David Rubin: Creating Value For Self and Others

By Sylvia Whitman  |  Photo by Nancy Guth

When David Rubin and his wife, Adie, reached that “amazing place where you have more than you need,” their Buddhist faith—and their accountant—steered them to the Community Foundation of Sarasota County (CFSC). Every year, they parceled out contributions to organizations dear to their hearts—Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, International Relief Fund, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Believers in “think globally and act locally,” they were also learning about the culture in Newtown and helping a small after-school center by paying some utility bills, for instance, and donating a fax machine. Their accountant pointed out that by gathering what they might give piecemeal over several years into a lump sum gift to a donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation, they could maximize both their tax deduction and the impact of their giving.

Hence was born the David, Adrianne and Jordan Rubin Fund at the Community Foundation of Sarasota County.

The Rubins actively mandate disbursements from their fund, recommending grants to qualified 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations—in Sarasota or anywhere in the United States. CFSC doesn’t passively hold the purse, however.

David Rubin heaps praise on the “amazing team” at CFSC. “So responsive, so polite, so accommodating. They jump on things.” The Community Foundation practices at key intersections of goodwill in this area, he says.  “They are everywhere. In a good way.” 

The Community Foundation helped the Rubins deepen their involvement with SOAR (Seeds of Academic Resource), the Newtown K-3 program founded by retired Booker Elementary teacher Jacquelyn Paulk. For years, Paulk was an after-school nomad, moving her tutoring and dropout prevention activities from the Boys and Girls Clubs to the Sarasota Housing Authority and finally to a modest house donated by the Greater Hurst Chapel AME Church. There Paulk and her educator team created an “individualized learning program where student efficiencies are identified, analyzed, and remedied,” says Rubin, a onetime teacher. “It wasn’t just tutoring. It wasn’t just homework. It’s really identifying, where is this student behind? Let’s remedy that, get them back up to reading and above.” With room (930 square feet) for only 32 kids from across the county, SOAR always had a waiting list.

Impressed, the Rubins asked Paulk what else she needed. Her answer: “’A little more space.’”

Not just more but better space. And soon. In 2016 the program closed to begin preparing for a new home. By then the Rubins had partnered with Paulk, community members, and longtime SOAR supporters to envision how this Newtown success story could serve as a “model program for students, teachers, and educators,” says Rubin.

During the early meetings, Rubin reports, “you’d hear another knock on the door.” Parents, hoping to keep their kids on track. “‘Mrs. Paulk, are you open?’” And she’d have to say, “‘No, no, not right now.’”

The exploratory team considered funding, land acquisition, and organization to acheive nonprofit status. “Bringing a strong board together is an art and a science,” notes Rubin. SOAR found its chair in Dr. Louis Robison, a longtime teacher, principal, and administrator in the Manatee County public school system who spent his middle and high school years in Newtown. As other local leaders came on board, a plan emerged for a 3,000-square-foot facility: four classrooms with interactive boards, library, kitchen, a multi-purpose homework/media room with computers—all surrounding a courtyard with an outdoor classroom and play areas. Sweet Sparkman Architects did the design; a local builder, Ernie DuBose II, would oversee the construction.

In addition to time, the Rubins contributed money (from their donor-advised fund, of course). So did many others, from the Scott and Christine Key Education Foundation (Scott’s a SOAR board member) to organizations such as the Sarasota Southside Rotary Club.  Again, the Community Foundation, which had once underwritten a playground for SOAR, enabled other intersections, according to Rubin. “They helped us set up a field-of-interest account” so that the SOAR Learning Center Building Fund could receive donations from other interested supporters.

This spring, SOAR’s new Jacquelyn Paulk Campus will open. A $100,000 grant from the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation will underwrite the first year of expanded operations. Although David Rubin will likely stay on as a SOAR adviser, he says, “We’re looking for the next generation to come and take the baton into the future.”

What’s next for Rubin?

Hiking, traveling, perhaps taking a long trip with Adie. More giving certainly.

“We never really had a master plan,” says Rubin. He still marvels that Lumina Health Products, the wholesale business he and his brother, Mark, launched at midlife in Sarasota, has enabled him to become a philanthropist.

Looking back, Rubin sees much of his past as “a train wreck”—ending a first marriage, being a teacher (“but not a very good one”), failing in business, facing family physical and mental health challenges. He and Adie lost their only child, Jordan, a son born premature who struggled valiantly for 10 days.

“If you navigate those things in the right way, something happens,” Rubin says. He speaks softly, deliberately. “Somehow you stop hoping for smooth sailing. You’re just looking for how to become a good captain.”

How to achieve equanimity? Both Jewish, David and Adie have been practicing Japanese-rooted Nichiren Buddhism for 35 years. In addition to daily chanting at their home altar, they join in peace, culture, and education work through U.N.-affiliated Soka Gakkai International. Soka, Rubin explains, means “value creation—the idea that everything that happens in this world, everything is an opportunity to create value. Every time you hear about another catastrophe, a shooting, a massacre, it’s always followed by ‘How do we create some value from what took place?’”

You choose, Rubin says. Given iron, you can make a weapon or make a plough. “Everything takes form according to what we do with it.” Supporting wildlife defenders or charities such as Smile Train, which repairs cleft palates in children around the world, has been one way for the Rubins to create value from Jordan’s death.

The causes that draw David relate to “a larger concept of health—wellbeing. Which comes so much into how people are connected,” he says. A few years ago, “kind of like Noah, I was getting a message to build an ark. For me, it was, build a family.”

What? he thought. He already had the most supportive family in the world in Adie and Mark. But  Rubin broadened his idea of family beyond wife and brother to include his closest friends (his “adopted family”). “I developed an even deeper respect for the profound value of my life-to-life connections,” he says.

“It’s interesting: there are many people who are only into themselves, but there are just as many people who are into everyone else but themselves. And we can be so compassionate to others and dry their tears and tell them, ‘Hey, you did well enough. You tried. I’m proud of you.’ And we can get so hard on ourselves.”

Rubin says that he wakes up every morning deeply grateful for his comfortable bed, hot shower, car that starts—and his human connections. “Everything’s getting faster and quicker, and now you can do this, stream this, and all you’ve got to do is this. It’s getting further and further from the safety net that life throws out to you that is based not on any of those things. It’s based on sitting comfortably in your own life and enjoying the process, and enjoying the blessing of family and friends.”

“Buddhism,” Rubin says, “has given me what everyone needs: a basic underlying philosophy that guides their life. The good life is contributive and is looking always to create value for self and others.”

For More Information about the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, please visit cfsarasota.org or call 941.955.3000.