Tim Gaskin: A Lifetime of Challenges Met with a Lifestyle of Hope
Most people would never believe the background of Tim Gaskin to see him now. Creator and Founder of Benefit Magazine, a new publication that raises awareness of charitable non-profits and supports the “lifestyle of giving,” he knows first hand how important charities are to helping people get ahead in life.
A third generation San Franciscan, Gaskin, 40, grew up in the city’s Castro and Mission districts living in and out of battered women’s shelters with his Mother. His father and brothers were alcoholics, himself the victim of their abuse from the disease. By the time he turned 13; Gaskin had had enough, and ran away from home. He was made a ward of the court until he petitioned for and was granted emancipation at the age of fourteen.
Gaskin continued to attend school, being elected Sophomore Class President at Lincoln High School while living on his own. But by his junior year, he had to drop out of school to work full time simply to survive. He began working in fast food restaurants across San Francisco while living in a one room apartment in the Fisherman’s Wharf neighborhood district.
Gaskin worked hard through his teen years, and in his early twenties met Rueben Glickman and Susie Tompkins who owned the old Hamm’s Brewery. He was offered a chance to found the Hamm’s Café, a new café in the building, and it became a success.
Gaskin’s career after that continued to be tied to the food industry, working as a trader in the import meat business, something he continued to do until recently.
“Because I lived on the streets in my youth, there is nothing I haven’t seen or been a part of,” said Gaskin. “It’s hard today to imagine that my life was ever that way.”
As his career grew, Gaskin got more involved in community affairs, becoming active in local merchant societies and community-focused publications and television shows. In 2001, he co-founded Gloss Magazine, an alternative lifestyle magazine for San Franciscans and began co-hosting a local cable show called “Inside City Limits” for ComcastSF. The show gave him a platform to raise the profile of the local non-profits he had personally benefited from as a child. Gaskin currently hosts his own cable show, “OUT Spoken,” which is the only LGBT entertainment/talk show of its kind in the United States.
In late 2005, Gaskin saw an opportunity to fulfill his long held dream of starting a publication dedicated to the lifestyle of philanthropy and raising the profile of non-profit organizations in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Just like so many challenges in his life, Gaskin overcame the nay-sayers and the critics, launching Benefit Magazine, The Lifestyle of Giving in 2006.
“I came from an impoverished welfare family,” said Gaskin. “It was poverty that killed my parents, not the domestic violence or their drug addition. Those were just coping mechanisms to try and deal with the poverty. The charitable organizations that serve San Francisco are out to destroy poverty, and I believe it’s my obligation to help them. While my parents chose one way to face poverty, I chose another, and now I’m in a position to give something back.”
Gaskin’s involvement in the non-profit world is not new to him. For over ten years he has helped raise desperately needed funds for charities struggling to survive.
He served on the board of AEF/BCEF (AIDS Emergency Fund/Breast Cancer Emergency Fund) and while a board member, Gaskin launched This Old Bag (www.thisoldbag.org), a celebrity and designer handbag auction which has included donations from Oprah Winfrey, Sharon Stone, and every star on Desperate Housewives. Since its inception two years ago, the event has raised over $200,000 to help women who are struggling financially while coping with the brutality of their disease.
Gaskin, who has used painting as a creative outlet, has also donated many of his creations to charity fundraisers and was chosen as one of the artists in the Hearts in San Francisco project that benefited the SF General Hospital Foundation. Gaskin was selected by Mayor Gavin Newsom as his pick to be a commissioner on the city’s Arts Task Force, a position he still holds.
