You Can Change The World

December 31, 2007

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In a brilliant blogpost - The Art Of Philanthropy, Dwayne Lattimore urges us not to wait until we can afford to make a bigger contribution to give something back. There’s things we can do now, on a smaller scale to improve the lives of others.

Of course, most of us make contributions to charity often. But have you ever felt guilty when doing so, because you know you could be doing more to help? I know I certainly have.

And many of us do start a business in the hope that we will eventually be able to help change the world. But, what if eventually never comes?

We can help so many people, if we do something now, instead of waiting until we have more time, or more money. Think about it this way - the efforts of 100 people all contributing a small amount of time can achieve far more than the efforts of one person putting in every single hour they have. But, where do you start when you’re spending virtually all your waking hours trying to grow your business?

It can be overwhelming just thinking about it can’t it? There’s so many people who need your help and so little time. And you have to be realistic and honest with yourself about how much time and effort you’ll actually be able to give. Because if you take on too much and you crash and burn, you’ll not be helping anyone.

If you’re going to volunteer your time to help others, in the early stages of your business, it’s probably wise to help in an area where you don’t have to learn a lot of new skills to be of any use.

For example, I have decided to help sufferers of PTSD and their families in 2008. I didn’t want to go down that route initially because I’ve had PTSD for many years myself, and I almost felt there was something selfish about wanting to help those with similar problems.

But, it’s a whole lot easier to help people when you understand the problems they’re facing, and have some idea of how to help them deal with it. And also, if those affected by trauma get help very early on, they may not suffer PTSD for the rest of their lives. So, helping would be very rewarding.

What are you planning to do to help others this year? Is there a cause you feel passionate about? Or is there an area in which you can put your skills or knowledge to good use?

If you’re not sure where to start, Tim Ferris has some great ideas in this blogpost: The Karmic Capitalist: Should I Wait Until I’m Rich To Give Back?

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Comments

5 Responses to “You Can Change The World”

Mrs. Micah on December 31st, 2007 9:39 pm

Well, last year I made a batch of quilts to raise money for Alzheimer’s research. I’d like to do more of that this year. And perhaps start a depression blog—it’s something I’ve struggled with so much and I’d like to encourage others. But I’m not sure about it yet.
Catherine Lawson on January 1st, 2008 10:25 am

Hi Mrs M. Happy New Year. The quilting sounds great. I’m guessing it must take a good while to complete each one. Do you sell them to people you know or put them on ebay?

I noticed you’d done a few posts targeted at people with depression recently and I guessed you had been affected by it.

A depression blog sounds great if you have the time to start another blog without it affecting your existing blog. You have some great posts on there - I really enjoy reading it.
Ian Denny on January 1st, 2008 6:46 pm

There is so much you can do within a business to help a good cause.

The biggest challenge though is guilt. I’ll explain. One of the reasons many businesses don’t engage with a charity is that they don’t want to be seen to be gaining.

But you can achieve a win-win-win situation. The charity wins. The people donating money win. And you win.

Helping a charity in some fundraising need only take a little of your time, but it can achieve great results and get publicity.

Forgive me Cath for linking here, but it’s the easiest way to explain.

First, think of a business challenge you have. It could be the need for sales. Or improved efficiency. Or in our case customer service.

Next, think of an activity that can simultaneously help you tackle the business issue and raise funds for your favourite cause.

Then just do it.

In our case we wanted to increase our focus on customer service. So we decided that if we got less than 100% excellent scores in our monthly satisfaction survey, one of the director’s would take a public forfeit.

After the lauch month to get things rolling, I was publicly custard-pied at Â£5 a go. Of course many people contributed more than Â£5, and it total we raised Â£600. The month after, my colleague we auctioned off as an IT slave for the day and raised a further Â£400.

The result? Money for the cause. Each of the donators were publicly thanks and got a little publicity themselves. In the case of the person who won the auction, they got some IT work done they would have paid for anyway.

And us? We got some publicity with a full page feature in the local paper.

Forgive the links:

http://www.multisolutions.co.uk/index.php/news/liverpool-daily-post-picks-up-on-it-support-customer-service-forfeits/

and:

http://www.multisolutions.co.uk/index.php/news/a-huge-thank-you-to-the-following-people/

So use a little imagination and get win-win-win to help your favourite cause and be able to justify the time because it helps get your business a profile too.
Mrs. Micah on January 1st, 2008 9:46 pm

Thanks, Catherine,

The quilts for Alzheimer’s actually go to an organization which does the selling for us. They have their own auction site. It’s pretty cool.

And then sometimes I try to sell quilts on ebay or Etsy or to people to raise money for other things.

I’m still recovering from major depression which was horrible about 3 years ago. It’s a lot better now, but still a burden. My husband is also chronically depressed, so I’m used to living with it.
cathlawson on January 2nd, 2008 7:28 am

Hi Ian - don’t worry, I saved your post from the spam catcher! It is fine to link to charities on here.

And it’s good that you’re sharing what you’ve been doing with readers as they can also try something similar in their business.

I think you are right about the guilt thing though. But, as long as the company concerned actually cares about the charity too - as I know you do, there is no reason to feel guilty.

Mrs M - that is brilliant - please feel free to put a link to the auction site here. I’m actually going to put a few of these links on here at some point.

Depression is an awful thing. I shot you an email earlier this morning. It sounds as though this isn’t a good time of year for you and I hope things get better soon.