Everyday Giving Blog

What Would You Give To A Mugger?

"I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It's as simple as it gets in this complicated world."

This is a quote from Julio Diaz. Julio was recently mugged in the subway at New York City. He not only gave his wallet, but since the robber was going to be mugging other people, Julio gave him his coat to keep warm. This led to the two of them having dinner together in a nearby diner (and the mugger paid for the meal!)

This is an incredible story on the power of a giving lifestyle. There's something in this story for each of us as we look at our own life. Just how giving are we in our everyday life? Even in the moment of incredible stress (imagine being mugged), is our natural response to give?

Read the entire article from NPR.

...post by guest blogger, Scott Couchenour, founder of Serving Strong.

Tips For Successful Fundraising Events: The Giving Carnival for March 2008

Welcome to the March 2008 issue of the Giving Carnival. The Giving Carnival provides you with the best blog posts on the topic of Giving.

The theme for March 2008 is: Tips For Successful Fundraising Events.

Check out each of the blog posts listed below. Apply one or more of the tips to make your next fundraising event more successful.

A Tale of Two Special Events

by Joanne Fritz

During the worst special event I ever attended, I excused myself and hung out in the restroom until I thought the guest speaker was probably done with her awful speech.

She was a well-known actress who thought we would all be as interested in her life story as she was, including many lurid details. Her speech seemed to go on forever, making me think the event planners had either not given her a time limit, or that she had ignored it. more>>

Leadership Tips for Successful Fundraising Events

by Christopher Scott

I really like Roger Carr’s topic for this month’s Giving Carnival. I’ve always believed that principles are important, but small tips are just as important when you add them all together. So I’ve put together Six Leadership Tips for Successful Fundraising Events.

Six Tips for Leaders of Successful Fundraising Events

1) Start Early - I started working on the outline for this article a little more than three weeks before it was due to Roger. I easily could have wrote it the night before the deadline, more>>

Successful Fundraising Event? "Share Why You Care"

by Michael Gibbons

Charity Navigator evaluates over 5,300 of "America's largest charities." [that does not include the thousands more local and grassroot organizations let alone bake sales, car washes & candy sales] and you wonder why it's hard to fundraise, hard to set your cause apart!? The point: Almost all of these are worthy causes with good caring people committed to making them successful. The Problem: So many good causes and smart people make it very hard for charities to differentiate and for donors to decide who to support -- in fact some people opt out all together understandably overwhelmed.

So what to do? How do you make YOUR fundraising event successful,  more>>

Tips on Fundraising Events

by Marc A. Pitman

I’m not an “events” person but they do seem a necessary evil in our field.

And to be fair, they do have lots of other benefits: visibility, engaging volunteers, etc.

So when I saw that this month’s Giving Carnival topic was “Tips For Successful Fundraising Events,” I knew I had to chime in.

The best tip I ever got about events (other than don’t do them if at all possible!) was: give the event three years before deciding to continue it or not. more>>

Designing Your Event

by Brenda

You’ll be most successful if you’re always thinking of your main goal as you design your event. Are you trying to thank and recognize, educate and make a case for support or raise money? Again, clearly define your goal and design the event from there.

Let’s say you decide that your major donors should see the facility first hand and understand how their support made it possible. What are some creative ways to reach your audience? more>>

Fundraising, Grant Writing, Mission-Success, Community Building; It's All the Same

by Arlene Spencer

Think back to the last donation that you gave. Some issue or cause concerned you. When you decided which organization, specifically, to give the donation to, what factors did you consider in choosing which organization would receive it? What motivated you to eventually give to the specific organization that you did?

To help you raise more money for your non profit in an ethical, professional, legal, and effective method, consider the following logic. more>>

Will Your Mission Statement Send People To The Moon?

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy used a short speech to motivate an entire nation to "put a man on the Moon and return him safely by the end of the decade." His goal was turned into a reality on July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong put his footprints onto the Moon.

What if President Kennedy was a typical, modern-day CEO? What would his speech have sounded like? Would it have been as effective? These are questions that Chip Heath and Dan Heath asked in their bestselling book Made to Stick.

They postulate that CEO Kennedy's speech would have gone something like this:

"Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives."

Do your vision and mission statements have the ability to motivate and inspire? If not, consider a change.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

Yes. But not in the way you are thinking about it.

In the WebMD article Unselfish Spending Boosts Happiness, Miranda Hitti reports on a study that examined the connection between money and happiness.

What was the bottom line? Money increased happiness when it was given to others. It didn't matter how much the person earned or how much was given.

Do you want to be happier? Give to help others!

Note: Thanks to my friend Martin for bringing the article to my attention.

March Giving Carnival (2 Days Left)

There are only 2 days left to get your blog post submitted for the March issue of the Giving Carnival.

The topic for March is: Tips For Successful Fundraising Events

Write a blog post about one or more of your favorite tips to make a fundraising event successful. Send me the link to your blog post to givedaily@gmail.com.

The deadline for submissions is this Friday, March 21, 2008. I will post the information and links here on the Everyday Giving Blog on March 24, 2008.

