Chapter 36 - The Sterling Foundation Challenge
Three years later, Meredith House operated twenty-two campuses.
That should have satisfied me.
It did not.
“There are waiting lists,” I told Julian.
We were eating breakfast.
“Of course there are.”
“Forty-eight thousand children nationally need emergency legal advocacy each year.”
“Meredith.”
“We could scale.”
He lowered his newspaper.
That was always dangerous.
“We?”
“Yes.”
“You already run one of the largest youth legal networks in the country.”
“And you have infrastructure experience.”
He stared.
“Are you recruiting me?”
“Yes.”
“For your nonprofit?”
“Yes.”
“I used to negotiate aerospace contracts.”
“Congratulations.”
“I advised governments.”
“Wonderful.”
“I managed seventy thousand employees.”
“You’ll be excellent at donor spreadsheets.”
He laughed so hard Eleanor came running.
“What?”
“Your mother is bullying me into nonprofit work.”
Eleanor nodded seriously.
“She does that.”
Traitor.
Six months later, we launched the Sterling Foundation Challenge.
For every private dollar donated to qualifying youth advocacy centers, Vanguard and our family foundation matched it.
Up to two hundred million dollars.
The response was enormous.
Corporations joined.
Athletes.
Actors.
Teachers.
Small businesses.
Former Meredith House clients.
Within eighteen months, the challenge raised more than six hundred million dollars.
One morning, Allison entered my office holding a letter.
“You need to read this.”
It came from a young woman in Ohio.
She had been removed from an abusive home at fifteen through a program funded by the challenge.
Now twenty-one, she had been accepted to law school.
Her final line read:
I want to become the lawyer I needed when I was fifteen.
I sat silently.
Allison sat across from me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good crying?”
“Yes.”
She handed me tissues.
“You're getting soft.”
“Leave.”
She grinned.
Our relationship had become easy in ways I never imagined.
She and Daniel had a son.
Leo.
Eleanor adored him.
Patricia became the irritating grandmother who bought educational toys nobody requested.
Robert volunteered at Meredith House twice a week.
Always supervised around finances.
That was my rule.
He found it hilarious.
“Still don't trust me?”
“With children? More.”
“With money?”
“Absolutely not.”
Fair.
May you like
Life became beautifully ordinary.
Until one afternoon when Julian collapsed during a board meeting.
