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Denver philanthropist aids needy around the world via self-sufficient foundation
Leave a Little Room founded by Cure d'Ars parishioner Donna Auguste
Wayne Laugesen
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Kids in Tanzania and Kenya still die of polio — a disease Americans forgot about shortly after
Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine in 1955. They still suffer from measles, mumps and other
diseases Americans easily avoid.
Jonas Salk fans, meet Donna Auguste — a modest, little-known philanthropist who has
given millions of dollars in personal wealth and countless hours of time and energy to ease the suffering
of those less fortunate than herself. It's all because she's a devout Catholic, doing what Jesus would do.
"My relationship with God makes it clear to me what I'm supposed to do and where
I'm supposed to go, so I just go and do it," said Auguste, a member of Cure d'Ars Catholic Church
in Denver.
The daughter of black Louisiana natives, Auguste's family moved her at infancy to
Berkeley, Calif., where she attended Catholic school through ninth grade before entering a public high
school. Her parents were brought up in Louisiana's Creole culture, which Auguste credits for her
family's unwavering faith in God.
Auguste's call to a life of philanthropy came early in the year 2000. At the time, she was
busy running Freshwater Software — a company she co-founded in Boulder with longtime friend
and colleague John Meier in 1996.
The two had worked together at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., where Auguste
was instrumental in developing the world's first personal digital assistant. In the early 1990s they
worked together in the US West Advanced Technologies Division before deciding to go into business
in order to establish a workplace that valued people and customer service over all else.
"John and I made a decision about the company culture we would create before we had
any idea what our product would be, or what the name of the company would be," Auguste
explained. "We felt that people being important to other people was part of our spirituality and part of
our background."
Five years later, Freshwater Software had 64 employees and was providing crucial
e-commerce quality control software to most of the nation's leading banks and thousands of other
businesses engaged in e-commerce. Auguste's successful corporate life was enviable, but not what
God had in store for the long haul.
"In early 2000, I experienced a calling from God to initiate a global outreach ministry at
my church," Auguste recalled.
She came to find that others in the predominately black Cure d'Ars parish were
experiencing an identical call, so a small group of parishioners began meeting to talk about it.
"We sat together, talked about it, prayed together, and then I went on a fact-finding trip
to four or five communities (in Africa) to find out what we might do to foster a relationship of
sharing and fellowship," Auguste said. "In going and listening and learning I developed a sense of how
that fellowship might work in ways different than I would have known back at home just
brainstorming about it."
Auguste listened to villagers and developed friendships on three separate trips. Her aim
was to determine just what, if anything, she and her fellow parishioners could do to reach out.
"We were looking for sustainable solutions that would not create dependency, but
instead would allow a fellowship of mutual admiration and respect to emerge," Auguste said. "The
people we met had very concrete and specific ideas of what would be useful to them. They did not
need thousands of pounds of rice, for example. What they did need was a vaccine refrigerator."
It was a tall order. The problem with disease in many parts of Africa has nothing to do
with vaccine shortages. The Tanzanian government provides adequate amounts of the same polio
vaccine, for example, that is used to protect American children. But some villages are hundreds of miles
from the nearest electrical outlet, so refrigeration of vaccination drugs has never been an option.
"Without a way to store the vaccine in a refrigerator, the government can't leave any
behind," Auguste said. "So they're there for a day with the vaccine, and then they're gone and that's it
until they show up again the next year."
In Lositete, a small village in northern Tanzania, Auguste looked at the sun and saw the
light. Though Lositete seems light years from the nearest power pole, it's only two degrees south of
the equator. That means lots of sun, all year round.
"We would hook up a solar panel on the roof of the hospital clinic, drop cables down into
the building, hook them up to an array of batteries (to store electricity), then go through to hook up
light fixtures, power outlets and a vaccine refrigerator that's reliable year round. That would vastly
improve the health care that the clinic could offer the Masaai people of that region."
Auguste made her final fact-finding trip in November 2000, and she and her fellow
parishioners had great ideas for a sustainable global outreach that would respect the dignity of participants
in developing countries. There'd be solar panels and refrigeration. Villages without phones would
be outfitted with laptops that would provide e-mail transmission via satellite. In Mexico, small
homes would be built for homeless families.
But how to pay for it all? Parishioners, including Auguste, were generous with donations
and felt called to give all that they could. But it could take millions to accomplish the kind of
support they all knew was needed.
It wasn't out of God's reach, they would soon learn. Six months after her last
fact-finding mission, Auguste found herself in a position to give like never before. Mercury Interactive, a
San Francisco-area high tech firm, offered Auguste and Meier $147 million in cash to buy
Freshwater Software.
Fresh out of Freshwater, Auguste established Leave a Little Room — a foundation "to
facilitate the sharing of gifts with which we have all been uniquely blessed." She procured a
spacious rural home between Denver and Boulder to house the organization. She established an endowment
of $10 million, which would help pay for laptops, satellite access, solar electrical equipment,
vaccine refrigerators, housing construction and lots of trips to Africa and Mexico by volunteers from
Cure d'Ars.
For all of its good works, Leave a Little Room foundation doesn't compete for funds
with Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services or any of the other great Christian charities. It
doesn't compete because the organization doesn't seek donations. Rather, Leave a Little Room raises
money the old fashioned way: it earns it.
"Just as our outreach projects have to be sustainable, we wanted to create a sustainable
model with Leave a Little Room," Auguste said. "We decided to use a business model to share the word
of God and in doing so raise money for our global outreach projects."
At the Leave a Little Room headquarters is a state-of-the-art sound studio, where the
foundation produces and records gospel music for MP-3 downloads that it sells on the Leave a Little
Room Web site. The foundation is negotiating to provide gospel music for major motion
picture soundtracks and plans to provide constructive content for children's video games.
Not all of Leave a Little Room's outreach is global. Locally, Leave a Little Room
established the Winter Coats Project, in which new coats are distributed to the needy after labels that
feature Scripture are sewn inside each garment.
"My focus in whatever I'm doing — whether it's business, ministry or community activity
—
is and always has been on God," Auguste said.
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