Rob Giardinelli
The Houston Philanthropic Leader Shares How Running The Organization Like A Business Has Allowed It To Scale And Increase Its Impact
By Rob Giardinelli Photography courtesy of Houston Children’s Charity
Huge Houston Hearts
Laura Ward is a force of nature in the Texas nonprofit gala fundraising universe. In 2018, she became president of the organization she founded, Houston Children’s Charity. Over the past eight years, Houston Children’s Charity Gala has grown from a highly successful annual gala into a can’t-miss juggernaut of a night where Houston’s most beloved philanthropists open their hearts and wallets to fund programs that positively impact children in the city year-round.
The 2025 Houston Children’s Charity Gala, “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas,” was the organization’s most successful yet, and raised an eye-popping $9.4 million. This amount is higher than any other Texas gala that has revealed a fundraising total during the 2025-2026 Texas gala season.
A can’t-miss part of the evening is Texas’ most successful and entertaining Paddles Up, where patrons raise their paddles so families can receive life-changing handicapped-accessible vans. The 2025 paddle raise was so successful that 98 vans were given away at their annual Van Distribution Event this past spring.
The 2026 Houston Children’s Charity Gala will mark the organization’s 30th anniversary, and if Laura’s track record of success is any guide, it will enter the stratosphere of the gala unicorn: an eight-figure fundraising night that will blow the roof off of The Post Oak Hotel where the gala will be held, as well as the Houston (and Texas) philanthropic scene.
Run It Like A Business
The reason for this rocket-like ascent of Laura Ward’s unique and highly successful approach to the spectacular success of Houston Children’s Charity Gala is simple. She runs her gala like a business. In fact, during our chat, we made the comparison that the nimble Houston Children’s Charity is a unicorn; a nonprofit resemblance to the most special of tech startups of which everyone wants to be a part.
Laura Ward will be the first to tell you she is “old school” in her approach to fundraising, opting to pick up the phone to call donors and sponsors rather than open a laptop to type emails. This uncanny ability to create connection with wide swaths of the diverse, vast Houston community is why she has earned the trust and respect of many philanthropists in the area.
In this exclusive conversation, Laura Ward shares how she runs her gala like a business. She did so with a refreshing mix of honesty, candor, and simplicity. Below are five key takeaways on how Laura Ward runs a gala like a successful business.
Five Ways Laura Ward Runs Her Highly Successful Houston Children’s Charity Gala Like A Business
# 1: Create Bold, Trusted Leadership
A core principle of Laura Ward’s leadership strategy is trust. “Good leadership happens because of trust, and I believe trust happens because of strong leadership.”
A key to her successful leadership, like that of any business visionary, is the ability to communicate transformative ideas simply. “Strong leadership is essential to streamline from a thought: a simple thought and a process of that thought to an end goal of success.” When leaders like Laura Ward do this, everyone else, from your employees to your board, will follow.
This is seen in how Laura Ward approaches leveraging and utilizing her board. Unlike many other nonprofits, Houston Children’s Charity has a highly engaged board of top business and community leaders who stay on for years. She rejects the idea of a two-year board term because a good “board member isn’t seasoned up in two years.”
This allows her to efficiently and effectively leverage board members, which I found to be Laura Ward’s gala as a business North Star. That thing is trust, with success. “When you have trust, and you have strong leadership, it’s just the winning formula. It’s going to get you to your end goal every time.”
#2: Offer Unique & Innovative Products/Services
When asked about the mission of the Houston Children’s Charity, Laura Ward mentioned unique products and services as a part of that mission. “We go for what no one else is doing.”
The organization has a multitude of highly successful programs, which are a mix of annual and recurring, transformative and wide-reaching. The three most successful programs offer things essential to a child: happiness, security, and mobility.
