By Alex Cohen

Moving into a permanent home…

Moving is always stressful but not this time. This time we are celebrating a move into our newly designed space, GIVE Central. It will be located on the Point72 Stamford, CT campus come fall of 2016. This will be a permanent home for the Foundation that will give us the capacity to continue to grow our team and our giving. And we hope GIVE Central will be a valuable resource, and a home away from home, for Point72 employees and the Foundation’s grantee organizations.

For years I had been running the Foundation alone from my home office. Three years ago I decided to hire a Director for the Foundation to help me as it was becoming too much for one person to handle. It just so happened that I hired my very close friend, Jeanne, who I actually met doing charity work over 15 years ago.

I had some reservations about hiring a friend as I was afraid to mix friendship with work. I didn’t want anything to threaten our friendship. The opposite happened: I soon realized that I could not hand over this position to just anyone. It needed to be someone I trusted – this was my baby and I wanted the Director to understand how important it was to me. Jeanne was the perfect choice: she already understood that our Foundation was not just about giving away money, but about building relationships with institutions that do meaningful work.

Once she came on board I explained that I wanted to grow the Foundation and touch even more lives than we had ever touched before. With that came two more hires, first Melanie then Alyssa. Together we have made giving so much easier and even more fun. I decided that I needed to start coming to the office on a regular basis, not only to be present but also to connect with all the employees around us. So we carved out a small space in the west wing at Point72.

Our presence here has made quite an impact, not only for the employees of the Firm but also for our grantees that benefit from all the volunteer opportunities we are able to fulfill. We were pleasantly surprised that so many employees wanted to do “something” charitable and just did not know how to go about it. Since we started working out of the office we have introduced employees to grantees and they have forged their own personal relationships with them. Some have joined boards, run marathons, biked, swam, cooked and even offered their professional service to these organizations.

Every time I drove to the office I would pass the “gatehouse” that sat there empty and quite sad looking and would think to myself, “Wouldn’t that make a great headquarters for the Foundation?” I asked the head of facilities if there was any way we could move in there and he replied, “Why not?” We went inside the building and soon realized that in its present condition it would not work for us.

That’s when we decided to rebuild and start from scratch. We would need an innovative design that would become a beacon of inspiration. It would become GIVE Central. We met with architects and came up with a modern building that will allow us to hire more team GIVErs and to reach so many more people in need. We are building a large conference room for ourselves, employees of Point72 and our grantees to come and use for their meetings. We will offer a beautiful outdoor space, as well, for lunch or just reflection. We encourage all to come and visit us and bring your questions and ideas, or just hang out.

Along with a new home we are launching two very exciting new initiatives. I won’t say much about them now but you can be sure GIVE Central will help us maximize their impact and create a GIVE-ing revolution.