Interview with Sophie Zdatny
raise funds from the business community
and the general public. If you have clients
or non-lawyer friends that are interested in
social justice issues and would be interested in learning more about the Foundation
and its grantees and donating to the Access to Justice Campaign, let us know and
then work with us to reach out to those
potential donors and, if successful, thank
them for their donations.
BP: Okay. Great ideas. I think your message here is really clear that we need to
go outside the bar to sustain even the current levels of services that you are able to
provide.
SZ: Lawyers are surprisingly bad at selfpromotion when it comes to their support for access to justice. It is important
to let the wider community know all that
we, as lawyers, do to help the less fortunate whether through our own advocacy on their behalf or through our financial
support for those who provide legal services. We have the opportunity to reach out
to the business community and the general public and educate them about all the
good things lawyers do. As you say, I don’t
think lawyers alone are going to be able to
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pick up the slack and fill the gap here so
we need to reach out beyond the bar. The
business community is going to be reassured and more willing to invest in access
to justice if they understand that Vermont’s
lawyers are committed to it and if lawyers
stand behind those efforts and support
those efforts.
BP: Good point. Since you have talked
about the Access to Justice Campaign, before we close I want to thank the five big
donors, including your firm, Dinse, Knapp
& McAndrew, Downs Rachlin Martin, Langrock Sperry, Primmer Piper, and Vermont
Attorneys Title. Between them, they have
been donated $50,000 a year, maybe even
more than that, over the last five or six
years. It’s been a huge part of the fellowship fundraising. Also, this year, we had
more lawyers donate than in past years,
and many donated more than one billable
hour. Those who could not donate a billable hour this year were encouraged to
do what they could because every dollar
helps.
SZ: We had a matching grant of $7,500
this year from Vermont Attorneys Title,
which was very helpful in bringing in new
THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • SUMMER 2014
donors, so a big thank you to them for that
as well.
BP: Anything else that you want to add
to this?
SZ: Let me just touch briefly on the grant
we recently received from the Vermont Supreme Court. The Supreme Court was interested in having the VBF take the next
step to expand its fundraising efforts. Given the decrease in IOLTA revenues and the
increased need for civil legal services, the
Foundation had in recent years been distributing as much of its revenue to its grantees as possible and, beyond the volunteer
hours of its board and committee members, had not invested in fundraising. The
grant money we have received will help
us take that next step and reach out to a
wider audience and seek financial support
from beyond the bar, as well as enable us
to explore other potential revenue sources.
BP: Great. Sophie, thank you. I think this
was really helpful.
www.vtbar.org