Across the Threshold: Giving Beyond the Check

Editor's Note: The Patterson Foundation (TPF) Fellowship is a 2+ year, salaried, full-time opportunity for graduates of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s advanced degree programs (MA, PhilD, or PhD). Michelle Walker, TPF’s eleventh Fellow, brings over a decade of experience in nonprofit strategy, management, and intellectual capital to the foundation.

Recently, I wrote about gifts we can count: the $16.7 million raised through the Giving Challenge. Counting helps us, as rational thinkers, quantify, track, and analyze the power of collective generosity. Lately, though, I've been thinking about a different kind of gift: those that people give to each other at times of transition, which are just as meaningful, if less publicly visible.

The gifts I’m thinking about are those that Lewis Hyde writes about in The Gift. Threshold gifts are gifts that appear at moments of transition, when someone is literally or figuratively crossing a threshold into something new. We make these gifts all of the time: wedding presents, graduation gifts, food at times of grief, baskets to welcome newcomers. These threshold gifts help orient us to unfamiliar places, roles, stages of life, and communities. They illustrate a simple truth: some of the most meaningful gifts can be named far more easily than they can be measured.

My husband and I relocated to Sarasota, FL, for this Fellowship opportunity and were greeted with so many gifts at a time of many transitions (moving, new apartment, new job, leaving friends and family, finding new community, etc.). People generously shared restaurant recommendations, favorite parks, hidden gems, and local advice. We were greeted with welcome baskets and invitations. Gifts across the threshold are both the symbols and resources we need to make transitions from one stage to another. They defy quantification because even though some gifts were consumable (Matt says thank you for the Moose Munch!), many are not consumable. They’re information in the form of trusted recommendations from trusted new friends and colleagues about where to eat and what to experience in our next two years here. As we work our way through the list of suggestions, Matt and I are building memories and connections made easier through uncountable gifts given at our threshold.

The same thing has happened professionally. My new colleagues have shared context, history, introductions, and perspective that could never be captured fully in an onboarding manual. They have explained not only what we do, but why we do it that way. Those conversations haven't simply transferred information; they have helped me make better decisions, ask better questions, and contribute more quickly than I could have on my own.

Before joining The Patterson Foundation, I understood the phrase giving beyond the check as contributing expertise, relationships, and time alongside financial resources. I still believe that's true. But I'm beginning to recognize another dimension: sometimes giving beyond the check means helping someone cross a threshold. It looks like offering context that saves months of trial and error, making an introduction at exactly the right moment, or sharing local knowledge that transforms an unfamiliar place into one that begins to feel like home. These gifts are difficult to measure, but they often shape what comes next in ways money alone cannot.

As I continue learning what giving beyond the check means in practice, I hope to become more intentional about offering these threshold gifts to others. After all, every one of us is regularly crossing into something new. One of the most generous things we can do is help make someone else's next threshold a little easier to cross.