. And, it's a, it's a very much needed resource for me. So how do I feel? So let's talk about that. Like, how does your approach support individuals, first of all, when they have enough and those who maybe think they don't have enough? How do you work with them as far as the financial part of giving? Yes so, what I try and do is, first of all, say, okay, let's, let's shift the narrative and redefine, what is enough, and what does it mean to sort of, make it, right? Because what if that legacy aspect. What if what if our legacy is not what we earned, but it's what we gave, I try and focus in around their passions. And their purpose and what they actually have, because most of us, unless we get curious, and that's usually just what I'm doing is I'm just getting curious. I'm just asking lots and lots of questions and saying, okay, well, tell me about this. Tell me about that. Tell me about things that you enjoyed in your childhood. Tell me about the things that you do love about your Your profession. What are the things that you really don't want to do? So getting curious in those moments and then helping them build out that, plan in terms of, oh, okay. So let's think about your money. Most of us really aren't. thinking of ourselves as a philanthropist, like Mackenzie Scott, because most of us are no longer itemizing. Right. So, but I have a, I have a little thing that I do with folks and I am like, okay, I want us to do a a brainstorm session. And in two minutes, we're going to write down All of the places that we can remember that we gave money to this last year, let's just write that down or where we gave our time this last year. And, then we go back through and we check off all of those boxes. Then I say, okay, let's revisit that generosity statement. Let's revisit that manifesto. How does that feel like it's in alignment? Because if it isn't, then we can change some things. But then I also try and help people create a loose budget. And again, this is a loose budget of their time. What I love about, a financial planner, a financial coach like yourself you're helping people put their finances in buckets. Well, let's just say that, we've gone through this exercise and we know how much money we're giving in a year. Then can we shift some of that around to have a bucket that is for our statement, have a bucket that is our yes. I always like to make sure that we have that space to say yes to the friend down the street that we want to support the, kid that knocks on your door selling candy bars. Right. And then I try and say, and, it probably relates to you, which is that emergency fund, but I call it an inspiration fund. And so we're actually saying, okay. I wanna be inspired this year, and maybe that looks like handing the, the man on the street $10 or tipping up at the grocery store or at the end of the year. Your favorite organization says We need a little bit more this year. Okay. So now we know we've got space in our budget for that. I love that. That's made me remember one of my earlier clients. She she had found herself divorced after 40 years and was like, I need help just learning to manage my money again. So as I'm working with her again, creating that budget, doing all of those things, she said to me, I love to give to people. money. You know, I just like to hand out money. I said, do you know how much? Well, no, but I'd like to have cash on hand that I can freely hand out. I says, well, then we will put it in your budget. And so, yes, it's like, if that is a passion, just create the avenue for it to really have it. So I love that. So, man, so many things, so many directions I want to go. I want to go back to when you were talking about some small boards and different places of serving. It had me thinking like, Oh yeah. Cause you know, there's only probably a handful of places I think of when I'm like, Oh, I could go and give up my time here or here or here. So can you kind of enlighten listeners to how they can explore maybe smaller avenues places they maybe don't know of and things like that to still give up their talents, because maybe. Maybe they don't want to go and serve food, right? Or maybe, but they want to go give somewhere of their time and they're like, I would rather it be more in line with me. Can you, share some ideas? Well it's interesting that you say that because I had a gentleman just recently, and he said, who in our community is tackling the homeless situation? my wife and I, we're really, we're really, we want to do this. And I said, I love that. Let's dig a little deeper. Cause what do you really mean by that? So again, I'm going to say, let's dig a little deeper. So if you're saying, I see a problem out there in the world. I see the homeless situation how are what are things that are going on in your community that are beginning to tackle that, right? So again, it's, it doesn't have to be the big shelter on the street you know, ask a friend. Honestly, hey do you, where are some shelters that you've heard of? Talk to a lot of it's, I love this part of like what's going on with education right now. A lot of schools because children have to go out, you know, national honor societies. I find a lot of my best and they are giving out hidden gems from other organizations. So our faith community has that piece of it and they are giving all over the community. So I just look and see, I'm like, Oh, wait