Changes in the Way We Give

On this morning's The Today Show, there was an interview with the founder of Living by Giving's founder Kate Atwood. She talked about a great trend where people ask for donations given for their birthday, instead of gifts. There are a number of ways to do this, but I think it's a great idea. If you're like me, you really don't need more stuff. (Of course, you may want more stuff.)

 

In addition, today's USA Today (what's with all the "Today" titles?) had a Special Report on "Corporate Philanthropy" in their Money Section B. It had some interesting information, including a list of 11 companies that donate over 5% of their profits to charitable causes. I will admit that I was kind of surprised that Chik-fil-a wasn't included, since S. Truett Cathy was a co-author of The Generosity Factor and strongly advocated tithing 10% of income, even as part of corporate policy.  It's possible that they give this much and just didn't fall under the companies analyzed in the article ... or that Cathy gives on his personal profits after extracting them from the business in the form of a salary.

Anyway, here are the links to some of the giving stories from today's USA Today.

• Interactive Graphic - Tracking Big Corporate Donors
• Companies donate employee's time, service instead of cash
• Charitable donations won't soon match pre-recession levels
• Want workers to volunteer? Set Goals and Support Them
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy
• Kindness: New ways we give and volunteer

Unity Church on Giving

The wonderful people of Unity Church have done a nice profile on the project. The article, Giving It All Away, is available on their website. They based the article on reading the blog plus a couple of e-mail exchanges with us to flesh out the details.

Karma Update: I Won a Free iPad!

I haven't been particularly diligent about updating this blog, I know, but this recent news was of such import that I thought it was worth sharing:

I won an iPad!

How I Won an iPad
My company has recently had a couple of contests which have offered iPad 3Gs as prizes. I signed up for their Twitter contest, but did not win. Then I signed up for the Facebook contest ... and I won!

The iPad itself hasn't arrived yet, due to a backorder situation, but still ... very cool! I'm not saying that this is karmic payback for the giving experiment, but the iPad is cool, I wanted one, and I would not have shelled out that much money for a fancy electronic toy. I'm not saying it's karma, but I'm not saying it ain't, either!

Karma's a Bit... Weird
Also last week I had a flat tire, which was unrepairable and required the purchase of a new tire, but that was just a little over $100. And twice my car refused to start and required a jump, so very likely needs a new battery. Still, in total, I consider myself way ahead on the rewards versus losses chart.

Microfinancing Student Loans

I recently stumbled upon a new take (or at least new to me) on microfinancing, in which you offer relatively small amounts of money to impoverished people, so that they can help themselves out of poverty and pay you back. These programs have proven incredibly successful since they were initiated by Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank as a means of providing them in his native Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank and Yunus were jointly awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below."

Student Loans

Many people have looked into new way expand the microfinancing model into new areas, but this is one of the most interesting that I've see. Vittana allows you to search for a student in a country that does not have many college loan opportunities, so that you can help microfinance student loans.

I don't have the experience with Vittana that I have with some other microfinance organizations discussed below, and since Vittana's new there's little on record about it. They don't yet have a Charity Navigator profile and only a very barebones GuideStar profile.

• Crunchbase - Vittana Profile
• Huffington Post - Faces of Vittana, March 26 2010
• Politics Daily - Crowd-Funded Student Loans: Vittana Brings Microfinance to Campuses Worldwide, April 28 2010

What is Microfinancing?
In short, it provides those in extreme poverty a way to get money for start-up capital to get ahead in their small, entrepreneurial businesses. For example, Yunus found that poor craftswomen were being charged such extreme interest rates by loan sharks to borrow money that, by the time they bought the materials and paid back the interest, they had no money left. Even worse, many money lenders demanded that the women could only sell their wares to them, which essentially gave the money lenders a bank of slave labor ... for as little as $27, as he discovered. Yunus paid this money out of his own pocket to break the hold the money lenders had on the women, and sought to expand the program.

However, because these were poor women, they could not get loans from any other source. Many were illiterate, and therefore had barriers to completing the required paperwork to get loans. His story of expanding this program is really inspirational, as you can learn in his Nobel Lecture. Here's an excerpt, discussing how the emphasis of our current economic system robs us of some essential elements of our humanity:

I am in favor of strengthening the freedom of the market. At the same time, I am very unhappy about the conceptual restrictions imposed on the players in the market. This originates from the assumption that entrepreneurs are one-dimensional human beings, who are dedicated to one mission in their business lives − to maximize profit. This interpretation of capitalism insulates the entrepreneurs from all political, emotional, social, spiritual, environmental dimensions of their lives. This was done perhaps as a reasonable simplification, but it stripped away the very essentials of human life.

Human beings are a wonderful creation embodied with limitless human qualities and capabilities. Our theoretical constructs should make room for the blossoming of those qualities, not assume them away.

Now, microfinance is becoming a very popular form of philanthropy. Individuals can take part through Kiva (a non-profit which provides no interest back to the individual lender) and Microplace (a for-profit which does provide an interest-yielding return on the investment). There are some other differences, too. On Kiva, you choose a specific person or group to loan money to, while on Microplace you're investing in a lending note that will be provided through a separate agency to needy people in the region chosen without ever knowing precisely who the money actually goes to.

There are several nice aspects to microfinancing. First, you don't actually lose your money. Assuming that the borrowers don't default on you (and the overall default rate is low, at around 2%), the money is paid back. You can either re-loan it out to a new borrower or withdraw it. This makes these sorts of programs a nice place for socking away some extra money as part of your nest egg. It's not highly leveraged, and is far less volatile than the stock market.

Second, it's not a hand-out, but instead a business agreement. There is no social stigma or loss of dignity for someone who accepts a business loan.

Third, the systems in place allow you to really have a lot of options in how you direct your money, moreso than with some other charities. In general, a charity is either local or global, and either way you don't have a ton of say-so in how your donation is spent. This, however, often lets you target a specific type of entrepreneur or borrower, so that you can be sure you're supporting a project that you really want to support.

Finally, the benefit of microfinance is that it's based upon the actual needs of the local people in impoverished areas. They need the money to achieve necessary goals, and are asking for the money. It isn't a case where someone in the United States just decides that these people need a certain sort of service. (Not that there's anything inherently wrong with these programs, such as One Laptop Per Child, but the fact that they are not locally-centered is a bit of a drawback.)

What do you think about Vittana, or about microfinancing in general? Have you had experiences with any of these programs?

Charity Navigator Upgrade

One of my favorite resources to check prior to donating to a new charity is Charity Navigator. They rate non-profits on a four-star rating system. Each organization has an overall rating, which is obtained from evaluations of two sub-categories:

• Organizational Efficiency
• Organizational Capacity

New Accountability System
This week, though, Charity Navigator announced an upgrade their site involving a new rating system which begins to add a dimension of accountability that has been missing from the existing rating system. Here is a description of the new accountability and transparency system and the factors that will now contribute to their analysis.

