Still wondering what to give this Christmas? How about giving the gift of giving? December is our busiest month at GA. Many gifts coming through are to friends and family needing extra funds to buy Christmas presents for their children.
In our town, Bellingham WA, we have a toy store that opens only in December each year. Last week more than 300 families came to this toy store to buy hugely discounted Christmas presents for their children (like new bicycles for $10). All these local families are struggling financially, and this store, filled with donated toys, is made available only to them. Giving parents the ability to pick out gifts for their kids allows them the honor of participating in the joy of giving.
You may not have a toy store like this in your town but maybe you know a family struggling to buy Christmas gifts for their children. Why not give them the gift of giving? It’s not too late to give in this way.
From our team at Giving Anonymously we wish you a very merry Christmas!
The video is just over 20 minutes but worth watching. Dr. Norton talks about research done throughout the world on the relationship between happiness and how money is spent. Let us know what you think of it.
The following quotes are from Bob Goff’s twitter feed. They are my favourite quotes of his from 2011. No need for commentary, they speak for themselves…
“We’re not aiming to please and work our way up; we’re aiming to serve and work our way down”
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“Spread love like it’s grass seed in a big wind; we don’t need to pick where the lawn grows”
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“Love like there’s no tomorrow; live like there’s no yesterday. We’re forgiven; now go love people like we believe it”
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“Stand up like a mountain; have faith like a rock; love like an avalanche”
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“Give hurt a short expiration date; treat forgiveness like it will last forever”
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“Do one heroic thing today; big or small doesn’t matter because it defines who you are and what you really believe”
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“Love doesn’t try to be efficient; when it’s most extravagant, it’s least wasted”
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“God wants us to change the whole world; we can’t be content making balloon animals and just pretending anymore”
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“Who you become depends on what you give the most air time to; be picky”
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“Breathe in thankfulness like you’re chain smoking it; breathe out hope”
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“God’s plan for the world is as simple as it is inexplicable: It’s us”
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“Shorten the list of things you think you can’t accomplish; sometimes love doesn’t take no for an answer”
I recently read a book by Brian Zahnd called Unconditional. He writes, “The way of forgiveness does not forget the past, but through truth and reconciliation it finds a way beyond toxic memory. It is the way of restorative justice.”
With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 two days away many will spend this weekend remembering the pain of that horrific tragedy. Often the toxicity of pain prompts us to hate, to seek revenge. Brian’s point throughout the book is that hate and revenge are not restorative but rather inflict more pain on others especially our own selves.
Miroslav Volf , Proffessor of Theology at Yale University writes, “To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life.”
It’s a radical concept to think that there may be a different and better way than retaliation. One of the famous sayings of Jesus was that we should love our enemies. Love our enemies not only for their sake but for our own. When we responds with love instead of retaliation the level of freedom that we experience is truly powerful, even more powerful than the evil committed.
As we go into this weekend maybe we can together think of a ways to stand against the evil of 9/11 by finding creative ways to respond in love and forgiveness. A local church in our area is doing a joint service with our Muslim community to together remember and mourn but in a way that creates unity and love. What a great opportunity to build bridges with our fellow Muslim Americans. Another idea may be to respond to 9/11 by giving to, reaching out to, someone who has hurt us in the past. We have the ability to re-frame the date of 9/11 in our memories by responding in forgiveness and love.
“If someone were really in serious trouble — think of the people in Japan after the tsunami — we wouldn’t hesitate to reach out and help. Think of this as that same, generous, human response only on a much smaller, less critical scale.”
Peter Bregman offers this analogy in piece published in the May 2011 edition of the Harvard Business Review titled “Too Much to Do? Take On More”. In the article Bregman proposes that the most effective way of fielding gossip, complaining, and other negative responses to stress in the workplace is to find small ways, tangible or intangible, to assist or encourage colleagues and coworkers. He asserts that listening, validation, and giving specific suggestions or offers of help can go a long way toward helping a colleague or team regain focus and get back on a productive track.
While I find Bregman’s specific argument a little shaky, I love the encouragement to take an active, counter-intuitive posture towards stress and negativity–cancers that affect workplace productivity, job satisfaction, and healthy teams. Wisdom suggests that a proactive response to a negative circumstance is consistently the most direct route to a solution. And to have a little less moaning about crummy weather, unrealistic project time-lines, clueless clients, or unmotivated students but instead to be generous with encouragement for tasks well done, to validate frustrations and participate in problem solving. I want to give freely in my workplace. I want to be that co-worker.
