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A persistent pacesetter with unrelenting positivity. A volunteer with an unwillingness to let his big dreams slip. A guy whose board sometimes has to temper his herculean ambition.
These are ways colleagues have described Charlie Wills, co-founder of 100 Men of Dane County and broker at Charlie Wills Team – Real Estate Partners in Madison, Wis., who inspired a group of friends to donate $2.3 million in grants to 26 nonprofits in six years.
The group of five “knuckleheads,” as Wills calls his co-founders, created the 100 Men platform to award quarterly $100,000 grants to nonprofit organizations that benefit children in the areas of housing, food, education, mental health and mentoring. Although they had already served on boards for United Way and Big Brothers Big Sisters, they saw an even bigger opportunity to engage more donors and help more people.
“Then based on [our goal of] $100,000, we said, ‘How do we get that number easily?’ We thought: $100,000 by 100 guys equals $1,000 a guy. That’s not a huge ask,” says Wills, who enlisted his network of real estate professionals and people he knows from his days playing basketball at the University of Wisconsin.
“Creating significant impact and monumental change was the only way we wanted to be relevant,” Wills says. “And every [giving] quarter I tell my wife, ‘I feel like I could run through a wall because of the energy, love and gifts given every time.’ It’s unbelievable.”
Keeping It Simple, and Very Effective
Wills began his volunteer mission by helping a friend in crisis. “It started back in 2010 when I was diagnosed with brain cancer, and Charlie, bless his soul, wanted to do something about it, so he started a small golf outing,” explains Jason Guttenberg, another co-founder of 100 Men of Dane County.
“He’s always taking the reins, and when we’re busy professionals being pulled in multiple directions from our businesses and families, he’s always the one … saying, ‘Hey, let’s get this done.’” –Jason Guttenberg, co-founder, 100 Men for Dane County
The golf fundraiser grew—and it helped Wills see broader potential. Wills realized that to create the colossal impact he envisioned, he needed to focus first on who had the deepest need—children—and then award grants greater than what these local charities usually received. This meant forming the cumulative giving group and 501(c)(3) nonprofit, 100 Men, and striving for six-figure donations.
“We can all give money individually, but collective giving is what’s going to push these organizations to a new level, which is why we like that structure” of 100 Men, Guttenberg says. “If we give $100,000, it can change an organization and add additional programming.”
The friends were inspired by a national network of similar clubs called 100 Women Who Care. They streamlined, using Wills’ favorite principle, KISS—“Keep It Simple, Stupid”—to attract the right members while operating on a thin $35,000 annual budget.
Each giving quarter is simple: A transparent, definitive 15-question survey from 30 grant applicants helps the organization to select three finalists, who are invited to submit 2-minute videos. Then, 100 members vote over five days via an online survey to select a winner.
Ripple Effect
One grant winner, Mentoring Positives, is a youth empowerment organization that uses basketball as the hook to children’s programming in what Executive Director Will Green terms “underestimated neighborhoods.” In addition to joining an Amateur Athletic Union basketball team, teens and young adults can participate in discussion groups, gain leadership skills, learn about urban agriculture and find paid work in the organization’s restaurant and food production spaces. Uniquely, kids are the ones responsible for preparing the nonprofit’s salsa and pizzas sold to the public.
Having grown up among young persons who had been incarcerated or adjudicated through the court system, “I wanted to get on the front end of providing mentorship programming for youth in trouble and trying to keep them out of the system,” Green says.
Wills met Green in a basketball tournament and, as a natural connector, Wills encouraged him to apply for a grant. When Mentoring Positives was awarded $90,000 in August 2020, it used the funding for work stipends plus additional staff members and curriculum growth. It also helped the nonprofit expand to a 2,000-square-foot food and restaurant space.
Operation Fresh Start, another 2020 grant winner, mentors teens and young adults through hands-on work experience in construction and conservation jobs while they complete their high school diplomas.
Jody Weyers, OFS’ development director, says the $96,000 grant helped the nonprofit navigate operations during the COVID pandemic and pay stipends to participants. In total, 100 Men has awarded $2.4 million—plus what 100 Men has awarded locally—which is “huge for our community. It provides visibility to organizations you might not know about,” Weyers says.
Wills also remembers an early $80,000 grant supporting an in-school food pantry run by a Holocaust survivor. Their video included a poem from a child who was so hungry he couldn’t think over loud, interrupting stomach grumbles. He said his mother played “Survivor” games with her kids to get through the lack of meals during summer.
“Oh, man, it was the most impactful thing I’ve ever heard a child say about being hungry. There was not a single dry eye, and guys were cutting checks above the original check because they were like, ‘I could not imagine telling my child they’re not eating today,’” Wills says. “This was eight years ago, and I still get emotional because it was a crazy experience to be part of something so beautiful and so big. Everybody there got so into it that we went from 80 [donations] to 115 in two weeks.”
A Big Dreamer
100 Men thrived because Wills spurred real estate industry friends to form something special. And now their future includes mentoring a new women’s group, Women’s Collective of Dane County, which will double quarterly donations, to $200,000. Groups of agents who are REALTORS® in Austin and Nashville are following their lead. They’re also building a young men’s program for 18- to 35-year-old professionals.
“Charlie’s willing to do something positive in his community, and when he wants to do something, he’s all in. He’s dreaming big, which is why we’re here,” Guttenberg says.
Wills is proud that half of 100 Men are connected to real estate. “It’s just the heart of most REALTORS® that they feel connected to their communities and want to do well.”
If you’ve been considering the next step in volunteering, Wills says you shouldn’t fear making a mistake or needing to make adjustments. “Just do it. Just create action. Even if you fail, even if it doesn’t work, just do the action; that’s the best way.”
Charlie Wills is a broker with Charlie Wills Team – Real Estate Partners in Madison, Wis., and co-founder of 100 Men of Dane County (AKA Cure Local).