The first charity that they've rolled out with this new accountability rating system is Nurse-Family Partnership. Their only negative mark on accountability is that the organization does not post their latest Form 990 (the form that non-profits must file with the federal government) to their website, which is an ethical best practice but not an actual requirement for non-profits.

Issues with Current System

There are still some issues with the current evaluation system, of course, as with any evaluation process. For example, Heifer International has a bit of a hit on the site, having only a three-start rating, in part because:

• The CEO makes a fairly large salary ($258,246)
• They spend a large percentage of their budget on fundraising (16%)
• They don't have a big Working Capital Ratio (they couldn't run off of their savings if donations dried up)

However, when you consider that this charity is a massive international project, requiring a substantial amount of coordination among diverse groups, the CEO's salary doesn't necessarily seem out of line. And they don't have much working capital because the majority of the money is immediately spent on livestock, per the organization's mission. Their expenses are directly linked to the donations, in other words, and if donations dried up, then the purchase of animals would also slow down in proportion. The work of education and the Pass on the Gift program would continue in these cases, but the purchase and distribution of livestock would cut back significantly, so they'd last a lot longer than their current financials would really indicate.

The current rating system doesn't take all of this into account, and there are other issues - some of which are even more important - which have been left out.

Other Non-Profit Vetting Resources
Guidestar - Guidestar's mission: To revolutionize philanthropy and nonprofit practice by providing informaiton that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving.

GiveWell - GiveWell attempts to look beyond the financial data, to evaluate organizations on how well they effectively accomplish their mission. I admit, I haven't delved into this site too much. They are, admittedly, fairly strict in their evaluations - of the over-400 charities they have evaluated, only 11 have received any stars in their rating system.

Philanthropedia - Philanthropedia brings together experts in fields such as climate change, education, and microfinance (as well as some San Francisco Bay Area local issues) to evaluate charities seeking to have an impact on these issues. They have created "Expert Mutual Funds" based on these suggestions, which have distributions among the top organizations for each issue. Donations to a fund are split accordingly among the various individual organizations, but you only have to worry about going one place to donate (which also helps keep track of things for tax purposes, if you happen to itemize your deductions).

Other Resources of Note
Charity Navigator Blog
Tonic - Getting the Most Bang for Your Charitable Buck
Newsday - State eyes possible fraud in car donation charities

Gates, Buffett, and Philanthrocapitalism

In the last couple of weeks, there's been no shortage of coverage about Bill and Melinda Gates, together with Warren Buffett, offering a Giving Pledge. The goal: to convince their fellow billionaires to pledge to give away 50% (or more) of their net worth to charity during their lifetime (or, at the very least, upon their death). If you've missed the coverage, then here is some of it.

• Fortune - The $600 billion challenge, June 16
• Fortune - Billionaire peer pressure: Behind the Buffett-Gates challenge, June 16
• NY Daily News - Bill Gates and Warren Buffett ask Oprah, Bloomberg, other billionaires to give big money to charity, June 16
• Charlie Rose interview, June 16

(This Bill & Melinda Gates video is from January 2010, before the challenge was made public.)

Coincidentally, this announcement came as I was reading the book Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World by Matthew Bishop & Michael Green. (The newer version of the book, according to Amazon.com, has been rebranded with the subtitle "How Giving Can Save the World" and an introduction by Bill Clinton.) The book begins, understandably enough, with Buffett's 2006 decision to give the majority of his vast fortune to charity - the bulk of it to the Gates Foundation, for their work in world health and development.

In the Charlie Rose interview on this new challenge, Buffet lays out some of his philanthropic thoughts (also detailed in this article):

So the truth is I’ve had everything in life, everything
in life I’ve ever wanted.  I have never given away any
money that’s caused me to give up a movie or dinner or
trip to Disneyworld or anything of the sort.

So it’s cost me nothing.  So I have these little pieces
of paper in safe deposit box which I bought about 40 or
45 years ago and they’ve grown in value enormously.
And what they are is they’re claim checks on something
in the future.  

I don’t have anything I need in the future.  All kinds
of other people have all kinds of needs.  And it’s a
way of cashing those claim checks in a way where
people’s lives are changed for be the better.  Mine’s
already changed for the better.  It couldn’t get better.

If those little pieces of paper translate whether it’s
into children avoiding diseases, becoming better
educated, people having a better life in their own age,
whatever it may be, that’s terrific.  I think a lot of
people feel the same way. 

This is a profound statement, and certainly true ... for billionaires.

For most of us, of course, choosing to give something does mean that there are some sorts of desires that we have to pass up. People with this degree of wealth don't run into this problem (financially, at least), but when you think about things on a global scale, this situation extends to the majority of people in America.

Worldwide: The poorest 75% of the world lives on only 25% of the resources! At least 80% of the human species lives on less than $10 a day.



By extension, living on $3,650 a year means that you are among the wealthiest 20% of the people on the planet Earth! (Note: This is 2005 data, so the number would be a bit higher now ... but not much.)



Depressing, isn't it?



So the arguments that Buffett make are all, by extension, arguments that could apply to the majority of us. We can all afford to give a bit more, even if all we can give is of our time or our sympathy.



Elsewhere in the interview, Bill Gates recounts an early dinner party where these three billionaires gathered with other billionaires in an effort to help convince them to give more. The group of billionaires share their stories of philanthropy - how they got involved, what causes they're committed to, and so on - and there was a tangible energy and enthusiasm among the group, which Buffett and the Gateses wanted to harness. Gates makes the observation:

And one thing more I would like to say is no one said that they felt bad they’ve given the money. Everybody felt more fulfilled, were able to use their creativity in some special ways.

I would certainly agree with this. There have been a handful of people who have come forward to me, saying that they were motivated give in part thanks to my 40 Days of Giving project. Not a single one of these people has said, "You know, I gave this money, and just think it was a waste!"

The amazing thing about this isn't just the money itself (although Carol Loomis makes a strong case that this will profoundly increase the money going into charitable giving). Many billionaires are self-made entrepreneurs and businessmen, like both Gates and Buffett themselves, and if they turn their eye toward philanthropy, it's unlikely that they will do so in a passive way. The sheer amount of innovation, brainpower, and overall resources that this could turn toward philanthropic goals is astounding.


And this is the the whole point of Philanthrocapitalism, which talks about the way that these powerful capitalists can leverage their talents in that area toward philanthropic goals. A similar case was made by David Bornstein about social entrepreneurs in How to Change the World.


