We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mike Turner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Mike, thank you so much for joining us and offering your lessons and wisdom for our readers. One of the things we most admire about you is your generosity and so we’d love if you could talk to us about where you think your generosity comes from.
Our son, Owen, was born with a chromosomal abnormality. As a result, he needed an enormous amount of both medical care and medical equipment. Even though we had pretty good private insurance and Owen was covered by Medicaid, he was still denied for coverage over and over again. We had really tough days as a family but we got through with the help of friends, family, and the amazing help of several charities. It took mountains of paperwork and hours of our time just to get the things that we needed for Owen.
After Owen passed, we wanted to give back and we knew there had to be a better way of helping other families in need. We didn’t want others to have to fight as hard as we did or to go through the pain and uncertainty we faced. So we built The Legacy Foundation. Our Legacy Trip takes med students to volunteer at Give Kids the World and work with children on wish trips. Owen’s Outfitters takes donations of medical equipment that families don’t need any more and gets them to people in need for free. We hope that this makes their lives just a little easier and better as they struggle with illness, disability, or injury.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Our nonprofit is The Legacy Foundation. We currently have two main programs:
Owen’s Outfitters is a medical equipment library. Our mission is to provide durable and disposable medical equipment at no charge to those who need it most, sourced through community donations. Essentially, we take donations of almost every kind of medical supply or equipment ranging from diapers and syringes to large items like hospital beds and electric wheelchairs. We then give them away to anyone in need regardless of insurance, income, race, age, sex, or location.
The Legacy Trip is an annual one-week humanitarian trip to Give Kids The World Village in Florida. Medical students work with children who have life-limiting conditions and their families, giving back to the future communities they will serve as physicians. The students get a glimpse into the day-to-day lives of families dealing with life-limiting conditions that provides more understanding and compassion as well as improving their bedside communication.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Compassion – Every day there are people struggling with healthcare needs. They are just trying to care of themselves, their loved ones, or both. They deserve dignity and respect.
Resourcefulness / Creativity – Save healthcare items that were going to be thrown in the landfill and give them to those in need. We have so many places to buy used cars, household goods, clothing, etc… It just makes sense to do them with healthcare as well.
Business Approach – We track everything we do and invest in things like IT, warehouse equipment, and cleaning supplies to make sure our environment is clean and welcoming. That way we can report on details like dollar impact, families served, and tons of equipment saved from landfills.
Nonprofits sometimes feel like they’re the last stop for people. We want it to feel like a place where both the people donating and people using our services feel valuable. If we’re going to lower healthcare costs it means families need to use this equipment. Keeping items out of landfills means both someone donating and someone else using that item instead of buying a new one. Our services extend both ways and we strive to make every person who comes through our door feel good about being here.
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
I would spend it doing exactly what I’m doing now. We’ve been humbled and feel incredibly fortunate that people believe in our mission. Running our own nonprofit means we get the opportunity to just do the right thing every day. Someone needs extra colostomy bags? Done. A homebound person needs a hospital bed delivered? Done. A volunteer wants to learn warehouse skills? Done. If it’s within our abilities to do something we get to do it.
It’s honestly just a ton of fun to get items such as wheelchairs and hear that the family was going to throw it away until they found us. Then we get to give it to someone that needs it and make their lives better. Often, they had no other options and didn’t know what they were going to do. We make people cry, hug, and smile every day and it’s extremely rewarding.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thelegacyfoundationsd.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/owensoutfitters/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TLF.OwensOutfitters/
Image Credits
Owen’s Outfitters
The Legacy Foundation
Mike Turner
Eleanor Turner
