Remembering Richard Male: Nonprofit Leader, Family Man and Mensch

Not long after the out-of-the-blue diagnosis of the liver disease that would claim his life ten months later — at 77, on December 31, 2022 — Richard Male convened a committee to plan his funeral.

"You will not be surprised to learn that there was an agenda," recalls Rabbi Yaakov Chaitovsky of BMH-BJ synagogue, where hundreds gathered last week to pay their respects to a man who built a colossal fifty-year career as a community organizer, activist, teacher and nonprofit leader, one meeting at a time.

That committee's charge must have seemed impossible. Rich achieved more than most of us could pull off in two or three lifetimes. Starting at the grassroots, his work was foundational to the nonprofit infrastructure in Colorado, now home to more than 20,000 organizations working to serve the public good.

Rich founded the Community Resource Center, the Colorado Coalition to Save Rural America and what is known today as the Colorado Nonprofit Association. He helped form Community Shares of Colorado, which drives millions in charitable giving to nonprofits across the state. He organized the Colorado Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and the Golden Brick Road, serving people experiencing homelessness in Denver. He established the Colorado Grants Guide, now a huge database that helps nonprofits find and apply for funding.

That's just some of the Colorado stuff.
Rich was also deeply involved with the local disability rights movement in the late ’70s and ’80s, which culminated with the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990. He organized ADAPT, activists who busted up sidewalks and laid down on Colfax Avenue to protest how hard it was for people with disabilities, especially those in wheelchairs, to get around in Denver. The curb cuts that make it easier to roll a stroller or a suitcase off and on a sidewalk? Rich helped standardize them in Denver and around the world.

As I imagine is true for many who read A Rich Life: The Perennial Richard Male, a memoir and collection of remembrances from friends and loved ones published in 2021, I was gobsmacked by what I learned about a man I thought I knew well. I knew that his career as an activist began in the Mississippi Delta in the late ’60s, where he advocated for health equity for Black Americans (and went to jail a few times for his efforts). I did not know that he spent years in Salt Lake City, where he was such a good community organizer they called him "The General." Many of the groups he worked with in Utah are still active.

I knew that Rich worked to protect elephants in Kenya and reduce HIV/AIDS in Botswana. That he championed reproductive rights in Guatemala and democracy in Mongolia. I knew that he promoted literacy and library development in Ethiopia, where I was privileged to travel with Rich and his eldest son, Abraham, in 2008, as emissaries of Ethiopia Reads, an organization he coached and loved and where I worked for three years, thanks to Rich. Whether meeting with local leaders in Addis Ababa or the rural Rift Valley, Rich showed up exactly as he did in Denver: folksy, wry, excitable. He gamely sat for hours drinking strong ceremonial coffee. He ate the goats that were presented at feasts in his honor, heads intact.
For Rich, a thing worth doing was not just worth doing well: To have real value, it must be put to use to help others. This simple but profound approach to life was first rooted in his childhood in Port Chester, New York, a diverse, working-class suburb where he was raised by a hardworking, entrepreneurial mother and a kind father who loved people and answered the phone, "This is Seymour. How can I help?"

Most personally, I knew that Rich was a devoted mentor, coach and friend who changed my life. For sixteen years, he helped me strategically plan my life. He made introductions and found me jobs, shared the curriculum of classes he taught at Regis University, the University of Denver and other schools. I did not realize the full extent to which he played the same central role in the lives of dozens of others. Hundreds, over the course of five decades. Some of these protégées now lead major nonprofit institutions. Some are just people with an instinct to make the world a little better. Rich didn't care that much about scale. He was just doing his job as a kind of talent scout for the universe, lovingly nudging those in his orbit to do and be a little more.
Rich was, at his core, a family man. He courted his future wife, Evelyn Lifsey, at rallies for nuclear disarmament. Over nearly forty years of marriage, they raised four children in a faithful Jewish household where even Rich stopped working to observe Shabbat every Friday at sundown. Much of the time, the modest family home in Winston Downs was like a hostel for change makers from all over the world, who usually left with armfuls of Rich's exotic cucumbers and heirloom tomatoes. A certified Master Gardener, he put his vegetables out into the world, too.

The Male children — Abraham, Sarah, Daniel and Juliadele — are all now established, accomplished in different ways, all able to read and recite in Hebrew the Kaddish that soothed mourners who gathered at Rich's gravesite at Rose Hill Cemetery last Tuesday, taking turns shoveling earth onto his casket.

At his service, Evelyn shared that, in the end, Rich was not depressed or sorrowful about what the end of his life meant for him. Rather, he was deeply disappointed that he wouldn't see in full bloom the work of those he left behind. His was a good death, she shared: He passed at home surrounded by his immediate family on the last day of the year, leaving the challenges of 2023 and beyond for the rest of us to reckon with, ably equipped with everything he taught us, and one simple question:

How can I help?

In 2021, the Male family established the Richard & Seymour Social Change Fund to support grassroots organizations devoted to creating social change. Those who contribute $50 or more will receive a copy of A Rich Life: The Perennial Richard Male, published in 2021; you can donate here.

Laura Bond is a former Westword music editor.

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