February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
But like countless second-generation Irish-Americans, she had been nurtured on memories of the “almost magical land” that her mother and father had left behind.
“The experience of being there was extraordinarily moving; it was almost overwhelming to her,” recalled Loretta Brennan Glucksman, who’d traveled with her.
Such intense transatlantic emotions have helped the American Ireland Fund raise and dispense $150 million to projects in Ireland since it was founded a generation ago.
However, Brennan Glucksman, who has been chairwoman of the AIF for 15 years, believes that the charitable organization has reached a crucial moment in its history.
It’s a “tough sell,” she said, to convince people to give to a newly prosperous nation, even though there are widening economic gaps between the affluent and the poor.
A Financial Times article this month pointed to these challenges, but added that not only was the AIF regarded as a positive model for Americans of other national backgrounds, it was helping to stimulate the growth of philanthropy within Ireland itself – a country where 500 people now have a net worth of more than