To buy EmpowerEd tickets or become a table sponsor, visit leadersgives.org/events. You can also learn more about the Leaders Education Foundation at leadersgives.org. EmpowerEd: An Evening with Dr. John Delony is presented by West Tennessee Healthcare.
The Pocket Change Podcast is presented by Leaders Credit Union. To learn more about Leaders, visit leaderscu.com.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
We've actually given over half a million dollars since we started. Our main focus is to give back to the community and give back to educational programs throughout the community and not just here, but all over West Tennessee.
Shea:
Hey, this is Shea.
Carrie:
And this is Carrie.
Shea:
Welcome to the Pocket Change Podcast.
Carrie:
Where you'll learn better ways to spend, save and invest and take control of your financial journey. Okay, so, Shea, I have good news. Yes. Have you heard who's coming to Jackson this August?
Shea:
I have heard, but tell our listeners because they’re going to be excited.
Carrie:
Okay.
Carrie:
So Doctor John Delony is coming, and I personally am a fan. Have you ever listened to his podcast?
Shea:
Yeah, I've heard some of his podcast episodes. He's great.
Carrie:
He is great. So we're excited to talk about why he's coming to Jackson and how others can come and see him.
Shea:
Yeah, so they can come and hear him speak. As a keynote speaker of an inaugural event that's going to be honoring educators in our community.
Carrie:
Yep. That's right. Let's get into it. We're excited to welcome our guest, Leigh Anne Bentley, president of the Leaders Education Foundation. Welcome to Pocket Change.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Carrie:
We are too. So to kick things off, we hear there's a big event coming to Jackson soon. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Leigh Anne Bentley:
We're very excited about having our inaugural fundraiser for the foundation. It's called EmpowerEd an Evening with Dr. John Delony, presented by West Tennessee Healthcare. It's going to be on August 14th at the Carl Perkins Civic Center here in Jackson, Tennessee. EmpowerEd is kind of standing for “empowering education.” So if you kind of see it spelled funky, that's kind of the reasoning behind that. But we're very excited about having it coming to Jackson, and it's our very first fundraising event we’re having for the foundation.
Shea:
Yeah. So the inaugural event, that's very exciting to kick that off. EmpowerEd like “Ed” for “Edu”, like you said. And before we dive more into the event, tell us more about Leaders Education Foundation and its mission.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
We have three primary impact areas we focus on when giving back to the community. Scholarships for students, teacher grants or educator grants, and then program support. We're very excited about the foundation, and we actually started in 2019. And so, it was a great time to start going into 2020 or right before 2020, but we have not let that slow us down. We've actually given over half a million since we started.
Carrie and Shea:
Wow.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
We do that in kind of three ways. We our main focus is to give back to the community and give back to educational programs throughout the community. And not just here, but all over West Tennessee.
Shea:
Education focused.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
River to river. Border to border. We’re very proud to be able to do that all throughout West Tennessee. But we do that three different ways. So kind of our first way we try to give back is through scholarships. So we have collegiate scholarships that we give away every spring. And so it's very exciting to go into four year universities, people who are graduating seniors, then we've actually broken down and have workforce readiness scholarships. That's actually brought to us by Dixie, one of our partners. So they've been a great partner with us, allowing us to double the number of workforce scholarships we can give annually. So three times a year we give out workforce scholarships, and those are people to attend community colleges TCAT, technical schools throughout West Tennessee. So that's very exciting. We give over $30,000 a year with that. And so, the second venture, we kind of go into our leads grants or our educator grants as we kind of call them. So with that, we do that every fall. There are kind of three categories of those.
Shea:
So like a trend here, three categories… all these categories.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
There are three areas. There's different categories. So we do classroom grants. Classroom grants, teachers can submit and give how they would spend $1,000 in their classroom. We do professional development for teachers who want to apply for ways to continue to grow their education themselves. And then we also do teacher appreciation because isn’t that what we are really are here about, we want to thank the ones who are here.
Shea:
More than just one time a year...
Leigh Anne Bentley:
More than just one time a year… not just Teacher appreciation week, but let them kind of find other ways to say thank you. We want to give back to them. So those are the two areas that we handle in-house. And so then there are so many organizations throughout West Tennessee that do great work. I mean, so what can we do to further enhance education without us doing everything ourselves? Why not partner with their organizations and let's support them? Let them do bigger and better things. Support them financially and then through volunteerism when possible. So we do that through program support,
Shea:
Right.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Just some of the programs we support locally, throughout West Tennessee, like the Read Team or the Wow Wagon. We support West Teach through UT Martin. We support, educational programs through the chambers. You know, at the Jackson Chamber here. And so Imagination Library is a big one, right? And so there's quite a few that already doing great things. And if we can help them further enhance their mission and their goals, we're glad to be a part of it.