And these sorts of thinkers are crucial, because the problems we face today - climate change, oil spills, clean energy, clean water, diseases such as malaria and AIDS, rogue states, terrorism, and so on - literally cannot be solved solely by throwing money at them. These are real problems that require careful thought by innovators, and it's important to get the innovators engaged.


That is the real goal of the Buffett-Gates challenge, because they know that they are in a position to turn serious people onto these issues. The money can be used for good, but it's the human capital that they really want. They want solutions ... and as businessmen and innovators, they know that you can never predict where the real solutions are going to come from. They want to get as many people as possible into the marketplace of solutions.


It's saving the world, free market style. You've gotta love it, America!

Oenophilanthropy

Oenophile (or Enophile): Someone who appreciates wine. (Wordnet)

Philanthropy: Voluntary promotion of human welfare. (Wordnet)

Oenophilanthropy (or Enophilanthropy): Appreciating wine in a way which actively seeks to promote human welfare. (Coined at 6:02 pm Eastern time, June 6, 2010, by AZJ. Feel free to use to your heart's content, but please link back to this posting!)

So let's imagine - just for the sake of argument - that you like wine. And let's assume that you're the support of person who likes to support worthwhile causes. How can these two things be linked together?

Well, I suppose that one option would be to establish some sort of wine-tasting charitable function to raise money for your favorite cause. And certainly that's a clever and worthwhile goal.

But another action that even the laziest of oenophiles could perform is to orient your wine-buying activities so that the money goes to businesses that themselves support philanthropic activities.

And there's certainly no shortage of them, as I learned when my mother handed me a page form Food and Wine magazine with the clever title "Grape Causes." (Although I think that Oenophilanthropy is clever, too.) They discuss some great wine-related giving programs:


Wine to Water: This group of oenophilanthropists have done just what I suggested above: raise money through benefit wine events, such as tastings, and use the proceeds to support water access projects around the world. The lack of clean, fresh water is one of the biggest world-wide problems, affecting over 1 billion people worldwide. The organization also produces their own wine label as a means of generating funds.


Indego Africa: This organization sells fair-trade handicrafts, with proceeds going to the Rwandan artisans who craft the items, as well as providing training in entrepreneurship, literacy, and computer skills. How does this impact the oenophilanthropist? Well, they have wine coasters and wine bags.


Boisset Family Estates' Fight Against Hunger: Each bottle of wine sold by the Boisset Family Estates winery results in the donation of three meals for families in need! This is an astounding donation, but it may be over. Though the Food and Wine report is from April 2010, the website itself indicates that this was in place for June through December 2009, with no indication (that I can find) that the program has been extended. They exceeded their goal of 1.2 million meals!


Fledgling Wine: A joint project of Twitter and Crushpad's custom winemaking, this new wine label is created to provide funds for the wonderful Room to Read project. Room to Read provides local-language books to impoverished areas around the world.


O Wine Company: 100% of the net profits from this wine goes to fund scholarships for at-risk youth. In 2009, the owners signed a contract with Oregon State University's Science and Math Integrated Learning Experience (SMILE) program to fund 5 scholarships over 5 years, resulting in a total of 25 needy students who will achieve financial assistance from O Wines.


Korks 4 Kids: This wine cork recycling program uses proceeds to support programs that help children, focusing initial efforts on the Autism Society of America (ASA). The organization's Rubber 4 Rugrats program also recycles rubber-based goods, such as tires, to raise money.


Help for Haiti: Wine producers were among the many people donating to Haiti relief, of course. The Spirit of the Americas (funded by Diageo) donated more than 45,000 pounds of food to Haiti. Constellation Brands provided medical supplies through an ongoing partnership with InterVol.

First Reflections - By the Numbers

Over the last 40 days, Amber and I have given all of our actual realized income to others - mostly in the form of donations to worthwhile non-profit organizations, but also in some more personal ways, such as giving out gift cards to a local grocery store, some generous birthday gifts, buying breakfasts for random people at a restaurant, and so on.

We have kept some money, as I outlined at the beginning. For example, we used the child support we receive from our oldest son's biological father to help with groceries, childcare, and other expenses. We also have a rental house which clears about $50 a month in profit, after the mortgage and other regular expenses are paid, and we put that $50 back for maintenance expenses. And we of course didn't give away money that we didn't get - so my paycheck deductions for taxes, insurance, 401(k) contributions, and so on were all done before the money was given away.

So we had two net paychecks from my day job and a monthly payment from About.com which we gave away. In addition, shortly into the project, we learned I was getting a bonus, and decided to give that as well ... but, again, taxes, 401(k) contributions, and some other things were taken out of that, and we only gave the remaining balance that made its way to us.

I say all of this to make it clear that we really focused on giving away the money that came into our lives during these 40 days, in an effort to stay true to the spirit of what we were doing. Even the $100 I received as the first payment on our sold pickup, which was given to me a few days prior to the start date, was mostly given away.

So now that it was all said and done, I was curious ... how much did it actually cost us financially?

Fortunately, I keep my financial records in Quicken Home & Business, so it's easy to check. This tracks everything - retirement accounts, business accounts, student loans, car loans, mortgages, checking accounts, savings accounts ... I even track how much I have in PayPal on this thing! So I can pull up a report which tells my net worth at the start of the project and my net worth at the end of the project, and figure out exactly how much my net worth changed over the course of giving all of our money away. (The only thing that isn't taken into account is any depreciation on our home or vehicles, or any other physical assets that we have.)

The difference in our overall financial picture, after having given away 40 days worth of income, is ....

$674.37

That's right. From February 15 to March 29, our net worth dropped by exactly $674.37.

But over the course of the project, I also taught a writing workshop which I haven't yet been paid for ... so once that's taken into account, the actual cost is less!

And that's in the immediate aftermath, not even taking into account anything else that may come along as a benefit in the coming weeks!

How is this possible?

Well, my first answer is: I'm not really sure.

I was expecting to be down about $2,000 or so dollars, to be honest, when I ran my original pre-project estimates. That was with us being incredibly frugal ... which we weren't. We normally are fairly frugal (or outright cheap), with a substantial portion of our income going toward debt repayment and savings. Once we unlocked the "emergency fund" and began living off of it, we didn't really exercise a ton of restraint. With the amount of time I was devoting to work and to the project, and Amber being in school full time, and a four month old baby, we spent much of our time fairly exhausted ... so if one of us suggested eating out, the other one typically jumped on the idea.

Since I knew it wasn't from frugal money management, I looked at the accounts to see where the increases were. They were pretty exclusively in our retirement and investment accounts, which is understandable, since these are the only accounts that can go up without putting money into them.

There was some inflow into these accounts, of course. The money that came in was from my 401(k) contributions and the company's match, on two paychecks and the bonus I received. In addition, there's a strange event I haven't been able to investigate yet, where more shares were deposited into my retirement account! I believe this is a result of my company's profit sharing plan, but I'm not sure. I'll have to investigate this further.

