When love and business collide: One couple’s journey to giving in harmony
Do you and your spouse have a different approach to generosity? If that’s the case, you’re not alone. Roger and Marsha Campbell used their unique callings – and their real estate holdings – to give more than they ever dreamed possible.
Early in their marriage, the Campbells lived on Marsha’s school teacher salary while Roger established a business providing loans to builders. They learned to save their money and sell or donate any excess for charitable giving. From the very start, they made a commitment to give generously, even when their income was meager or unsteady.
Over the years, it became clear that Roger and Marsha approached generosity quite differently. To Marsha, generosity is born in relationships and grown in community. “God puts people in our path who can help and people who need help,” Marsha says.
A friend gave her a coaster that reads, “Everyone is born with a gift that someone is waiting to receive.” That’s how Marsha sees generosity, as a way to draw people with shared interests together to fulfill the immediate needs of others with their time and finances.
Roger sees generosity from a business perspective. With a creative and entrepreneurial spirit, he draws strategically-minded people together to find long-term solutions for those in need. “I believe in the Church community. We need to find a better balance between short-term handouts and empowering people through the dignity of work,” Roger says. “My gift is building business models and outcomes that empower communities to be successful long term.”
Generosity builds a village
Roger and Marsha brought their different approaches to generosity together for the benefit of a charity that Marsha was working with – The Global Orphan Project. Marsha had become aware of the urgent needs and challenges of marginalized women and children in Uganda, and her heart yearned to help. She began to pray, seeking ways to raise money to build a home for one mother and her children. “Roger said I was thinking too small,” Marsha remembers. “He said I needed to gather some mothers in my circle of influence and build a whole village.”
Within a month, Marsha and her friends had the capital to build Father’s House, a village of homes for 100 children. From there, Marsha and The Global Orphan Project invested in a brick-making machine to create a small business for the villagers to build their own homes brick by brick.
Creating a legacy of generosity through real estate
Today, Roger and Marsha own rental properties in and around Kansas City. And Roger realizes that accumulating their profits in a savings account or mutual fund is a stewardship issue. It isn’t theirs to keep. Roger says, “We can’t take it with us. And God doesn’t call us to.”
In 2022, they approached NCF with the desire to donate their income-producing real estate properties to benefit their Giving Fund. Their goal is for those asset gifts to produce ongoing, tax-efficient charitable cash flow to enable them to give more to the organizations they love.
“We want to encourage our kids with our actions,” Marsha says. “We want them to witness this idea that generosity can be both strategic, like their dad, and relational, like their mom. God showers His followers with wonderful gifts that are not for us, but for us to give to others.”
“We are all different parts of God’s body,” Roger says. “I can’t do what God has gifted Marsha with and vice versa. We want our children to know we all have something unique to give.”