Shea:
Yeah, I think a lot of these groups that the foundation supports are already serving multiple counties, like Imagination Library, that's in every county. United Way, serving, you know, several counties with their Wow Wagon, bringing books to children. So ways that the foundation spreads that to all these different areas is really, really great. And so we talked a little bit about the foundation, but what can people expect from the EmpowerEd event in August?
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Well, it's going to be a great evening. And I really encourage people to join us that evening. Our keynote speaker, as I mentioned earlier, is John Delony. So he's going to be a keynote speaker, even do questions and answers at the end. So I think that'll be interesting to kind of have kind of a live podcast. You can ask him questions. We are also going to have some more surprises throughout the evening. Little entertainment things, but we're most excited about is giving awards back to and honoring five educators throughout West Tennessee. And so we'll be doing this in different areas, different kind of three different buckets...
Shea:
Another three categories.
Carrie:
Let's keep it simple.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
So and so one being administrative, we're looking at people who are in leadership roles so that with their school system. It could be a school board member. It could be someone else, the principal, vice principals. And then we have volunteer. Obviously, there are a lot of organizations of support that support education, either within the schools or externally. And then also, three tiers of, you know, educators themselves. And so if they're in the school, maybe K through 12, either collegiate scholarship, or collegiate aspect, or someone who is working within the school system in another capacity.
Shea:
Yeah. That's great. So I mean, I love how it's honoring all the different areas within the school system, you know, K-12 and collegiate and workforce level, but also support individuals like, you know, guidance counselor or a librarian or someone. And also, you know, non-paid volunteers. There's a lot of that within the school system that people are tutoring and supporting education. So I'm glad to see that it's all encompassing.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Absolutely. We actually had a whole committee who kind of put together, since this is our first year, a lot criteria and curriculum and different things to look for… and then for about a month and a half, you know, went out and tried to find these people, looked at applications, requested people to submit. So I think we had over 50 something applications come in, which is amazing.
Shea and Carrie:
Yeah.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
And it just goes to show you how much support is given to educators in our area. And they had the hard job of selecting it. So and so, we're excited that we have our selection. We're going to be honoring them. And so you can follow us on our socials or our website to kind of follow them and see, all the different ones that we are honoring and that can be found at leadersgives.org.
Shea:
Yes. Thank you.
Carrie:
Well that's all very exciting. But let's talk about this guest. That is a very special guest that we're having to, you know, headline the event. So what made John Delony the right person for the job?
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Well, first of all, I've been a fan for a long time. But it wasn't just me. We had our board discussed it. You know, different volunteers. We had conversations, but he seemed to be a natural fit. And so a natural fit because he's been in education. He worked at colleges, he's in counseling, you know, he actually is also tied with financials. And so, and we were actually our founding sponsor Leaders Credit Union is obviously a financial institution. So pulling all of those together, we thought, what a better person to bring in somebody here who has that eclectic mix. People who may not know as much about him, he's a Dave Ramsey personality, and so he's on his show. He has his own radio show called The John Delony Show. He has his own podcast. He has a bestselling author, New York Times bestselling author, written several books. Yeah. And so, he's just a, you know, very interesting, very unique. I've listened to him for years. We've had great feedback when we were talking to the community about bringing him here. So if you haven't been listening to him… I encourage you, go find him on YouTube, go find him, on socials and start following him because he's fascinating.
Carrie:
I agree, I follow him and I love his reels and, his posts. And I'm excited. I'm a fan myself, so I'm excited to hear him speak.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Well we look forward to meeting him and hearing him live and letting him answer a couple questions for us.
Shea:
I think, you know, after you listen to this podcast… then you can listen to Dr. John Delony on his podcast.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Of course, of course. Priorities right?
Shea:
He focuses on education and mental health. And that's, you know, we want to be supportive of educators in our community. So I think, like you said, a great fit for the event, for him being our keynote speaker.
Shea:
So if someone wants to attend EmpowerEd, to support the foundation, how can they do that?
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Well, we have sponsorships available. We also have ticket sales for the balcony, but if you're interested in purchasing a table or even being a sponsor. You can go to leadersgives.org/events or just go our website and you can find the link to it there.