The most transformative and life-changing is the annual Van Distribution Event, where, in 2026, due to the huge heart of Houston Children’s Charity donors, 98 families received life-changing, handicapped-accessible vans that allow families to give their children with disabilities the gift of mobility through reliable transportation to get to places such as school and doctor’s appointments.
Even with the Van Distribution, known as Chariots for Children, and other highly impactful Houston Children’s Charity programs in place, including the Annual Toy Distribution Event and the Monthly Bed Giveaway program, known as the A Better Night’s Sleep program, Laura Ward is always thinking of other solutions and offering what nobody else is doing in the Houston area. “We create new programs all the time,” shared Mrs. Ward. Like any visionary leader or entrepreneur whose company stays ahead of the pack, she is constantly rolling out new services for children in the Houston area.
The boldest part of leadership is admitting that not everything will always be a success. This means constantly reviewing programs and services to ensure they are achieving the intended impact. “We create new programs all the time,” said Mrs. Ward. She quickly followed with, “We’ve gotten rid of some programs that didn’t enjoy the measure of success necessary to warrant the energy that went into doing it. We look at that.” This allows Laura Ward to ensure that the Houston Children’s Charity’s resources are being efficiently leveraged in the right places, so the organization is on a path to continue to evolve, increase its impact, and find the next transformative service for children in Houston.
#3: Know Your Customer Base
The customers that frequent the Houston Children’s Charity, which are the donors and philanthropists that are a part of the 800-person gala at The Post Oak Hotel each year, have high expectations. Laura Ward keenly understands that and mentions that “the customer is always right.”
Part of Laura Ward’s success with her customer base is how simplistic she is with her communication. “It’s the personal contacts. It’s the stewardship,” admits Mrs. Ward when reflecting on her success in retaining and recruiting top Houston donors to her event.
To make this a priority, Laura Ward devotes significant time to making phone calls, a form of old-school telemarketing and client maintenance. “I start my phone calls in the morning, and I usually make them all day, 3-4 days a week, and I do it in a very concentrated period of time.” Laura Ward’s reason for calling them is evident when you talk to her: she takes neither donors nor clients for granted and emphasizes the importance of saying thank you. “You call them. You let them know how important they are to you.”
One personal story Mrs. Ward reflected on regarding the power of the phone over e-mail is a conversation with a prominent, now-deceased Houston donor. Her words say it all:
“I had a major philanthropist in Houston who is deceased and was a very dear friend of mine years ago tell me cause when I called them I said, ‘(First Name), forgive me for bothering you today, but you know I’m calling about the gala again; it’s that time. They said, ‘First of all, you’re never bothering me when you’re calling me, but the first year that you e-mail me to buy a $50,000 table, I won’t take your call when you follow it up with a phone call. If I’m not worth a phone call from Laura Ward once a year, you don’t get my table.’ “I learned so much from that lesson… I learned that not only was I not bothering them with that phone call, but they literally looked forward to that phone call every year.”
The result of her efforts is that 70% of Houston Children’s Charity Gala donors and sponsors renew yearly. That is an almost unheard-of rate in the world of event fundraising, especially for events with over 500 guests, and the power of knowing and understanding that even the highest-profile people want to be reached out to. In fact, the personal touch can ensure a long-term, if not lifelong, relationship with top customers and donors.
#4: Optimize Your Revenue Streams
While the Houston Children’s Charity Gala has multiple revenue streams, Laura Ward knows which three generate most of the event’s revenue. Those three elements are the Van Distribution Paddle Raise, table sales, and a live auction.
In 2025, over half of the Houston Children’s Charity Gala revenue came from the Van Distribution Paddle Raise. The Paddles Up is the most exhilarating and successful gala appeal of the year in Texas. To reiterate, the Houston Children’s Charity Gala’s generosity made it possible to give away an astronomical 98 vans, raising over $5 million.
