A powerhouse mother-daughter duo of support for RESULTS

On Mother’s Day — and every day — we celebrate the dedication, ingenuity, and resilience of parents around the world. Consider making a gift to RESULTS in honor of your mother and caregivers today.  

Casey Gardiner steps up for her mother, and, of course, RESULTS’ mission to end poverty.  

Her mother, Nancy Gardiner, steps up because, she says, “As RESULTS volunteers, we are part of a team: RESULTS’ staff support us through their education and research, and then we raise our voices to influence policies that can save lives.”       

Nancy and Casey are stepping up not only through their actions, but through their donations and by inspiring others to give, too.  

Having an impact on “big, big” issues 

Nancy learned about RESULTS in 2010, when she was looking for a way to act in solidarity with parents around the world. She attended a presentation about RESULTS, where she learned about a global poverty issue and wrote to her senators then and there. 

“I thought, this is a group that knows what they are doing,” she remembers. Soon after she helped to start a RESULTS chapter in Connecticut, where she lives. With RESULTS training, she started building a relationship with her member of Congress, successfully persuading him to support anti-poverty efforts he had been opposed to, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.   

“I had never done anything like this before,” Nancy says. RESULTS works on “big, big issues that you can’t imagine you could have an impact on, but you really can. It’s very inspiring and very empowering.” 

Nancy and her group also held a friends and family fundraiser their first year and have done an online fundraiser every year since. One of her most faithful donors: her daughter, Casey.  

A family affair 

“I learned more about global poverty because my mom is part of RESULTS, and she’s brought us all into it,” says Casey. “So, of course I give, because she’s really important to me, and she has helped make this mission really important to me, too.” Casey also notes that her younger sister, Jill, has also been a donor and a volunteer, going to the International Conference and meeting with congressional offices as a teenager. “It’s really a family affair,” she says. (That’s Nancy, Casey, and Jill at another “family affair” in the photo above.) 

What Casey especially loves about RESULTS is our emphasis on people power: “It’s not only through important bipartisan work that is really well researched, but it’s work conducted through citizens and normal people. It’s not just people doing full-time jobs in lobbying, it’s not just major donors. The work with RESULTS is accessible: all of us can take our actions, use the talking points that RESULTS gives us, call our members of Congress, and then give at whatever level is right for you. And all of that really adds up.” 

When Nancy launched the Connecticut RESULTS chapter, Casey was a college student. She took RESULTS’ advocacy actions when Nancy asked, and she made a small donation to RESULTS when Nancy’s chapter had a fundraiser. Over time, Casey has scaled up her donations as her ability to give has increased.  

She’s now worked for two employers that offer matching gift programs and, with those matches, has taken her support — and the chapter’s fundraising success — to another level. For a recent fundraiser, she made a generous commitment to the group: if they raised $4,000, she and her employer would contribute $2,000 each to match. The group encouraged people to give at whatever level was right for them and it quickly added up. Thanks to Casey’s double match and other donors, they raised more than $16,000 in just three days.  

As a psychologist, Casey believes we humans don’t pay enough attention to how good we feel when we do things that help other people. Each year on her birthday, she makes donations to organizations she cares about like RESULTS, because “giving to others is also a birthday gift for me.”  

Casey says, “Everybody wants to end poverty, and RESULTS does it in such a powerful evidence-based way that it both resonates with and empowers people from all walks of life. In a polarized world, there’s so much that is cause-related that feels politicized. RESULTS transcends that: we all share this goal and we’re going to do the work together.” 

Friends & family fundraisers are a great way to raise money, strengthen your group, and spread the word about our work to end poverty. You can use our online platform to create a fundraising page to celebrate special occasions, commemorate milestones, honor loved ones, and other creative ideas.