Courtesy Dan Ryan Builders
Dan Ryan and some close friends traveled to the Dominican Republic to help construct bleachers for a soccer field at an orphanage and to teach building skills to some of the older students.
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” says Ryan, who followed his father into both home building when he opened Dan Ryan Builders in 1990 and into charity work when he took over the family foundation in 2004 and renamed it Dan Ryan Builders Charitable Foundation. The new foundation’s mission is largely the same as the original’s: “My giving philosophy,” Ryan says, “is an extension of my dad’s philosophy, which is: ‘Give back to those who are in need.’ It’s extremely important for me to give back.”
His charitable focus, although not exclusively, is low-income housing. In Frederick, Ryan’s main project is the rescue mission, a Christian organization that served 165,000 meals to poor, homeless, and working-class locals last year and houses up to 32 men at a time in its Changed Life Recovery Program, an effort to help recovering drug addicts and ex-convicts earn their high school equivalency diplomas, find jobs and permanent housing, reconcile with their families, and connect with a local church. This year, the mission will open an eight-bed residential program to do the same for homeless women and children. Ryan donated $100,000 to the effort and helped Farlow navigate some local zoning obstacles.
“Dan does surprise a lot of people because he’s quiet,” says Farlow, who estimates that Frederick, which is 45 miles from Washington, D.C., and has a population of approximately 69,000, has at least 300 homeless citizens. “But he’s very thoughtful. … Dan’s a doer.”
Courtesy Dan Ryan Builders
Dan Ryan Builders is the main sponsor of 10-mile road race, which raises money for the Frederick, Md., Rescue Mission
Courtesy Dan Ryan Builders
Patricia Motter, president and CEO of Frederick-based Interfaith Housing Alliance, which builds and buys homes to sell at affordable prices to working-class families, agrees. “Dan is really committed to the idea that the organizations he supports are doing good work, and he likes to call attention to what they’re doing, to get the word out about what they do and about the difference they make in the community,” she says. “That’s part of the reason why he takes the back seat. He’s really about giving back to the community in meaningful ways.”
Outside of Frederick, where the company’s headquarters is located, Dan Ryan Builders staff elsewhere in Maryland and in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and North and South Carolina are allotted a budget to spend on charity work in their communities. Each division is required to spend the money—and they do.
The Charleston, S.C., division donated 21 mattresses, box springs, and bed frames to HALOS, which works with abused and neglected children and their caregivers, after employees there learned that some kids wind up in foster care simply because their family homes have too few beds for all of the children. The division in Williamsport, Md., built a Habitat for Humanity home and routinely helps elderly neighbors with home repairs.
And while Ryan may eschew the limelight, he’s well aware that his privately owned company’s generosity has paid off in local goodwill as well as home sales.