Still, these contributions account for a little bit over half of the increase in my retirement and investment accounts. The rest can be attributed to only one thing ... the stock market going up during this time.

Here's the curious thing about these numbers. Once I figure up the actual amount our net worth is down over these 40 days, and the amount we gave out, I notice an interesting relationship. We lost only about 10% of what we gave.

For the math challenged, let me provide an example. (These aren't the actual numbers involved, because I don't want you all knowing my exact salary.)

This would be like giving away $7,400 dollars and then finding that your net worth only dropped by about $700!

It's truly unexpected, and this almost ten percent ratio is a bit chilling. To quote my friend Annabella, "It went from serendipity to spooky." A unexpected tenfold increase in giving is not something that I expected.

I need to let it sink in a bit more to really have an opinion on this.

But your opinions, of course, are more than welcome!

Day 40: The Finale, or the First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

So today I woke up with a sense of relief that this crazy roller coaster ride which I got us on was finally coming to an end. Don't let this seem as if I'm disappointed in the experiment - far from it, I think this has been one of the best experiences of my life.

Still, the fact is that by setting a goal to give in this way, I turned it into a bit of a chore. From time to time, I'd reach the end of the day, exhausted, realizing that I hadn't really given anything ... and I can honestly say that, at those moments, I wasn't really a cheerful giver. So, while goals are nice, and it's good to set aside a portion of your income, I don't suggest turning it into a chore in any way.

But the project was what it was, and today it ends ... and my work of turning it into a book which people will want to buy begins. I'm actually really looking forward to it, and I have a great deal of confidence that the giving experiences I've had in my life and in this forty days will prove compelling enough to get the attention of a publisher.

So ... on to the day 40 gives:

First, some catch-up. You may recall that we were buying Joy a membership in the Aspire Indiana Farm, to provide her massive family with fresh vegetables over the summer. I went onto their website and signed Joy up, but did so by entering her contact information, including her e-mail. They sent a confirmation e-mail to her, but I need the invoice number from that e-mail in order to actually pay for it. It's been two weeks, and I'm still waiting on that invoice number. So I wrote a check to Aspire Indiana Farm for the amount of the CSA and am sitting it aside to pay for Joy's invoice once I get the number.

Similarly, my sister's birthday present (swim lessons for her 16 month old daughter and herself at the YMCA) continues to go unpaid, because she hasn't gone to the YMCA to find out the cost. So I just wrote a $50 check to the YMCA and am mailing it to her, which should be enough to cover the lessons.

With those expenses caught up, we were able to look at the money left over today and decide what to do. First things first, we stopped by the grocery store on the way to church, which was have a potluck lunch, to pick up our food.

Then, following lunch, we went out to my mother's house and I unloaded things from the back of her pickup truck. She'd moved up from Vincennes to Anderson (a three hour move) last fall, but hadn't been able to bring some of her outdoor supplies, including some spring flowers and bulbs, and so Amber drove down with her yesterday to collect some of those things. The truck, therefore, needed unloading today ... and I did that in relatively short order.

After Mom's truck was unloaded, I then proceeded to my dreaded give of the day ... Locks of Love. Yes, you are correct, I came nowhere close to reaching my $10,000 goal for Heifer International in 40 days, and originally I set this as a condition for me to contribute my hair. The problem is that it just didn't work, so I was left with a decision ... either give up or not.

We decided not. Amber and I remain committed to raising the $10,000, even if we now realize that a 40 day time limit is perhaps a bit limiting (at least in our current situation). And since we will raise the money, I figured I might as well go ahead and donate the hair now and get it over with. So now .... the before photos:

And the "after" photo (more to come):

It feels strange to be without the tail, and I'm certainly not too sure how I feel about the new do (although Amber claims she likes it), but ... it was (relatively) painless, and the hair will be used to make a wig for a child with medical hair loss, which is a far better use than being on my sorry old head!

For that matter, my hair will probably be a bit healthier now and this may prevent the slow thinning that I was beginning to notice. So, once again, this act of giving holds within it a reward, which has been a recurring theme throughout this experiment, and is of course the very concept that inspired me to start it in the first place.

And having started it, it's now time to finish it ... which means that the last bit of my income has to go away. We gave a $25 tip to the hairdresser who performed the cut above. (The Great Clips hair salon chain, or at least the one we went to, do not charge for Locks of Love donation cuts, so in order to tip the stylist on the debit card we use for our giving fund we had to buy some hair product. It cost under $10, which is less than the haircut itself would have cost.)

When I got home, I was ready to pay out the last of the money ... and then the phone rang. Our local firemen association was soliciting donations. Yes, they could have some money. (If they'd called 20 minutes later, they'd have been out of luck.)

The final two donations are in honor of my friend Robert J. Sawyer, the science fiction author who wrote the novel FlashForward, which provides the basis of the ABC television series of the same name. (He's known for many other things, but at the moment that's the biggest one.)

Early on, I reached out to a handful of friends and asked for some ideas of charities they like to give to, so that I could profile them. Unfortunately, the 40 days slipped by faster than I really anticipated, and I didn't get to focus quite as much on profiles of individual charities as I would have liked ... but still, these two charities are incredibly worthwhile, so I decided to split the remains of our giving money between them: 

• The Huntington's Disease Society of America
• American Diabetes Association

Note: Rob is Canadian, so he donates to the Canadian branch of these charities.

I recommend Rob's 1997 novel Frameshift, which features a main character who does, in fact, suffer from Huntington's Disease, a horribly debilitating and ultimately fatal neurological disorder, as a enjoyable way to learn further information about the disease. (And yes, I do realize that's a slightly ironic choice of words.)

To learn more about Diabetes, just follow a modern western diet of fast food and high fructose corn syrup ... you'll get it eventually and learn all about it.

And with those donations ... the 40 Days of Giving project is officially complete, but the giving does, of course, continue. In the coming days, I'll be posting some immediate reflections on the whole experience but one thing is certain - this experiment is just the beginning. Amber and I are continuing to raise money for Heifer International, and other charities, and we're looking for ways that we can get the proceeds of the book (once it's published) to help promote further giving as well.

I think some of the results of this project will absolutely fascinate you. Stay tuned!

Share Your Giving Experience

Have you ever had an experience where giving has seemed to, remarkably, result in a reward?

How has giving (either as the giver or the receiver) impacted your life?

On this blog, I've been sharing my own giving experiences and thoughts, but that's just one life ... and one of the things this has helped me learn is that one life is fairly meaningless unless it's connected to other lives. So, in that spirit, I'm asking all readers of this blog to share their own stories of giving by leaving a comment on this blog post. 

