Business is hard, but cancer in kids is harder. My Minor & Brown colleagues and I use legal skills to help remove roadblocks to business success. This week, however, we are also taking aim at cancer in kids. I've said it before: good businesses make money, but great businesses build the communities that make good business possible. Since we aspire to be not just great lawyers, but great members of the business community, I am proud, humbled, fired-up (pick an adjective) to continue the Minor & Brown partnership with the Morgan Adams Foundation.
Real partnering with non-profits requires a business to do more than write the occasional check. Engaging employees in business philanthropy is a best practice that resonates with me. When employees have both a voice and a hands-on role in the community building efforts of the business, the non-profit, the business and the employees all benefit. I think our partnership with MAF has paid off since Minor & Brown employees, even former employees, couldn't wait for artma 2012 to come around.
artma began when Morgan Adams, a beautiful six-year-old girl, lost her 11-month battle with a glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor. It is in her honor, and in tribute to all those children who have been through, or are going through a similar battle, that artma has become a gift of love and hope. Through the generous donations of art from local, regional and nationally recognized artists, and the incredible support of community businesses, our event has blossomed.
Minor & Brown employees are part of artma's set-up and take-down teams. We will have folks working the event, and folks attending the event along side guests that we helped recruit. We even hope to add to our collection of artma-purchased art, but we hope to be smarter about it than last time when I realized that my partner Lisa D'Ambrosia and I were bidding against each other for a piece that now hangs in our reception area. What the heck, it's for a great cause, it's for hope.
Here are links to read more about the Morgan Adams Foundation and artma (if you are reading this before February 11, you might be able to grab some tickets on the artma site -- it always sells out), as well as some early posts from this blog about the Minor & Brown connection to artma, including hot glue that connected me, literally, to some of the art that kids from the cancer unit at Children's Hospital Colorado made for sale along side the professional work.
