As I talked to people who were deeply involved in educational philanthropy, I realized that it was actually the time they gave that kept them involved, even if they could have written a large check and been done with it.  Charles R. Bendit, for instance, had built his real estate firm, Taconic Investment Partners, into a successful portfolio of commercial buildings and apartments in the New York region. When he first became interested in giving something back in the 1990s, he said he didn’t have a lot of money but did have some business experience.  A friend suggested he consider education and connected him with Pencil, a nonprofit group that brings business people into public schools. “I figured education makes a lot of sense,” Mr. Bendit said. “Educating our students best prepares them to take on the responsibility of becoming our business and political leaders.”  After volunteering at a couple of different schools, Mr. Bendit was paired up with Sana Q. Nasser, the principal of the Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx. The result has been a partnership of more than a decade that has brought significant improvements in the school, which now has 1,900 students.  Ms. Nasser said she had been a principal for five years when she met Mr. Bendit. At that point, she felt she had stabilized the school, which had been failing when she took over, and was ready to start making improvements. She wanted to start academies within the school that would draw on assets that were not being used, like a television studio and a planetarium.  “I realized very quickly that I needed someone to help me,” Ms. Nasser said. “I didn’t know exactly how to do it. I didn’t have the wherewithal to negotiate all of this.”  But she knew she didn’t want an executive to come in for a day and write her school a check.  “I wanted someone who would stay with me for the long haul,” she said. “I wanted time, their knowledge and commitment, and a wide network of people. I wanted that business connection. I wanted internships for my kids.”  Mr. Bendit said the two hit it off. But before they tackled her dream of having academies within the school, they began working on her ability to delegate to her assistant principals. Without doing that, he said she couldn’t think long term about the school.  She said she trusted Mr. Bendit to teach her skills that she didn’t have. “It was almost a mindshift for me,” she said. “I realized he could help me as I tried to rebuild Truman to what it used to be.”  Mr. Bendit said that for him, helping her start various academies within the school with focuses as different as law and cooking, meant using his contacts more than his checkbook. “It was about leverage,” he said. “I didn’t know much about television studios or catering, but I knew who to ask.”  Today, Truman is a thriving school. But Mr. Bendit was quick to point out that he was able to make a difference without sacrificing other things in his life. He estimated that he spent no more than 25 hours a year with Ms. Nasser.  “We sometimes don’t appreciate the impact we can have by just investing a little bit of our time and some of our resources,” he said. “She never said, ‘Could you buy me computers or could you buy me a new planetarium?’ It was more about, ‘What can you do to help me build this?’ ”  Mr. Bendit said he gave the school money for a special program, however, and has donated to Pencil and many other educational organizations.  The Bank of America study of high-net-worth households found that 89 percent of those affluent people said they had volunteered their time — up 10 percentage points from 2009, when the study was last conducted. Ms. Costello, the Bank of America executive, said researchers had also asked people about the level of personal satisfaction they derived from their charitable giving and found that it was linked more to engagement than dollars.  This was no surprise to people who have been involved in educational philanthropy.  Marguerite Griffin, national director of philanthropic service at the wealth management firm Northern Trust, said that people who wanted to be involved in education charities needed to be prepared to wait for results, and that could be frustrating for people who were not volunteering their time and seeing the small steps of progress.  “Many of the best educational funders are also mentors in after-school programs or they volunteer,” she said. “They do something that keeps them in touch with the population they’re trying to help.”  Donna Fontana, senior vice president at Fidelity Investments, said she was inspired to change her philanthropic focus by the documentary “Waiting for Superman,” about city students trying to get a better education in charter schools.  She began teaching an after-school class through a program run by Citizen Schools, which helps students gain life skills and experience. She is in her third semester of teaching “Invest Like a Millionaire,” a course Fidelity developed, at a middle school in East Harlem. Ms. Fontana said the class focused on teaching children the basics of saving, spending and budgeting but culminated with students counseling real people (her friends) on their financial situation.  “The children embrace it and rise to the occasion,” she said. “We knew we were getting through to them when we had one student talk to a client about compound interest.”  She said she now found herself talking enthusiastically about the children and the program to all of her friends.  Of course, there are those who can have it both ways, giving a lot of time and money each year.  Trisha Perez Kennealy and her husband, Michael J. Kennealy, an entrepreneur and private equity executive, said they took a three-step approach to their educational philanthropy. They work with the public schools in Lexington, Mass., where their three children go, finance scholarships at their alma maters and donate to and serve on the boards of national educational reform groups.  “It’s multipronged because we want to make a big change,” Ms. Perez Kennealy said. “You only go through third grade once. This is our future.”  But like everyone else I talked to, the Kennealys, who put their annual cash giving in the six figures, are true believers in what a great education can do. “Everything we have in life we attributed to having a great education,” Mr. Kennealy said. “It’s gratitude. But it’s also the recognition that a great education is not available to everyone else.”  A version of this article appears in print on November 10, 2012, on page B5 of the New York edition with the headline: Some Prefer Giving Time, Not Money, to Schools. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Offering knowledge and experience by volunteering at a school can be far more satisfying for donors than simply writing a check.