Please, when leaving your story, keep in mind that this is a public site and anyone can view the posts left here, so personal information should be left out of the post. (If you wish to share something very personal, or would like a response from me, contact me at azjauthor@gmail.com.) Some of these stories may be included in the book 40 Days of Giving, so by posting you are giving permission for that, but anything that goes in the book will be edited and any personal details will be removed.

200 Fans - Time for a Shameless Plea

You've helped us reach 200 Facebook fans on the 40 Days of Giving fan page, which is nice. Great, in fact, given it only started about a month and a half ago, and I honestly haven't promoted it too much. (In comparison, my Andrew Zimmerman Jones fan page has just over 465 fans, but that's been around since last November. It focuses more heavily on my science writing, so has a different potential audience.)

But 200 is a significant number, because it means it's very easy to do math in your head. $10,000 (the amount we're trying to raise for Heifer International) is also a nice round number. In fact, if you take $10,000 and divide it by 200, you get ... $50 per fan.

In other words, when you (and everyone else reading this blog) raise $50 for Heifer International, then our $10,000 goal would be reached.

So that's exactly what I'm asking. Each and every one of you can commit to raising $50 for Heifer International - either by donating themselves or collecting donations from others ... by next Sunday, March 28, when the 40 Days of Giving Project ends.

This is totally do-able. I'm certain of it. Most people blow $25 going out to dinner, so if they can be convinced to stay home instead, they won't even notice the lack of money.

If you're willing to aim higher, then do so ... because we all know that the vast majority of people will fall short, or not even try. Becoming a fan on Facebook is about the easiest thing in the world to do, and so I don't expect everyone to accept this call to action.

But if even half do take up the challenge, and if I am able to motivate a few people to go above and beyond, then we can reach the $10,000 goal by our deadline.

So call your friends, call your family, and see if they'll be willing to contribute to making poor families around the world into farmers who can feed themselves, and gain some income, in a self-sustainable way.

You can make a difference for generations to come ... but the first step is trying.

And remember - if we reach our goal by midnight on March 28, I will cut my hair for Locks of Love, where it will be made into a wig for children with medical hair loss. Further, I will provide rewards to anyone who collects over $500 toward the team goal!

Day 31: The Postman Gives Twice

The mail brought us two different giving opportunities over the last couple of days - one of them local to Indiana and one more global in scope. So we took advantage of both of them.

The Gift of Song and Laughter

For several weeks, Amber has been attending a yoga class at the local Unity Church of Anderson, and I've attended a meditation class there. We've gone to a couple of services, as well, and are finding it a relatively good fit for what we're looking for.

Well, last night when Amber went to Unity for yoga class, something unexpected happened. An envelope had come to the church addressed to me, in the care of the pastor. The pastor knew that Amber attended the yoga class, so left it for her there. Presumably the pastor, having learned of our project, passed the word along to some sort of mailing list or forum or something, and someone sent a response to the only address that they knew - to the church from which they'd heard about it.


Both Amber and I were thinking the same thing, because we'd been really trying to figure out how to get to the $10,000 goal for Heifer International. Could this possibly be a check for Heifer? Would it just fall into our lap like this? Did things like this really, truly happen? Was The Secret actually right?


This was actually a fairly foolish way of thinking, but not because such a thing is absolutely outside the realm of possibility. (I still check the mail expecting a $10,000 check, just in case.) The fact is that the envelope was 6" x 9" and padded, which was way more than what would be needed for a check. 


Still, it could have included a book or a pamphlet or something, along with the check. 


There was hope. 


Right?


Well, it wasn't a check.


But it was  a very nice gift: a CD by a comedic singer named Greg Tamblyn, called Analog Brain in a Digital World. There was a note included which commended my efforts and also directed me toward track 12, "A Brief History of God (G-String Theory)." The CD was really funny, and we're both very pleased to receive it. (Although, again, if you wish to send a $10,000 check, I'll be checking the mail for it daily. Apparently, if you address mail to me at Unity Church of Anderson, it will find its way to me.)


The musician, Greg Tamblyn, also suggested in the note that I should check out the charity TreesForLife.org.


I guess I knew where I was giving the next day (i.e. today).


As it turns out, Trees for Life is actually a really great charity. They have the highest possible rating on Charity Navigator, and they have a similar "pass on the gift" philosophy to Heifer International. (In fact, Heifer was founded by a member of Church of the Brethren, and Trees of Life indicates it has a connection to Church of the Brethren's volunteer arm. Also, their web pages follow fairly similar layouts. I'm not sure yet if the connection is more substantive than that, though.)


When founded in the early 1980s, Trees for Life focused on planting fruit trees in impoverished regions. Since then, the organization has grown into supporting a wide range of locally-initiated projects around the world. Since the programs are initiated by members of the community, they automatically have a local base to work from in getting community involvement, and aren't just outsiders who are trying to implement their own ideas.


Plus, as with Heifer International, this charity gives you a sort of "shopping fix" while you're donating, because you get to add things to your shopping cart. Your donations can now include gifts of trees, books, libraries, cook stoves, learning centers, computers, and various educational materials.


Masonic Giving
In the standard mail today, I also received a letter from the Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons. The Indiana Freemasons were sending me address labels, and asking for a donation.


This is actually a fairly standard ploy to gain responses. Marketing people have figured out a lot of ways to heighten our likelihood to respond to something and I think it's good that we all know about it. (For a more comprehensive list, interested readers should look into Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Way to Be Persuasive.) Providing a minor gift - address labels or a notepad, for example - increases the likelihood that a recipient will respond to the mailing. Adding a personal note, handwritten, on the letter also helps. And a sticky note on the document? You bet - it helps personalize the mail and, therefore, increases the possibility that the person will positively respond.

One of the major persuasive strategies is getting people to make a small concession in the beginning, such as putting up a small yard sign, before asking for a bigger concession, such as a monetary donation. Since people have agreed, there's a psychological predisposition to respond favorably to a subsequent request. (Did you become my fan on Facebook? Then you should donate to Heifer International!)

If you live in the United States, you likely received a notice about a week ago letting you know that the census  was coming and you should respond. (You have responded, haven't you?) This is the same sort of thing. In fact, a friend of mine who works in marketing called this a "fluffer," presumably because it gets the recipient ready to do the real work you're asking them to do. (If you don't know what this has to do with the word "fluffer," you'll need to look that up on your own. Kids may read this blog.)


Still, completely aware of all of these tactics, I went ahead and donated to them. Just because these persuasive tactics are used has no indication on whether or not the organization is worthy of the donation. Really, if an opportunity to give comes up during the project, I don't see that I can really pass it up. (Only 9 more days, charity telemarketers!) So they got a donation from us today, as well.

