Source: IndyStar.com

Karen Pence has no plans to sit still nearly four years after leaving Washington, D.C., with husband and former Vice President Mike Pence. Her next project, focused on service, draws from her time as Indiana’s first lady.

Pence launched the Hummingbird Charitable Foundation this past fall, an effort entirely focused on financially supporting charities that make a difference in Indiana. Pence said she specifically focused Hummingbird’s efforts on Indiana organizations because the Hoosier State is her family’s home. There are many “wonderful, wonderful” groups trying to make a difference across the state, she told IndyStar.

The project is designed after the Indiana First Lady’s Charitable Foundation, which Pence founded in November 2013, when Mike Pence was governor of the Hoosier State. The group held annual luncheons to raise money for organizations across Indiana’s 92 counties, raising $600,000 over its four active years.

The Hummingbird Charitable Foundation will operate in a similar fashion, with the first fundraising luncheon scheduled in March. Proceeds for the first year will support three Indiana nonprofits with missions centered around Hoosier veterans.

The former second lady and her husband returned to Indiana in 2021 following President Joe Biden’s election and the end of the Trump-Pence administration. It capped off a whirlwind two decades for the Pence family, which took them from Congress to the Indiana governor’s mansion to the U.S. Naval Observatory, where vice presidents and their families live.  

Pence spoke with IndyStar in November about her new foundation, what she hopes to accomplish and what it means for her family to live in the Hoosier State again.

This interview is edited for length and clarity. 

Tell me about what inspired the Hummingbird Charitable Foundation.

Karen Pence: When we left office, there was no doubt in our mind that we wanted to come home to Indiana. It’s home, and this is just where we wanted to be. One of the things that I did after we came back is I wrote a book. It’s called, “When it’s your turn to serve: Experiencing God’s grace in his calling for your life.” It’s not a biography of myself. I didn’t want to tell my life story, but I wanted to tell about some of the experiences that I had as a congressional spouse and first lady of Indiana and second lady of the United States. I wanted to, more than anything, encourage the reader to be willing to take that step and serve if they felt that calling and talk about how, even though sometimes it was intimidating to me, God gave me the grace to wear that mantle.

When I was first lady of Indiana, I started a charitable foundation called the Indiana First Lady’s Charitable Foundation, and we had one huge luncheon every spring. It’s the only event that we did to raise money, and then we gave money out to charities in all 92 counties. We had a board that reviewed applications, and we gave grants, and then we would have the recipients come to the governor’s residence and receive an oversized check. We would give them a press release to take back to their community. It was a wonderful way to celebrate so many of the wonderful charities and nonprofits in Indiana.

Why did you want to focus this work on Indiana organizations?

Pence: I talked about this idea to a couple of people, and some of them said, “Oh my gosh, you have such a great Rolodex for the whole country. I mean, you could really do something huge.” And I really didn’t want to do a big national foundation. I really just wanted to keep it in Indiana. We have a lot of wonderful, wonderful nonprofits and charities in Indiana.

The board started researching all kinds of different nonprofits and charities. The whole gamut from homelessness and food insecurity and literacy. There’s everything from toddlers, teeth, health. I mean, there’s so many organizations out there. And we actually got very excited, because we thought it’s pretty neat to look at your state and your community and to say there’s so many great things going on. It’s going to be hard for us to narrow it down. So we decided to pick a theme, and the theme will change every year. 

What organizations Hummingbird will support in its first year? 

Pence: We chose three organizations, and they all center around the theme of our veterans. The first one is Indy Honor Flight. Most people know about Indy Honor Flight; it’s a wonderful way to pay honor to our veterans who have served and who are aging now. Their goal is to get the most senior veterans to go to D.C. and see these memorials that were built for them. And it’s just such a beautiful, beautiful thing.

The next one we decided to support and draw attention to is INvets. They help former service members and their families transition to civilian life with an emphasis not only on job placement, but on happiness and success for veterans and their families as well. We have two in the military in our family: My son is a major in the Marine Corps, and my son-in-law actually is deployed right now in the Navy. We know that they have started talking about, well, what do we do when we get out of the military? What’s our job going to be? How can we support our family? And so we loved the idea of INvets coming alongside new veterans who are just getting out of the service and to help them figure out where they might want to get employment. The great thing is, it’s great for Indiana. We can keep these veterans here and their families here.

Our third one is called Indy Warrior Partnership. It comes alongside the veteran to help them with VA benefits, recreation, finding their community of other vets and and getting that support. We don’t want our veterans to feel left out or forgotten and this is a group that comes alongside our veterans and helps them with local services.

You and your husband came back to Indiana in 2021. How do you feel about living in Indiana again after heading to Washington, D.C., eight years ago?

Pence: It’s actually even way longer than that. Mike was elected to Congress in 2000. We actually had a home in Indiana and a home in Washington, and I taught school in Washington. Our kids went to school out there, so it’s been a long time, but we never lost track of our roots. Indiana is just a very special place, and it was an honor and a privilege, truly, to serve our country for so many years.

How is your family feeling about your new project?

Pence: When I started it, of course, they just said, “Oh my gosh, this is great, mom.” So I met with the attorney who helped me set up the Indiana First Lady’s Charitable Foundation, and I said, “Well, guess what? We’re wanting to do this again.” I’ve saved some domain names over the years with my name in them, just in case I wanted to do something later. And he said, “Oh, that’s great, Karen, but you can’t have your name in the name of the charity. You have to come up with some other name.”

So I reached out to our daughter in law and our two daughters, and I said, “OK, I’ve got to think up another name. So, what should we call it?” They immediately said Hummingbird, because Hummingbird was my code name as second lady. They said, “You’ve got to do Hummingbird.” Right then we just decided, OK, it’s Hummingbird Charitable Foundation. So, they’ve been supportive even from the very beginning, when we just were picking a name.