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The Impact of One Woman: Rebecca Powers
Her eyes red with grief, Rebecca Powers picked up a People magazine to distract herself during a flight between Sacramento, Calif. and Austin.
What could take her mind off a final visit to her beloved brother, Peter Hancock, who, in 2003, was dying from cancer?
An article in the celebrity magazine told of a Cincinnati woman who was raising serious money for charity by convincing others to donate $1,000 each a year.
“I never imagined that for $1,000, I could make a difference in my community,” Powers says seven years alter, as she plans to hand over day-to-day management of Impact Austin to an interim CEO.
So far, by combining the gifts of women with fairly modest means, the group has given away $2.6 million to 25 Central Texas nonprofits, collecting from members in 53 ZIP codes.
More than 500 women signed up last year - Impact Austin records an impressive 73 percent renewal rate - and Powers hopes to duplicate those membership numbers by the end of the year.
Powers, whose sun-streaked blonde hair and tanned features attest to hours swimming, boating and reading outdoors, could be mistaken for any other Northwest Austin housewife.
And, in fact, Powers, 56, raised two children, Brad, 23, now working on his masters in accounting at Texas Christian University, and Claire, 20, a junior majoring in civil engineering at George Washington University, with husband, retired Vignette marketer Phil Powers.
The Louisville, Ken. native — called “Becky” — grew up outside Peoria, Ill., where her family’s yard backed onto cornfields. Her father worked in marketing for Caterpillar Inc., the tractor maker; her mother stayed at home. She spent a lot of time outdoors as a girl, devising games with other bored neighborhood kids. She also excelled at school.
“I was a pleaser,” she says. “If I got good grades, I had more freedom to do the things I wanted to do. And I really did enjoy the learning.”
For college, she chose the University of Richmond, in part to escape a conventional life back home in the 1970s, but also to be near her grandmother in Norfolk, Virginia. Her mother requested only one thing of the assiduously polite Midwesterner who inherited residual Southern manners from her parents.
“She asked, ‘Would you change your name back to Rebecca? You want to be a doctor, and Dr. Becky doesn’t sound right.’” Powers remembers with a smile.
Not long after that declaration of geographical independence, her parents hauled a younger brother and sister all the way to Melbourne, Australia, where her father had been transferred.
“By default, I had to make decisions,” she says. “I had more independence sooner than I ever expected.”
Meanwhile, older brother Peter, who had been stationed in San Diego while serving in the U.S. Navy, was turning into a Californian.
“He became laid back, didn’t wear socks,” she says. “He was not a hippie, but very casual. Took life a day at time.”
Ironically, the sister who sought her cultural freedom in Richmond moved back to Peoria after graduation and took a job as a sales representative for IBM. That’s where she met husband Phil. Rebecca continued to work in sales until her second child was born.
The couple moved to Austin in 1994. Restless — and wanting to afford some domestic help - Powers became the self-proclaimed “queen of the Pampered Chef,” selling the company’s kitchen tools from her home.
“I loved being available to kids, but I needed more,” she says. Joining parent organizations and a Bible study group weren’t enough.
“It was only in my little neighborhood,” she says. “My sphere of influence was very small.”
Impact Austin blew open that world. After reading the People article, she convinced the wife of her son’s baseball coach while in the stands at a game.
“I was completely uninformed about nonprofits,” she says. “But it was the right thing to do at the right time. The women I met, we weren’t the usual suspects (in fundraising). But we did have business backgrounds. A lot of freedom to try this because we were an unknown quantity.”
At first, Impact Austin wasn’t taken too seriously.
“That was the biggest gift we got” she says. “We didn’t know what we couldn’t do. But we did it.”
Within six months, Powers had drafted 126 members. The group required written applications from nonprofits, initiated reviews, deferred the winnowing process to committees, then gave each member one vote about who got the money. Along the way, she discovered a mentor in Colleen Willoughby, who started Washington Women’s Foundation and serves as godmother to collective giving movement.
“I’m an evangelist,” she says. “I dare people not to do it.”
Why did it work, asks a reporter trying to keep up with Powers’ torrent of words? After an uncustomary pause, she says: “It worked because it feeds my passion. The women who became members could see of themselves: ‘I matter.’”
Brother Peter, whose memory returns to Powers when she hears certain songs, remains her distant inspiration.
“He sits on my shoulder a lot,” she says. “I kinda feel like he’s my partner. It’s almost as if we are closer in death.”
For years, Impact Austin gave out its checks on Peter’s birthday. To a favored member, she annually conferred a “For Pete’s Sake” award, a bowling pin “because he was such an incredible bowler.”
“Each time, we honor a different character trait in brother,” she says. “It has helped me appreciate my brother more now than when he was alive.”
After she steps down as Impact Austin CEO at the end of January, she’ll stay on as the founder to spread the collective giving word to other cities.
“Now I’m figuring out what the next thing,” she says “If I am open to it, it will happen.”
CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this post, Peter Hancock’s last name was wrong.
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