When you think of philanthropy, different things may come to mind.

For many, it’s solving some acute personal need — food for the hungry or shelter for the homeless. For others, it’s advancing a broader social goal like funding cancer research or supporting the arts. No matter what comes to mind, though, the essential goal is the same: improving people’s lives.

There are any number of ways to improve lives, but when you boil down what it takes for someone to enjoy personal success, three essential areas emerge — education, income and health.

Consider education.

While high school graduates working full-time can expect to earn less than $1.6 million during their careers (in 2009 dollars based on a government report released several years ago), that amount shoots up significantly to nearly $2.8 million for those with a bachelor’s degree. Graduate and professional degrees lead to even more lifetime income, with those holding professional degrees topping the list at $5.7 million.

And education is becoming more important every day. Our parents might have enjoyed a successful career doing one particular job with a high school education or less, but those days are long gone. Contemporary jobs require the use of changing technology, a much broader set of basic skills and the ability to solve problems independently. Not even a high school education is enough any more; an associate or bachelor’s degree is essential.

To get the education they need for success, children must develop some basic literacy and thinking skills before setting foot in school and then stay long enough to graduate. For many, that’s not as easy as it sounds.

Achieving “school readiness,” as experts call it, is more difficult in families with parents working different shifts or still struggling to learn English. And less than 72 percent of students in our state, overall, graduate from high school in four years. Rates are even lower for economically disadvantaged (61.8 percent) people with limited English proficiency (52.2 percent) or students with disabilities (56.8 percent).

With higher test scores and lower dropout rates, our local schools have been working hard to provide a bright future for our children. But many local students face some serious obstacles on their road to success, whether it’s entering school without the needed skills, getting pregnant as a teen, finding extra help with homework or arriving at school hungry.

Fortunately, our community has stepped forward to lower the hurdles and help students succeed in the classroom. There are many examples, but here are a few:

The Coalition for Families does marvelous work helping new parents learn how to help their children from birth through age three develop skills for success, working to prevent teen pregnancy and assisting those who do become pregnant care for their children while remaining in school.

Communities in Schools focuses its energy on helping students stay in school by arranging for tutoring, finding mentors for students and even providing weekend food for needy students through their well-known “BackPack Pals” effort.

The Boys and Girls Clubs works to help students stay in school, avoid teen pregnancy and understand the wide-open opportunities available to anyone who remains in school and embraces learning.

And there are many more working for the same cause — including the YMCA, 4-H, Warren Williams Child Development Center and dozens of local churches, each with their own ministries and outreach.

Unlike other less-active communities, our primary challenge isn’t convincing people to become engaged in public service, though we could always use more people serving as mentors or helping pack weekend food for poor students.

Ours is making sure we don’t get complacent. Whether it’s volunteering some time or making a financial contribution, everything we do to improve lives not only helps our neighbors’ future, but ours as well.

Next month: A report card on income.