a minute. They support this, this and this. So just by getting curious in, okay, what's going on in your community, maybe looking toward people that you admire. Ask a friend. I mean, honestly, I think we get a lot of great ideas from friends, but I would also say maybe ask someone who is outside of your circle too. Because again I recently bumped into a friend at the post office and he was telling me about the non for profit that he works with. And they are building homes from these bricks that they're learned, that they've figured out how to do. And they're making affordable housing in an area of town. And I'm like, this is amazing. And. So you know, getting and exploring those kinds of avenues, seeing something in the New York Times. I recently had a client who literally had gone through, made their generosity statement and empowerment was one of their words. They read an article in the New York Times. joined a mailing list, started making small donations to this organization, and this, this person is retired, started making small donations. And this is from last November. So within one year's time this person has gone from making those small donations, did it, did their own research, figured out like the impact that this organization was making, and they're making a five figure gift, financial gift, this year. And again, it's just because they had that grounding and then they got curious and because they had that grounding, they were able to say, I want to learn more about that organization. So I don't know that I gave you answers to like, go to right there in your community. But those are really the best ways to find, you know, just get curious. Yeah. I love that word and love that you keep bringing that up. Get curious, start learning just whatever is got you going, what, you know, so I do really, really enjoy that. All right. So share with us how you work with clients, how somebody could find you and connect with you. Well I work several different ways, so I obviously take on one on one clients and that's when someone feels that they. Want me to do a little bit more of that due diligence for them. So they don't want to go out and dig into the different organizations. So we come up with their generosity statement and then I go out there and I say, Oh, wait a minute. Here are three potential options for you or four potential options for you. We create the budget. We do that. And, and all of these are Are fee based, so I don't take any sort of percentages. I think that's really important for people to know and understand. I do run a generosity sort of boot camp, so three times a year. I do what I've been calling my generosity reset and so in the early part of this year. You'll, we just basically bring a zoom group together and we do this exercise, which is we go through, we create our, our generosity statement together. We, we get the pieces of the budget and then we put our plan together and, and again, what I try and do is then say, okay, then now go talk to your. You know, professional advisor. And then, of course, I have things that you can do this on your own on my website. So you can, you can book some time in with me just to sort of ask me a quick question with an audit, like, I'll audit what you're already doing and say, Hey, maybe you want to think about this or that or the other thing. So we, you can work with that. My website is Patterson dash advisors. com. So P A T T E R S O N dash advisors. com. So that's where you can find me. And my Instagram, which is, I don't do a lot is called let's go give y'all. It's kind of a. It's a nice I, I love, I love just thinking like, let's just go out there and give everybody. So that's, that's why it's named that. So, so that's where you can find me. I like that. Those links will be down in the show notes. So before we wrap up, I have one last question that I think we'll kind of just tie a bow on all of this. And how can giving transform someone's retirement? Well, first of all, it's, it's so much about you. It's not about how it transforms the world so much as how it transforms you. Because when we give boldly, when we do things to build each other up I could go into all of the science around the joy and the purpose that it brings for us. So you know, Knowing and owning that you are an everyday change maker in your retirement is something to walk around with. It's a neat and an important I'm sort of wrapping it around like a coat to wear like that is, you know, that is knowing that I walk around every single day and I'm a change maker because I am generous. So that's what I would say is that's how that transforms your retirement. I love how you were able to bring an angle to retirement that we have not covered yet that I had not even really considered. So I love that. Is there any last few words before we finish? I would just say to really lean into that. That moment that generosity is your superpower, and the more you can look for how to do it each and every day in whatever way, with whatever resource you have, and that's what's going to change our world. And I'm so grateful that there are people like you who are curious about it and who want to talk about it, and I'm grateful for all the people who just want to do that every single day. Great words. Thank you, Alison, for being here. Thank you, Dalene. I just, I'm really, I'm, I'm honored. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. Listeners. We will be back next week with another wonderful interview Welcome Alison. I'm excited to chat with you today. So to start, tell us a little bit about yourself. Thank you so much. I'm so grateful to just be here, so I am. Been in the not for profit world for over 25 years, the last 25 years grew up in a small town in southeastern Kentucky. And, you know, through my journey going into college and beyond that, generosity was kind of always just a part of my life. My life. I was working in Washington, DC, right out of college. And I had this moment of clarity where I was like, this is not where I want to be. So I moved to Kansas city, Missouri and got my master's degree in nonprofit development and started working in that. Section of work, and I spent 25 years with small to medium nonprofits, just helping them, you know, as a development officer, asking folks for money doing this. And and so finally, there became a point where I just kept saying, something's not right. This doesn't feel right. authentic, there's got to be a better way. And that's really what I always kind of say, which is, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a way. And so I started looking at the women in particular, but humans that I really admired in the way they were giving. And how they were doing things differently. And so I started Patterson philanthropic advisors in 2019, just before the pandemic to you know, just empower everyday people with the resources that they have, to go out there and create change in the world. That's my story. I love it. I love that you're in that second phase, as we were talking about, that second chapter. So I hope people are inspired even just by that. So your overall approach, talk about philanthropy and financial planning and values. And tell us about your approach and how you work with individuals. So my approach is a little different because most people start with how, how am I going to give? I'm going to give 100 here. I am going to start a donor advice fund. I am going to do this and what strategy will I use to do that? Or I am going to. I'm going to be talking about how to join a board. What, how I like to start with people is really coming up with their why, you know, that full Simon Sinek, what's your why? And creating their own generosity statement, manifesto, whatever that's going to be for them. And really beginning to own that with confidence because generosity really is your superpower, but. You have to understand that within your own self. So first, whenever I start with, with folks Whether we're talking about giving their time, using their voice as a resource using their financial resources, whenever we start, I always start with, okay, let's, let's ground this in a statement. I value community education you know, and start getting people into those nitty gritty moments of these are the things that I value. And this is the way that. I want to today in this moment drive what I have. So I do work with financial advisors and financial planners, especially when we're talking about financial resources, but I try and take a holistic approach to what are the resources that you have. Yeah. And I love that you know, time and Talents and gifts. Besides just money you want to talk a little bit about that before we dive into the money? Absolutely. Well, I even in my own journey, we talked about this is, this is my next and I don't like to call it my retirement. I call it my next. And so I specifically sought out different boards. To serve on and to think about because I have leadership skills that I knew they could utilize and it keeps me relevant. In what's going on in our world. It helps me to connect with different generations. It brings innovative ideas into my world. So, as the world evolves, the most relevant leaders are giving forward. And so in my own retirement, I'm looking at, how am I giving forward? What does that look like in terms of the time that I have to utilize? or even my voice. How do I, how am I using my voice around the things that matter to me? When I work, I work with a lot of folks who are in that trajectory to retirement, in that five year runway. Because I say to them, What does your day look like? What does your day look like? Because I love it if you want to go out and play mahjong and pickleball. But it might also look like once a week, I'm going to go with my husband who's also retired, or I'm going to go here and I am going to volunteer at the food pantry, or I'm going to give my time to this local, I worked with him and she's an attorney. And one of the things that I talked about is I said, well, let's take these five years and test some things to see what you truly love. So she's been working with a, a local gardening collective, because she's really a master gardener. So she goes and they create community gardens all over the city. I've worked with another woman. To join a board because she is an accountant and had specific expertise that this small organization really needed. So that's how I, work with folks who are sort of in those in between spots or in the runway moment of how they, how they're going to give not just their money. Yes. I love that because, you know, I think a lot of us are like, Oh, give. I feel pinched already. And, it's a, it's a very much needed resource for me. So how do I feel? So let's talk