Theresa Loveless: ‘Give like a leader’
Girl Scout CEO supports the United Way
This series of profiles coincides with the campaign season for the former African-American Leadership Giving Initiative at the United Way of Greater St. Louis.
“No one ever left my mother’s house empty-handed,” said Theresa Loveless, chief executive officer of the Girl Scout Council of Greater St. Louis.
Loveless said home and church are where she learned about giving.
“I grew up in a giving family in Southern Arkansas where we learned to tithe and where the spirit of giving was just a part of us,” Loveless said.
It remained a part of her. The mother of one daughter and the soon-to-be grandmother of a granddaughter has devoted her life to philanthropy. Her name is certainly a misnomer because she has given a lot of love. Loveless has spent the past 34 at the Girl Scouts, helping to make sure that thousands of girls become productive women.
“I do what I do because of the end result,” Loveless said. “When a young woman comes back and says, ‘You probably don’t remember me, but I’m now an attorney, or a mother, or a doctor’ because of what they got in Girl Scouts, it just makes you feel good.”
Loveless doesn’t limit her giving to work. She also gives her money and her time.
Loveless is a charter member of the United Way of Greater St. Louis’ Charmaine Chapman Society. The Charmaine Chapman Society recognizes African Americans who give $1,000 or more to the annual fund-raising campaign. Founded in 1994 by St. Louis American publisher Donald M. Suggs, the Charmaine Chapman Society has been heralded nationally as a model program.
Loveless has increased her gift over the years to the Alexis de Tocqueville Society level and has become one of more than 20 African Americans who contribute $10,000 or more to the annual campaign. She increased her giving, she says, as her leadership role grew.
“I believe that if you are going to be a leader, you have to give like a leader,” Loveless said. “And I work with CCS to encourage others to give because I believe in the United Way concept of giving – that we can pool our resources to better help people.”
United Way, Loveless said, has a track record of providing funds across the board to help agencies do what they do best – provide needed community services – and providing the necessary oversight to ensure that the best services possible are reaching people in the community.
“We have the best United Way in the country,” Loveless said. “And I believe we have caring people at both the board and staff levels. They really care about making this a better place to live.
“When people give to United Way or companies contribute to United Way, they have the satisfaction of knowing they are helping to support a very well-rounded community. It takes a lot of components to make up a well-rounded community and that’s what United Way does by its support of so many helping organizations. All anyone has to do is look at the concrete efforts of these agencies.”
Agencies like the Girl Scouts, the agency where her heart has been for the past three decades. The Girl Scout Council of Greater St. Louis, which receives more than a half-million dollars annually from United Way support, is the largest of 315 councils in the United States. It serves one in three girls in the metropolitan St. Louis area. Nationally, Girl Scout programs serve approximately one in nine girls.
Perhaps the local council does so well because the focus is on fun. “First thing you have to look for is to see if they are having fun,” Loveless said. “If they take just one thing from our program, I want it to be fun.”
They usually take a lot more than fun. The Girl Scouts are often their steppingstone to success.
“That’s what United Way helps us to do,” Loveless said.
The United Way funds 200 agencies and organizations that provide vital health and human services to more than one million people each year. Many – American Red Cross, Salvation Army and others – are at the forefront caring for survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The United Way allocates nearly $15.1 million or 33 percent of all funds annually to agencies and organizations that report they predominately serve African Americans, including Annie Malone children’s home, the Jackie Joyner-Kersee club, and Grace Hill Settlement House.
For more information on how you can make a difference through the United Way’s Charmaine Chapman Society, call (314) 539-4116 or PledgeUnitedWay.org.