Shea:
Yeah.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
And so table sponsorships are still available. Balcony tickets are available. So you can actually buy at the balcony as well. We’re just really looking forward to bringing people here, bringing people together to hear a great speaker to honor some great people and to spread a great message about what we're doing in the West Tennessee community.
Shea:
That's great. So visit leadersgives.org/events and you can find all the details, purchase tickets, look up sponsorships all that.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Absolutely. We love that. Great to be a part of our evening.
Carrie:
Okay so let's talk about impact. Where do the funds raised from this event go and how has the foundation made a difference so far?
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Great question. And so I mentioned earlier kind of our three areas of focus. But it also takes more than just us. You know, in addition to the fundraiser that we're having here, we've got great corporate sponsors like our EmpowerEd event is actually sponsored by West Tennessee Healthcare as part of our presenting sponsor. Other sponsors are coming on board with us, to be a sponsor on table levels, at different educational levels. And then we also have sponsors throughout our year. We have corporate sponsors that, you know, provide us funding, in the membership. We actually are a membership organization. I might not have mentioned that.
Shea:
Yes.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
And so the great thing about joining the Foundation is the one time $10 membership fee. You're never asked anything else after that. And so, but with that membership fee we give access to emailing you about information on when our grants are open and when our scholarships are open. Since we are a 501 c3 charitable organization, everything is tax deductible that you give to us. Anything given over $50 to us can be given in honor of or memory of a loved one. And so the funds that we raise through membership fees, through donations, and then through sponsorships are given to the teacher grants we talked about, or given to scholarships, you know, through the collegiate side or workforce readiness. They're given to programs to help support West Tennessee. So United Way is a great partner of ours. The school system is a great partner of ours. And so everything that we kind of do is giving back. We actually are all volunteer based. None of our employees are paid. They're all volunteers. Our board of directors are volunteers. And so I think our policy currently states that, about 95% of what comes in is to be spent back in the community. And so, we have 5% reserve for, you know, websites or whatever we had to do to kind of maintain the organization. But all the funds and all the money raised goes to program support and goes back to the community. It does not go towards salary. It does not go towards, anything but supporting our educational endeavors.
Shea:
So people can feel good about that $0.95 of their dollar goes back to supporting educational initiatives in the community. And you know, a lot of that's unique. And I think that's really exciting that people can support something so fully.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
We're proud of that. And so because that's our whole mission is to give back, you know, we say, you know, “give forward.” And so if the people who are giving to us, we're passing along to other people, and the money that we raise through our efforts, goes back to the community, just what we said.
Shea:
To say how much has the foundation given out since its inception, or roughly.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
We've given up over $500,000 since we started, and every year increases. I think last year was closer to about $150,000. So our first year is less you obviously less than $100,000. And we're kind of working our way to give more and more year after year.
Shea:
Yeah that's fantastic. We're excited about the EmpowerEd event coming up August 14th at the Carl Perkins Civic Center in Jackson, Tennessee. Visit leadersgives.org/events. We want to get that out there. Make sure people know. But since this is a financial related podcast, Leigh Anne, what is some of the best financial advice you've ever been given?
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Well, ironically, I was sent to the Dave Ramsey program back when I was in college, so my parents have always been very adamant about, you know, taking care of finances, being financially sound, being financially savvy. And so they always just kind of instilled in me to, you know, make sure if you're planning for something, you know, and you want something. Plan for it. Sometimes it's great to wait, you know, in order to save up. And so really, I guess my biggest advice is know what you want. It's okay to buy, you know, sporadically in some cases. But the best case scenario is know what you want. So you're not just throwing money where it's not necessary and you have a plan for your money and can plan moving forward.
Carrie:
That’s great advice.
Shea:
And I think even Dave Ramsey has a suggestion about, you know, the 24 hour rule or waiting a certain amount of hours before you buy something big. To see if you really want it. So that's good advice to think about that.
Carrie:
Okay, so I have one last question for you. Since this is the Pocket Change podcast, if you were to find some extra change in your pocket, what would you spend it on?
Leigh Anne Bentley:
I think I've been asked this before and I have a terrible sweet tooth. And so. And I do love ice cream, so my guilty pleasure is probably a little ice cream, little blizzard. Little Dairy Queen. You know any kind of ice cream concoctions.
Shea:
Great, put it upside down and won't fall out.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Right. That works for me. It works for me. It’s one of my favorites.
Carrie:
Sound good. Well thanks so much Leigh Anne for joining us today and sharing a little bit about the EmpowerEd event coming up.
Leigh Anne Bentley:
Well, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.