Day 30: Reaching Out to At-Risk Youths

Today, Amber and I drove down to Indianapolis to interview Mary Byrne, the Executive Director of a local charity that I'd heard about through a friend who had, several years ago, volunteered there. It's the Indiana Youth Group, an organization that focuses on providing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Questioning (LGBT) youth a safe, accepting environment where they can get mentoring and interact with other kids going through some of the same issues they're having.

One reason this is so important is that LGBT youths are about 8 times more likely than heterosexual youth to commit suicide, according to Ms. Byrne. Similar increases are evident for other negative behaviors, such as smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction, and unsafe sex. In a recent episode of PBS's Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, the following disturbing statistic was also cited:

"Nationwide, 20 to 30 percent of homeless kids are LGBT. In New York City it is one in three, according to Zak Rittenhouse, who works in a homeless shelter for gay and straight youths."

While these facts are incredibly alarming, there's reason for hope. According to Byrne, a recent study showed that virtually all of this is related to the rejection these youths receive from their parents, family, schools, churches, and other social circles. When looking at LGBT youth who are rated as having high acceptance, the instances of risky behavior drop to be virtually identical to heterosexual youths. [Update 3/19/2010: The study is entitled "Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults" by Caitlin Ryan, David Huebner, Rafael Diaz, and Jorge Sanchez, published in Pediatrics: Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.]

This reminds me of some other evidence I've discussed before, in We Are Not Killer Apes!, where I pointed out the strong role that environment plays on our altruistic behaviors, as demonstrated by various primates who show major behavioral shifts when there is a corresponding change in their social influences.

I think it's safe to say that anyone who grows up being rejected by the people who are supposed to love, care for, and support them will be more likely to internalize that rejection and manifest it in risky behaviors. After all, they're continually being taught that they're worthless, so why not act like they're worthless.

This is very personal to me, because my father is gay.  I've never really discussed his own formative years in this regard, but for me, this created a lot of confusion while I was growing up. Was my dad a bad guy? Since he and my mom were divorced, I didn't see him that often, but he certainly didn't seem like a bad guy. Was he going to hell? Was he evil? What did that make me?  Was my very birth a mistake? Was I gay? Was that why I had trouble talking to girls? Maybe they were sensing something that I didn't know about myself. Was I going to hell?

So yes, to answer your question, I have always over thought things.

The point is that even though I'm not gay (despite my profound love of showtunes), the fact that society puts such a stigma upon being gay had a lot of bleed-over emotional impact on me during my formative years. In fact, it's really just in the last couple of years that I've had anything positive to say about any aspect of Christianity, because I associated it so strongly with incorrect and unfounded attacks upon my father's worth as an human being, and, by extension, my own.

All of this negativity is due to a social atmosphere where rejection is the dominant motif. But if you change the environment to one of acceptance, while these youth will still have many hassles to deal with, they are less likely to internalize the negativity as part of their identity. They're less likely to take the labels provided by others and hang it around their own neck, because they'll see that there are alternatives.

That is really what drove the creation of the Indiana Youth Group in 1988. A group of volunteers from an Indianapolis crisis hotline for homosexuals got together in one of their living rooms to discuss a problem: when gay teens called in, they didn't have anyplace to send them for appropriate counseling or help. There was nowhere for these children to turn with their problems.

So they created one.

Today, the Indiana Youth Group serves kids from ages 12 to 20. (They also have a transitional program, helping those ages 21 through 24, so they don't just have to kick them to the curb.) Byrne recounted a busy period last year when the IYG was averaging 85 youths hanging out at the facility each evening, many of them playing volleyball (badly) in the court in their back yard. The majority of the IYG participants are from the older end of the spectrum, because the IYG facility doesn't sit on a bus line (they're trying to find a new facility more accessible to non-driving youths), but Byrne says that even for those who don't come, she thinks that just knowing the facility is out there may provide some emotional support. The IYG also now has an outreach coordinator who works with LGBT groups at high schools across the state, so that they're supporting those who can't make it in for their activities.

The majority of Indiana Youth Group's funding comes from grants, and about 15% comes from their fundraisers - just last Saturday they held an art auction, which included both professional artists and pieces created by the youths who frequent the IYG. The remaining 25% - 30% of their funding comes from the donations of individual supporters ... which includes, after today's give, Amber and myself.

Byrne says that, for her, the major benefits from giving her time to help others have been the rich relationships that she has developed. Maybe some are paying forward a mentorship that they once received at a crucial time in their own lives. Still others, she notes, support their work as a way of trying to help the next generation avoid the same problems they had to deal with.

I can relate to this. The negativity related to homosexually left me conflicted for years, just because I might have picked up a few gay chromosomes somewhere in utero! Kids who are actually feeling these emotions must have it way worse than I did, and if any of them can be spared isolation because of it, I say it's a noble effort. We're created to live with others, as communal beings, and being forced to seal some portion of yourself off is not - can not - be a healthy lifestyle. It hinders our ability to truly connect not only with others, but also with ourselves. The teenage years are where we really begin to determine who we are going to become and that process of self-discovery is hard enough in the best situation.

Kudos to the IYG for providing these kids with an environment where they can be who they were meant to be ... themselves.

Day 29: The Gift of Time

I missed yesterday's give because Amber had the debit card that we use to access the giving fund, and she went to bed early. She went to bed early again tonight, and once again I'm hesitant to wake her up to get the card, and I don't know where she's left it.

Still, overall, today was successful on the giving front. We packaged up the books which had been requested from a Day 5, and finally got them in the mail. (Sorry for the delay on that.) Amber also set up the food drive boxes that she's getting together for the Student Leadership Academy at Ivy Tech Community College.

I am taking this week off from the day job to focus on this (and other) writing projects, so you'd think I'd be getting a lot done, but not today. At around 1:00 pm, Amber rushed home because our car, which is in need of an oil change, was making curious sounds - so I went to Sears for an oil change, taking How to Change the World along with me for company. The oil change went relatively uneventfully.

Then I got home just in time to give a family member a lift to the hospital, because he couldn't drive himself. On the way home, I got a call from Amber, asking if I could come to my mother's to help move a few things. This turns into a substantial activity that takes the majority of my afternoon, as I moved a major pile of wood from her front yard, where it had been left when a tree was removed, into the back yard.

When I went to pick Elijah up from daycare, and was on the way back to my mother's to continue moving the wood, I was fairly upset. Frustrated, my brain was firing off in its usual way, "I really should be at home working on the book. I can't believe I'm wasting my time moving wood. This is not helping me at all on the project!"

Then it hit me - this was the project. I was helping my mother with something she needed done. That, and that alone, was my project for the time being. The book, I reminded myself, will be written. Now it was time to move the wood.