about that. Like, how does your approach support individuals, first of all, when they have enough and those who maybe think they don't have enough? How do you work with them as far as the financial part of giving? Yes so, what I try and do is, first of all, say, okay, let's, let's shift the narrative and redefine, what is enough, and what does it mean to sort of, make it, right? Because what if that legacy aspect. What if what if our legacy is not what we earned, but it's what we gave, I try and focus in around their passions. And their purpose and what they actually have, because most of us, unless we get curious, and that's usually just what I'm doing is I'm just getting curious. I'm just asking lots and lots of questions and saying, okay, well, tell me about this. Tell me about that. Tell me about things that you enjoyed in your childhood. Tell me about the things that you do love about your Your profession. What are the things that you really don't want to do? So getting curious in those moments and then helping them build out that, plan in terms of, oh, okay. So let's think about your money. Most of us really aren't. thinking of ourselves as a philanthropist, like Mackenzie Scott, because most of us are no longer itemizing. Right. So, but I have a, I have a little thing that I do with folks and I am like, okay, I want us to do a a brainstorm session. And in two minutes, we're going to write down All of the places that we can remember that we gave money to this last year, let's just write that down or where we gave our time this last year. And, then we go back through and we check off all of those boxes. Then I say, okay, let's revisit that generosity statement. Let's revisit that manifesto. How does that feel like it's in alignment? Because if it isn't, then we can change some things. But then I also try and help people create a loose budget. And again, this is a loose budget of their time. What I love about, a financial planner, a financial coach like yourself you're helping people put their finances in buckets. Well, let's just say that, we've gone through this exercise and we know how much money we're giving in a year. Then can we shift some of that around to have a bucket that is for our statement, have a bucket that is our yes. I always like to make sure that we have that space to say yes to the friend down the street that we want to support the, kid that knocks on your door selling candy bars. Right. And then I try and say, and, it probably relates to you, which is that emergency fund, but I call it an inspiration fund. And so we're actually saying, okay. I wanna be inspired this year, and maybe that looks like handing the, the man on the street $10 or tipping up at the grocery store or at the end of the year. Your favorite organization says We need a little bit more this year. Okay. So now we know we've got space in our budget for that. I love that. That's made me remember one of my earlier clients. She she had found herself divorced after 40 years and was like, I need help just learning to manage my money again. So as I'm working with her again, creating that budget, doing all of those things, she said to me, I love to give to people. money. You know, I just like to hand out money. I said, do you know how much? Well, no, but I'd like to have cash on hand that I can freely hand out. I says, well, then we will put it in your budget. And so, yes, it's like, if that is a passion, just create the avenue for it to really have it. So I love that. So, man, so many things, so many directions I want to go. I want to go back to when you were talking about some small boards and different places of serving. It had me thinking like, Oh yeah. Cause you know, there's only probably a handful of places I think of when I'm like, Oh, I could go and give up my time here or here or here. So can you kind of enlighten listeners to how they can explore maybe smaller avenues places they maybe don't know of and things like that to still give up their talents, because maybe. Maybe they don't want to go and serve food, right? Or maybe, but they want to go give somewhere of their time and they're like, I would rather it be more in line with me. Can you, share some ideas? Well it's interesting that you say that because I had a gentleman just recently, and he said, who in our community is tackling the homeless situation? my wife and I, we're really, we're really, we want to do this. And I said, I love that. Let's dig a little deeper. Cause what do you really mean by that? So again, I'm going to say, let's dig a little deeper. So if you're saying, I see a problem out there in the world. I see the homeless situation how are what are things that are going on in your community that are beginning to tackle that, right? So again, it's, it doesn't have to be the big shelter on the street you know, ask a friend. Honestly, hey do you, where are some shelters that you've heard of? Talk to a lot of it's, I love this part of like what's going on with education right now. A lot of schools because children have to go out, you know, national honor societies. I find a lot of my best and they are giving out hidden gems from other organizations. So our faith community has that piece of it and they are giving all over the community. So I just look and see, I'm like, Oh, wait a minute. They support this, this and this. So just by getting curious in, okay, what's