Gordon V. Hartman
Bringing joy and inclusion to people with special needs
After becoming one of the most successful home builders in San Antonio, Giving Pledge signatory Gordon Hartman sold his companies in 2005 and turned his focus to philanthropy. Inspired by his daughter, Morgan, who was born with cognitive and physical special needs, the Gordon Hartman Family Foundation has established the Morgan’s family of entities to increase access, inclusion, and quality of life for people of all ages and abilities.
Transcript
I think the thing I’ve learned the most is that if you surround yourself with people who have a passion similar to yours, it’s amazing the multiplier effect of what you can do.
My first actual activity of giving back was when I was in high school at a local seminary where we’d go out and meet people to assist them, whether it be someone who was older, who was living in a nursing home, or individuals with special needs.
And at that very young age, it became something very big to me that I needed to be a part of.
Having a child with special needs and recognizing how she is very blessed to have everything but many of those with special needs do not, that it was my opportunity to be able to really get involved aggressively to assist those with special needs and disabilities.
Morgan has all the doctors and the therapists, basically everything she needs to have her life be as normal as possible, but that’s such an exception to the rule.
So what we’re about at Morgan’s and everything we do also within the foundation is to make sure that we can try to make the playing field a little bit more level.
Morgan’s Wonderland opened back in 2010, and at that time we had no idea this whole new approach towards ensuring an ultra accessible, fully inclusive park was going to work.
Here we are today seeing that over 3 million people have come from 123 countries in all 50 states.
In 2017, we opened up a waterpark, which is ultra accessible.
We then went on and built a sports facility, went on to build a camp, the multi-assistance center, which assist individuals with special needs and disabilities in the area of medical, therapeutic and social determinants of health.
Every day I get to watch the things that we do here to assist individuals, both young and old.
Every time I have a chance to visit and talk with caregivers and parents and individuals who are involved in this particular area of trying to make the lives of those with special needs better, I start to learn that we are making a little difference.
And if we can just scratch the surface and show cultural change and spark cultural change by what we do, then we have enormous potential and that’s what we’re all about.
The Giving Pledge has allowed me an opportunity to listen to others who have had incredible success, well beyond anything that I could ever dream of doing and learning from them about how they are going about it.
Because through collaboration and compounding what we do, it’s an amazing thing how we can change the world to make it a better place.