One way a business stays on top is knowing that innovation is key to long-term success. The idea for the Van Distribution Paddle Raise came from a conversation Laura Ward had with a Houston Children’s Charity Gala donor who reached out to her after a gala wanting to contribute an amount of money toward a van. After taking it in, a light bulb went off in her head. “I took that not as criticism. I took that as a new mousetrap. And I thought, ‘They just presented me with the new mousetrap. There are people out there who want to give to these vans. Why not do it when you have a captive audience?’”
The results bore fruit at the 2024 Houston Children’s Charity Gala Paddles Up, where several million were raised, allowing the organization to give away 66 vans, up from a previous high of 12 vans. In 2025, the organization saw nearly 50% year-over-year growth, with 98 vans given away. Given Laura Ward’s ability to deliver, I’m confident 2026 will exceed the 100-van total for the first time.
The other two main revenue streams of the event, the live auction and table sales, are critical to the event’s success. The $2 million in advance table sales and $1 million from the live auction provide Laura Ward and the Houston Children’s Charity Gala with a strong foundation of support. Add to that the fact that Laura Ward personally oversees the seating chart, and she leverages the relationship dynamics among her donor base to create the perfect environment for the Van Distribution Paddle Raise to be her new flagship gala product.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Houston Children’s Charity Gala is how it defines success. Laura Ward measures the success of the Houston Children’s Charity Gala not by the amount of money raised, but by ensuring their impact goals are met. “If we cut our revenue in half, we would still consider it a success because we would still be able to fund our programs.” This brilliant strategy allows Laura Ward to take risks, such as integrating the Van Distribution Paddle Raise, given her successful track record and the implicit trust she has with her board.
#5: Be Transparent
One thing Laura Ward prides herself on is making sure that whether a donor gives $100 or $1 million, they know their entire purchase will fund one of Houston Children’s Charity’s programs. “We have an ironclad rule. And I have lived by it for 35 years. I do not buy auction items to resell. Many do, and many are no longer around who did that,” said Ward.
The reason Laura Ward does this is simple. She wants to make sure all $100 of a silent auction donation goes directly to the Houston Children’s Charity. The reason is simple: when a donor or board member wants to see expenditures, Laura Ward wants to ensure she has nothing to hide. You have to be 100% transparent “because somewhere along the way someone you did not tell is gonna figure it out. And you should have told them.”
One way Laura Ward does this is by doing something only the best of fundraising galas do: announcing the total at the end of the fundraiser. This posed a unique challenge for last year’s record-breaking gala. The $9.4 million raised exceeded even her best-case scenario. Reflecting on it, Ward says:
“We announce a total at the end and keep those figures transparent, honest, perfectly calculated all night long. So last year, I looked up, and at one point, our barometer said we were at $7 million. And I thought, there’s no way we are at $7 million. Then it said we were at $8 million. And I thought, well, they’re gonna make the mistake once, but they’re gonna correct it, and when it didn’t get corrected. I figured, ‘Laura, math is your worst thing. Trust the accountants. And I was blown away when we got to the $9.4, and I said, ‘Are these real figures? I wouldn’t announce it.’”
In fact, two to three minutes passed in silence on stage as Laura Ward made sure the numbers were rechecked. This has a wonderfully unintended consequential element to the event after an enormously successful Van Distribution Paddle Raise: suspense. What this did was allow the audience to take a moment to reflect on the enormous generosity in the room that allowed for guests to celebrate with glee at the results of the 2025 Houston Children’s Charity Gala, which it announced raised $9.4 million that night, an incredible 52% year-over-year revenue growth.
In my conversation with Laura Ward, I learned the two simplest ways to ensure the success of a gala are similar to a successful business. One is trust. The other is transparency. As our chat drew to a close, I asked her about one thing all successful events have in common. She clearly and boldly stated, “100% Transparency,” and as Laura Ward further reflected, she meant transparency with everyone involved:“100% transparency with donors, with sponsors, with staff, with board members, with the community, with the media. 100%.” As with all successful businesses, trust and transparency are key to long-term business and gala success.
