The latest studies on philanthropic giving point out that women are the strongest contributors to charities. What has caused this demographic change?

Airing this Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 12:30 PM on KERA, Channel 13, the McCuistion Program focuses on Women, Wealth and Giving, based on the book by the same name, co- authored by Margaret May Damen and Niki Nicastro McCuistion.

Panelists include:

• Margaret May Damen, CFP, CLU: President of the Institute for Women and Wealth, philanthropic advisor
• Jim Falk, CFRE: President, CEO of the World Affairs Council, Dallas- Ft. Worth
• Becky Sykes: President, CEO of the Dallas Women’s Foundation
• Niki Nicastro McCuistion, CSP: Co-founder and producer of The McCuistion Program, consultant for non-profits internationally

Women, Wealth and Giving, focuses on the combined work of Margaret May Damen and Niki Nicastro McCuistion and their extensive research on Boom generation women and their social and philanthropic activism.  The team talks about the socially conscious Boom generation woman and how she is turning her activism into active compassion.

The September 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review stated, “that women are a bigger market than China and India combined.” Tom Peters, management guru concurs, “Women are the largest national economy on earth. In the United States they constitute 43% of the nation’s top wealth holders and that number is growing.

And as panelist Becky Sykes adds, “they are writing big checks, especially for causes they really care about, women and children’s issues.”

Join us as we talk about the next frontier, philanthropy from a woman’s perspective and why it matters to our society, most especially in today’s economy.

Thank you for joining us as we talk about things that matter… with people who care.

For more information on Women, Wealth and Giving, visit www.WomenWealthandGiving.com.

The January-February issue of Texoma Living! Magazine, featured an article, After more than 500 shows, Dennis McCuistion and Niki Nicastro still do programs about “… things that matter with people who care.”

Below are the first few paragraphs of the article.  Click here for the complete PDF on the McCuistion Program after 500 episodes.

About ten minutes into the program a loud, chirping fire alarm went off in the studio at KERA-TV, Channel 13, and everything came to a halt. There was no fire, just noise. After a minute or two, the alarm stopped, only to start again in a few moments. It was ten minutes before things were sorted out.

There was a benefit in the mishap, however. The guest, a man in a gray suit and baggy brown socks, had been hit with an attack of flop sweat when the red light on the camera blinked on. The perspiration had beaded up on his face, and his forehead was glistening. The interruption gave the makeup woman an opportunity to come on the set and dry him off. Taking off his jacket and complaining loudly about the heat from the studio lights, the guest, who had been thirty minutes late for makeup and was grumpy, decided to finish the show sans coat.

The floor director politely pointed out that when the show aired, it would appear that the jacket had suddenly —magically it would seem to the viewers—disappeared, so the coat went back on. Finally, all was put back in order, the imaginary fire extinguished, or at least the alarm thought so, the guest acclimated to the lights, which weren’t all that hot after all, and the taping started again.

The host, Dennis McCuistion, who has been doing this sort of thing for twenty years and is well schooled in the vagaries of television, was not particularly bothered. He watched the rerun of the tape up to the point the alarm sounded, and when the floor director gave the countdown and the action sign, he looked into the camera and restated the question the guest had been answering. The guest, who was prepared to name names in the collapse of the housing market, soldiered on, and in forty-five minutes or so another McCuistion Program was in the can.