Time is one of the hardest things for me to give, because I feel like I have so little of it. I work a full-time job and run my own business, which essentially includes (at any given time) two distinct part-time jobs (About.com and whatever other writing project I'm working on). But today, I felt not only willing, but glad, to be giving up my time for this task. There was a strange peace in it (except for the brief period of time where Elijah attempted to argue with me over whether or not he was allowed to play in the truck bed with an unstable mountain of firewood), and that was nice to reach.

Anyway, end of story: I got the entire pile of wood moved, and now on to the next day of giving ....

Social Entrepreneurs

Yesterday, Amber and I went to see our lawyer about the possibility of starting up a non-profit, which would focus on helping establish community gardens around Anderson ... as a means of providing fresh vegetables, beautifying the community, and building stronger community relationships.

We left with a pile of paperwork, and the inclination that maybe non-profit status wasn't the way for us to go.

What It Takes to Become a Non-Profit
Becoming a non-profit corporation is not incredibly hard, but it's also not for the faint of heart. You file your articles of incorporation, which turns you into a non-profit corporation. This requires a fair amount of paperwork and, in Indiana, a $750 filing fee - reduced to $300 if you anticipate having a relatively low income your first year. (I forget the exact cut-off, but I think it's less than $25,000 in the first year.) In addition, there are some paperwork and fees associated with securing a unique corporate name within the state.

This makes you a non-profit corporation, but doesn't make you tax exempt. To do that, you have to file separately, both at the state level and then with the federal government for 501(c)(3) status. This allows donors to deduct their gifts as charitable donations. More important for our purposes would be that it would allow the non-profit entity to apply for the many community development grants which only allow 501(c)(3) corporations as applicants.

Beyond that, there are some annual filing requirements and such. It would mean getting an accountant, because it's a bit more than I can handle myself with TurboTax. (One person we spoke to suggested always having an accountant on the board of directors, to work pro bono, which does seem like a clever idea. If accountants are aware of this gambit, I'm sure they run from invitations to join these boards.) To apply for many grants, there have to be regular audits of your organization's financial records.

Check out more on starting a nonprofit at the About.com Nonprofit website.

Fiscal Sponsorship
Through all of this, I began to wonder how much of this hassle was really needed to do good work in the community. To be sure, if you're going to need a lot of supplies (or staff), then you'll probably need access to lots of grant funding over a long term, which means an established organization with 501(c)(3) status is very helpful.

However, a community garden primarily needs start-up capital (and land); the year-after-year upkeep could be handled by membership fees from members of the community who wish to participate. You'd need at least one person at the beginning to devote themselves to getting the thing up and running, but eventually it would be run entirely be volunteers from within the specific neighborhood.

So establishing a 501(c)(3) for this particular activity may just be overkill. What if we sought out an existing 501(c)(3), whose mission was in line with community gardens, and could convince them to let us write a grant on their behalf to provide funding for this activity? In fact, if the organization is well enough established, they may have experienced grant writers on staff, or know of some who can be asked to help. And, since the organization would presumably already be one which is local to the neighborhood in question, it would have a vested interest in seeing that neighborhood thrive.

There is, in fact, a name for this type of joint activity: Fiscal Sponsorship. Though it may sound a bit shady, it's actually perfectly above board (assuming, of course, that you're actually performing the work for which you're getting the tax-exempt money). Under this scenario, a non-profit acts as the sponsor of another organization without tax-exempt status - specifically so that the non-exempt organization is able to access grants and tax-exempt funds, such as donations.

Social Entrepreneur
There's still another possibility, and one which wouldn't have occurred to either Amber or myself in relation to community gardens on our own. A social entrepreneur is someone who uses entrepreneurial methods (sometimes including a successful for-profit business) to achieve desired social outcomes. Author David Bornstein profiles many amazing social entrepreneurs in his book, How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.

It's unclear to me how small neighborhood community gardens could really fall under the rubric of a profitable social entrepreneurial activity, but to others it must seem natural. In the last two weeks there have actually been two people who - unsolicited, mind you! - offered up that they might be interested in investing in such a business, if we could figure out how to make it profitable.

While I don't know have a vision for a community garden business, the idea of social entrepreneurship has taken a strong hold with me in other ways. I had been considering starting a non-profit of some kind eventually - more of a private foundation, which funded other activities - but in reading Bornstein's book, it became clear that this wasn't really necessary. As a for-profit business, I can still designate funds toward philanthropic activities, grants, scholarships, awards, and so on, seeking out worthy recipients on my own.

Surprisingly, the philanthropic arm of Google - called Google.org - is apparently set up as a for-profit entity, although one of its functions is to manage grant-giving, including from the tax-exempt Google Foundation. Philanthropy is so central to Google's vision that their founders made "making the world a better place" (as well as "don't be evil") part of their corporate mission when announcing the IPO of their stock back in 2004.

And now, we are in the process of establishing the Google Foundation. We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1% of Google's equity and profits in some form. We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems. - "An Owner's Manual" for Google Shareholders

Corporations like Google are not successful despite their commitment to making the world a better place, but specifically because of this commitment. It makes good sense all around. Bornstein makes it clear that he sees social entrepreneurs as "transformative forces."

... it takes creative individuals with fixed determination and indomitable will to propel the innovation that society needs to tackle its toughest problems.... an important social change frequently begins with a single entrepreneurial author: one obsessive individual who sees a problem and envisions a new solution, who takes the initiative to act on that vision, who gathers resources and builds organizations to protect and market that vision, who provides the energy and sustained focus to overcome the inevitable resistance, and who - decade after decade - keeps improving, strengthening, and broadening that vision until what was once a marginal idea has become a new norm. - David Bornstein, How to Change the World

An ambitious goal, which many would certainly mock. But if even a few of these visionaries can make it work ... that's a world I want to live in.

Day 22: Grocery Giving, Take Two

Let's imagine that you were walking into a grocery store and a man, along with his beautiful wife and baby son, walk up to you. He (or his wife) offers you a $20 gift card to this very grocery store (where, presumably, you are about to spend money). No strings attached. Do you accept?

Well, in our informal study this morning, it turns out that about one-third of the people would turn it down.

Era of Mistrust

Amber and I offered $20 gift cards outside of a local Pay-Less grocery store (not to be confused with the shoe store chain), located in one of the more economically-challenged neighborhoods in town, to people as they walked into the store. We were able to ask 18 people, and 7 of them turned us down. (One of the men who turned us down, however, came back as leaving the store and asked if he could have one.)

So, out of a total of 18, only 12 agreed to accept a free $20 gift card.

One of the most memorable exchanges came from a woman I'm thinking of as the Zen master of acceptance. I said, as she approached, "Would you like a $20 gift card?" Without pausing or even slowing her stride, she took the card and said, "Thanks." There was no hesitation whatsoever. She just accepted the experience for what it was and kept moving.

