Durham Cares is spot on for Durham. An organization whose mission is promoting “a heart to help those in need” not only propels us forward toward a more hopeful future for our city; it also takes us back to the city’s beginnings and the amazing story of Durham. In a way, Durham Cares beckons us to “Become What We Are”-a city of philanthropists.

My name is Chip Denton and I’ve lived in Durham for eight years now. I travelled a great distance to get here, all the way across the Great Blue Divide, from Chapel Hill, but I attended Duke back in the 80s so this felt like coming home.

Over the last fourteen years, I’ve been involved with the founding of a new independent Christian school called Trinity, down at the end of Pickett Road, just at the boundary line between Durham and Orange Counties. We love being in Durham, and we are hopeful about Durham’s future. This past summer I thought that hopefulness might be better informed if I learned a bit more about Durham’s past, and so I read Duke History Prof Robert Durden’s The Dukes of Durham: 1865-1929.

The story of the Dukes and Durham is a story of philanthropy, generosity, habits of giving and serving, and small beginnings which grow into big stories. If we trace the amazing story of the Duke Endowment backwards, we find that James B. Duke’s phenomenal gift was inspired, at least in part, by his brother Ben’s steady and faithful giving to Trinity College, which started with a $1000 gift to a nearly bankrupt institution in 1887; both brothers learned the habit of giving from their father, Washington Duke, whose “tithe accounts” trace his giving back to the days before the family moved to Durham; and those habits of generosity were taught and instilled by the Methodist Church, to which the Dukes belonged. I’d say the Dukes are Exhibit A for Methodism’s founder, John Wesley’s famous dictum: “Gain all you can; Save all you can; Give all you can.” And this in the days before income taxes and the charitable deduction.

Durham Cares is spot on for Durham because it brings us back to these philanthropic roots and impulses. It challenges us to expand our generosity, invest in projects which benefit the common good, invest in small ways that may grow far beyond what we could imagine. And, perhaps most importantly, the mainspring of this giving is the Gospel truth which the Dukes learned in their Methodist pews: The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it; and it is better to give than to receive.

So here’s to a new wave of philanthropy, inspired by an old motive, all for a city with a great past and a promising future.