Spending life seeking our personal fulfillment can often lead to disappointment and disillusionment in life. Maybe a part of midlife crisis is a realization of how having chased our own desires in life we now feel empty midway through. What if much of our frustration and disillusionment with life comes back to seeing ourselves as the end goal?
Life already is a gift, but it is not only for us; it is also a gift to give to others.
I believe that if we take our focus off of ourselves and live for love of God and others we will find overflowing fulfillment and joy even amid the pain of life.
It is a pleasure today to let some of our peer-to-peer (P2P) givers share their own stories! We are so encouraged by the enthusiasm with which folks who use GA exercise their generosity and testify to how the experience has inspired them!
Special Thanks to our friends who contributed to this video and were willing to be filmed for all the world to see!
Most of us who are working to keep up a lifestyle of giving and generosity develop a plan for our giving, so that we can simultaneously develop habitual generosity and stay on track with our necessary expenses & bills. If we succeed, we are able to determine what giving we can commit to on a weekly/monthly/yearly basis. Many plan to give a percentage of home/personal budget to a local church, a non-profit, an alma mater, or any other number of important and influential organizations & causes that we may feel called to support. Implementing a giving schedule along with payment schedules for a mortgage, insurance, tuition, and every day living expense schedule can be a challenge, but ultimately helps us all be conscious of our support and is an effective reminder of the lifestyle of generosity we aspire to.
What I hope to encourage you to do today is to add to or modify your giving plan to include a substantial portion for unplanned giving. I often hear the exasperated sighs of every day folks who are inundated with appeals for fundraisers that are dependent on small, private donorship–and the exasperation comes not from the feeling of being appealed to so often, but instead from being faced with the question, “Can I make room in my budget to support this cause?”
Just as we walk unwittingly in to personal expenses–car repair, parking tickets, appliance replacement, etc.–and ought to be planning with our money for obsolescence and the unexpected, we ought to be prepared for unexpected appeals to our convictions to give as well. We cannot foresee a neighbor falling ill and preparing a week of dinners for her. We may not know that the concert our daughter is playing in is a benefit for a local NPO that we want to support. We are yet to develop the technology to predict natural disasters that will propel our church in to a fundraising campaign to support relief organizations. These are all wonderful and admirable avenues to drive our money in to–but how often do we feel as though we can’t afford to respond to these calls as we would like to? We ought to be able to approach this reality of our lives in a more prepared and accommodating fashion.
I personally have a monthly giving plan, about 1/3 of which is for unplanned giving expenses. This includes NPO appeals, fundraisers facilitated by my local church, and giving of meals, items, or cash to members of my community who have a sincere need that particular month. If I arrive at the end of the month with a surplus of unplanned giving funds, I just add it on to my planned giving. Since I modified my monthly giving plan to include such a large portion dedicated to unplanned giving, I have experienced such relief and freedom to be generous as I’ve felt called, and as though I have been given permission to live the generous lifestyle I believe we’re called to.
If you feel the same exasperation over the volume of appeals for your financial support, maybe restructuring your budget to include a portion for unplanned giving can relieve you and give you the freedom to write that “extra” check or two each month, and bless some around you who you have felt called to bless.
Giving Anonymously’s website and logo are being redesigned and improved by our friends at Big Fresh Media. In a few months (or less) when you come back to our website you’ll see this. It’s still us, just with a face lift. Our team is so grateful to Big Fresh for the quality work and time they are putting into our site. We love these guys.
Others helping on this project are Matt Finley, a friend of ours from Hawaii, who has put together an excellent animation describing what GA does and Nicolas Lee out of Seattle who is composing the music and voice for it. This animation will be on our homepage. Thanks to both of these guys.
We have been putting a lot of thought into the giving process on GA’s site. Some of these changes will be apparent when the new site launches and some will be implemented later on. That said, if you have any ideas of how we could better serve you as a giver through GA please let us know. This website and service has been built for you and we want you to be happy with it.
In putting out this new website we hope to convey our commitment going forward as an organization. There’s challenges to offering a service like this but we are committed to seeing it through because we know it is touching peoples lives and making a difference. We also hope to convey our commitment to excellence, integrity and transparency in handling your money. We have big dreams for GA going forward and your partnership with us is that dream.
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