Others were a bit less fluid or immediate in their acceptance. Some wanted to know more about what we were doing, with some measure of skepticism, but not enough to reject the notion out of hand. When asked for more information, we just explained that we were finding different ways to give for a period of 40 days, and this was one of our ideas.

One woman, upon being offered the gift card, said, "Hold on, let me get my friend!" She went out to the car, where her friend had been waiting while she went into the store. The friend, who originally seemed somewhat disgruntled about being asked to leave the comfort of the vehicle, changed her tune when we explained what we were doing. "People just don't do things like this anymore. No one does anything like this," she said.

So 6 people, when offered a free gift card, turned it down. The immediate question one may ask is, "What the f*** is wrong with these people?"

The overwhelming sense that I got was that people just genuinely didn't believe us, or didn't believe that there were no strings attached.

Full disclosure: In fairness, today there was actually a slight ulterior motive. We'd been interviewed a while back by a freelance writer for our local newspaper, the Anderson Herald Bulletin, and I got a call yesterday from a reporter that they'd like photos to go with the story. We'd long been planning to do this sort of a giveaway, and it seemed like one of the most photogenic options. So there was a newspaper photographer nearby taking pictures, discretely, of the people who accepted the gift cards.

Still, I honestly don't think that the people who turned us down actually noticed the guy with the camera off to the side. Even if they did, I'm still not sure what that would have to do with their willingness to accept the money. They could ask, "What's up with the camera?" or say, "I don't want my picture taken," and still gotten the money. They genuinely showed absolutely no interest in being given money.

Is it possible that these people were so overwhelmed by their own belief that good things just don't happen in their lives that, even when extra money is literally held out to them, they are incapable of accepting their good fortune?

Studies would indicate that this might actually be the case. In The Luck Factor, psychologist Richard Wiseman recounts a study where two participants are asked to walk down a street into a cafe. One of the participants was a person who considered himself lucky, while the other considered herself unlucky.

Prior to each participant's journey to the cafe, the researchers placed a 5 pound note (this was, apparently, in England) right outside the cafe's door.

What was the result?

The lucky person noticed the 5 pound note immediately and picked it up, striking up a conversation with one of the confederates in the cafe and buying him a coffee. The unlucky person, on the other hand, walked right past the 5 pound note without even noticing it, and sat alone in the cafe, speaking to no one. Though they had exactly the same potential for experiences, the lucky person was able to take advantage of them while the unlucky person was not.

Feeling unlucky tangibly makes you less likely to experience good fortune, even when it's right in front of you. Your senses, emotions, and thoughts just will not let you even draw the good fortune into your life. Among the many intriguing correlations that Wiseman sites are the following, which he uses to define his "luck profile":

• Lucky people tend to be more extroverted; unlucky people tend to be more introverted
• Lucky people tend to be more relaxed; unlucky people tend to be more anxious, worried, and neurotic.
• Lucky people are open to new experiences; unlucky people don't like trying new things

This is, I think, what these people experienced as they walked past us, without even asking questions about why a strange person was offering them gift cards. They were not open to the new experience, and many of them looked a bit anxious as they passed us by.

And I'm betting that, if you asked them at the end of the day whether anything unusual happened today, they would say no. For them, things like that never happen.

They didn't just turn down the card ... they turned down the very possibility that the gift card actually existed.

"The Man" Tries to Bring Us Down
Actually, we bought 15 of the gift cards, which means we left with 3 gift cards remaining. Our intention was to give away all 15 cards, but we were thwarted ... by some administrator (assistant manager or something - I couldn't see the actual title on her badge) who didn't like us standing out front, giving away gift cards (which we had purchased there) to patrons, encouraging them to spend money and have positive feelings about their store. In essence, we were offering free advertising for the Pay-Less (if I were given free gift cards at a store, I'd be more likely to return), and still, they wouldn't let us do it.

The reason offered was that there was "no solicitation" on the premises. We explained that we weren't soliciting anything, just giving away gift cards to their own store. The woman replied that she appreciated us buying the gift cards, but we "couldn't" give them away, citing the photographer as one of the reasons. He offered his card, and explained that the article would run on Saturday, but she was still adamant - we could not give the gift cards away in front of their store, even though we weren't trying to get anything from the people.

Full disclosure: I offered my business card to a couple of people who expressed some measure of interest in what we were doing, as a means of expediting the exchange. "If you want to find out more, you can go to the website." But this was the extent of any "solicitation" going on. If I'd been really thinking, I should have offered my card to the manager when she asked us to leave ... this was one Scrooge that could have used some uplifting.

In fairness to the woman, she may have been ordered to chase us off by her own boss - I don't know how high up in the hierarchy she was - but still, it means someone had a problem with us giving away gift cards, in the midst of an economic recession, outside of a grocery store.

We had talked to a couple of other employees, who seemed to think the idea was very cool, so I wonder if they didn't pass it along, meaning no harm, only to have the telephone game reach someone who decided that such behavior could not be allowed to continue. Possibly the person who made the decision had no real idea what we were doing, and wasn't particularly interested in finding out.

I have little sympathy for this sort of mindless bureaucratic mindset. Regardless of what the policy is in place, there's a person who has to make the decision about whether or not to intervene in this sort of situation. Perhaps, had we pointed out that we only had three gift cards left, the person could have been talked into letting us stay ... but I wasn't inclined to help people spend money at their store.

There are two other Pay-Less stores in town, and we'll hand out the other three gift cards at one of them.

And the Pay-Less which told us to leave will never get our business again.

This reminds me a of a story from Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture. He recounts a story where, as a child, he went to Walt Disney World and accidentally broke a $10 Disney salt-and-pepper shaker set that he and his sister bought for their parents. While in tears, an adult suggested to them that they take it back to the store. They did so, told the truth about what happened (he dropped it), and got a new salt-and-pepper shaker set to replace it, free of charge.

The Pausch parents were so impressed by the story that, as they performed volunteer work with English-as-a-second-language students, they regularly brought bus loads of these students from Maryland to Disney World, because they considered it such an incredibly positive experience. Randy Pausch estimated that his family spent, over the years, more than $100,000 on tickets, food, souvenirs, and other expenses at Disney World in the time since someone decided to give away a $10 salt-and-pepper shaker to a couple of kids.

As Pausch hints, it's highly unlikely that modern policies at Disney World would allow any employee to give away a souvenir for free to replace one broken by a kid's carelessness.

Little acts of generosity can have a big impact, and sometimes the policies in place remove the ability to perform these little acts. If you're in a position of leadership, you could be missing out on a lot of good opportunities if you enforce the letter of a policy, even in cases where the spirit of the policy doesn't apply.

Of course, if you're in a position of leadership, you are also in a position to cultivate a culture in which giving opportunities are embraced at all levels, rather than avoided, and see what transpires. Who knows, you may just inspire someone to build a windmill in Africa.