To stay up to date with the Giving Carnival, join the Giving Carnival Group at http://groups.google.com/group/givingcarnival.

I look forward to reading your submission. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Warning, Fundraiser Ahead

You probably know that I am a board member and volunteer for the Arthritis Foundation, Virginia Chapter. One of my volunteer roles is to to perform as the chair of the Fredericksburg Arthritis Walk. This year the event is scheduled on Saturday, May 3rd.

I am going to be doing my personal fundraising for the event during the month of April. I have ordered and received personalized buttons to wear and display, drafted a letter to send to friends and family, and started to personalize my online donation webpage. I am also thinking about creating a "badge" that you can display on webpages and blogs.

Expect to see some blog posts during the month on the topic of arthritis and the Arthritis Foundation. I will let you know why I am involved and also share stories about some of my friends who have inspired me.

I look forward to sharing one of my passions with you. I hope you decide to support me in raising money and awareness for this worthy cause.

Pay It Forward

My daughter brought 10 of her friends home with her from college. You heard it: 10 BFFs! Here's a picture of our living room this morning.

They went to breakfast this morning at our local dutch restaurant.  When they returned, every single one of them was talking a mile a minute.  They couldn't wait to share what happened at the restaurant.

Turns out, when the waitress brought all their bills, a lady sitting close by came over to their table and took all the bills.  She shared how the girls were the future of the world and to keep Christ at the center of their lives.  She paid their bills AND put a $30 tip on the table!

But the most encouraging thing about this is that each of the girls are now planning how they can take the money they were going to spend on breakfast and find ways to "pay it forward" to someone else.

I don't know who the lady is, but how about that for everydaygiving?!

Scott Couchenour, Certified Life Coach (Promoting Ministry Balance)

www.servingstrong.com    www.servingstrong.typepad.com

Everyday Giving Now On Facebook

Join in the conversation with other Everyday Giving fans on Facebook. Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Everyday-Giving/9390834351 to sign up. I look forward to meeting you there.

Carve Out Space For Giving

"He emerged from the Metro at the L'Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap.  From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play."

This is a quote from Gene Weingarten in a story on Washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post had conducted an experiment in which world famous violinist, Joshua Bell, entered a busy Washington, D.C. metro station at 7:51 am on a Friday. In the middle of morning rush hour.  Joshua Bell played six classical pieces in 43 minutes as 1,097 people passed by. He had earned a total of $32.17 (not including $20 from one person who did recognize who he was.)

Weingarten goes on to say,

"A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100.  Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements."

Weingarten echoed Kant's words:

"Conditions must be optimal for the recognition of beauty. It is not that Americans are unable to appreciate beauty per se, just that appreciating art while on the way to a busy day is extremely difficult. In a concert hall, space has been carved out for appreciation: the audience is attentive because they have nowhere else to go."

"Space as been carved out for appreciation." Wow!

What distractions keep us from appreciating the beauty all around us everyday? And what if we allowed that appreciation to influence our giving everyday? Because even in the midst of beauty, there are needs.

The people in the Metro station that day were so focused on their agendas they didn't recognize the beauty of Joshua Bell playing a violin worth more than $3.5 million. Are you too busy to appreciate beauty? Are you too busy to give everyday?

Check out Weingarten's article, complete with video of the experiment.

From guest blogger - Scott Couchenour, Certified Life Coach (www.servingstrong.com  www.servingstrong.typepad.com)

Blogged.com Rates Everyday Giving Blog

I received a great surprise this week. The editors at blogged.com reviewed the Everyday Giving Blog and published their rating. They rated the Everyday Giving Blog "Great" with a score of 8.3 out of 10. Their review was based on the following criteria:

• Frequency of Updates
• Relevance of Content
• Site Design
• Writing Style

Go to http://www.blogged.com/blogs/everyday-giving-blog-10364.html and leave your own review. Carol Kirshner from Dollar Philanthropy has already been there and done that. Thank you Carol!

Volunteering For A Paycheck?

The Jan/Feb 2008 issue of the Advancing Philanthropy magazine provided a section entitled "Doing Good—If the Price Is Right." It describes a growing trend where volunteers are expecting to be paid for their help. It is based on the New York Times article For Love and a Little Money.

The article claims that these volunteers feel more valued when they are paid at at least a small amount. Charities believe these volunteers are more dependable. All of this may be true and there is nothing wrong with charities providing payment for needed services. However, I call this a job, not volunteering!

What do you think?

Nonprofit News At Your Fingertips

Would you like to go to a single webpage and get access to the latest nonprofit news and ideas? It is now available to all of us.

Alltop.com is a series of webpages (currently in beta mode) that features links to stories from the top news websites and blogs. Each webpage covers a different topic. There is now a page dedicated to the topic of nonprofits. Go to http://nonprofit.alltop.com to check it out.

I was aware of most of the nonprofit blogs featured on the site. However, I discovered a few I wasn't aware of or hadn't visited in a while. The service provides a quick way to find the stories of interest. Holding your cursor over each link shows a preview of the story.

I have bookmarked http://nonprofit.alltop.com and will be using it on a regular basis. You might want to check it out as well.