going on in your community, maybe looking toward people that you admire. Ask a friend. I mean, honestly, I think we get a lot of great ideas from friends, but I would also say maybe ask someone who is outside of your circle too. Because again I recently bumped into a friend at the post office and he was telling me about the non for profit that he works with. And they are building homes from these bricks that they're learned, that they've figured out how to do. And they're making affordable housing in an area of town. And I'm like, this is amazing. And. So you know, getting and exploring those kinds of avenues, seeing something in the New York Times. I recently had a client who literally had gone through, made their generosity statement and empowerment was one of their words. They read an article in the New York Times. joined a mailing list, started making small donations to this organization, and this, this person is retired, started making small donations. And this is from last November. So within one year's time this person has gone from making those small donations, did it, did their own research, figured out like the impact that this organization was making, and they're making a five figure gift, financial gift, this year. And again, it's just because they had that grounding and then they got curious and because they had that grounding, they were able to say, I want to learn more about that organization. So I don't know that I gave you answers to like, go to right there in your community. But those are really the best ways to find, you know, just get curious. Yeah. I love that word and love that you keep bringing that up. Get curious, start learning just whatever is got you going, what, you know, so I do really, really enjoy that. All right. So share with us how you work with clients, how somebody could find you and connect with you. Well I work several different ways, so I obviously take on one on one clients and that's when someone feels that they. Want me to do a little bit more of that due diligence for them. So they don't want to go out and dig into the different organizations. So we come up with their generosity statement and then I go out there and I say, Oh, wait a minute. Here are three potential options for you or four potential options for you. We create the budget. We do that. And, and all of these are Are fee based, so I don't take any sort of percentages. I think that's really important for people to know and understand. I do run a generosity sort of boot camp, so three times a year. I do what I've been calling my generosity reset and so in the early part of this year. You'll, we just basically bring a zoom group together and we do this exercise, which is we go through, we create our, our generosity statement together. We, we get the pieces of the budget and then we put our plan together and, and again, what I try and do is then say, okay, then now go talk to your. You know, professional advisor. And then, of course, I have things that you can do this on your own on my website. So you can, you can book some time in with me just to sort of ask me a quick question with an audit, like, I'll audit what you're already doing and say, Hey, maybe you want to think about this or that or the other thing. So we, you can work with that. My website is Patterson dash advisors. com. So P A T T E R S O N dash advisors. com. So that's where you can find me. And my Instagram, which is, I don't do a lot is called let's go give y'all. It's kind of a. It's a nice I, I love, I love just thinking like, let's just go out there and give everybody. So that's, that's why it's named that. So, so that's where you can find me. I like that. Those links will be down in the show notes. So before we wrap up, I have one last question that I think we'll kind of just tie a bow on all of this. And how can giving transform someone's retirement? Well, first of all, it's, it's so much about you. It's not about how it transforms the world so much as how it transforms you. Because when we give boldly, when we do things to build each other up I could go into all of the science around the joy and the purpose that it brings for us. So you know, Knowing and owning that you are an everyday change maker in your retirement is something to walk around with. It's a neat and an important I'm sort of wrapping it around like a coat to wear like that is, you know, that is knowing that I walk around every single day and I'm a change maker because I am generous. So that's what I would say is that's how that transforms your retirement. I love how you were able to bring an angle to retirement that we have not covered yet that I had not even really considered. So I love that. Is there any last few words before we finish? I would just say to really lean into that. That moment that generosity is your superpower, and the more you can look for how to do it each and every day in whatever way, with whatever resource you have, and that's what's going to change our world. And I'm so grateful that there are people like you who are curious about it and who want to talk about it, and I'm grateful for all the people who just want to do that every single day. Great words. Thank you, Alison, for being here. Thank you, Dalene. I just, I'm really, I'm, I'm honored. So I really appreciate it. Thank you. Listeners. We will be back next week with another wonderful interview