Category: Generosity Day

Why Generosity Day spreads

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

The good folks at Say100 Media asked me to answer some questions about Generosity Day.  Here’s the text or the original interview is here.

We asked Sasha to tell us about Generosity Day 2012, why generosity is contagious, and how to move millions of people to action without spending a dime.

What are the key things marketers can learn from Generosity Day? In 2011, Generosity Day went from an idea to a global phenomenon in 72 hours – with no resources behind it. This would have been impossible if the idea hadn’t been simple, sticky, compelling, a message that was easy for people to own that they were eager to spread. As marketers we understand these lessons, but we still put way too much effort into figuring out clever ways to try to spread OK ideas instead of putting all our effort into creating great ideas. Generosity Day was an idea that was built to spread and it reminded me how often we’re pushing the rope on an idea that matters to us but doesn’t matter to our audience.

What are some of your favorite ways to be generous that don’t involve giving money? Giving money actually is the easiest form of generosity. Generosity of spirit – being consistently kind to others, open, giving someone the benefit of the doubt, assuming the best in someone else – that’s where the rubber really hits the road for me and where the real work is. It’s so easy and such a bad habit to be quick to judge, and when that happens we are blind to so much wisdom, grace, creativity, knowledge and love. Quick judgment is the easy way to surround ourselves with people who act like us, think like us, make us feel safe … so generosity of spirit is a way to open the door to a whole new set of people and experiences.

Has the economic uncertainty in the financial world made people more or less generous? The official numbers say that giving levels have remained the same throughout the recession, so it’s hard to judge. In my experience people are definitely feeling more uncertain so while they may still be giving, willingness to make larger and longer-term commitments seems to be decreasing.

Is generosity contagious? If yes, why? Absolutely. We know that when someone discovers a few extra quarters in a vending machine they are much more likely to be generous to the next person – to pick up papers that someone has dropped or to help them solve a problem.  This is hard-wired into our brains, so one generous act begets another.  We’ve all experienced this personally, but we rarely think about the massive multiplier effect if we could create even a moderate shift in generosity at a societal level.

Part of the problem is that we lack the lexicon and the habit of thinking more broadly and systemically about the role that generosity plays in our lives. Historical traditions, whether religious or tribal, have this vocabulary embedded in ritual and scripture – we once understood that people need guideposts and clear expectations about how to treat one another. It’s time to revive this language and make it applicable to our modern lives.

Do you still say find yourself saying yes to everything? No. I did an experiment of saying yes to requests for help for a month so I could see what shifting my default response would do for my orientation to life. It was a powerful experience but I can’t literally do it every day. If anything I’m working on saying no to more small things and yes to the big scary ones. Even if I can’t say yes to everything, I can change my orientation, I can recognize that I want to be more opens – to people, new ideas, improbable connections, possibility. The generosity experiment was a tangible way to practice that.

How did Generosity Day go this year? Any favorite stories? It was incredible. 2011 was our first year and we had no lead time at all – we conceived of the idea on Friday and had three days to spread the word. This year it was at least twice the size and people all over the world participated and shared their stories. We had more than 5,000 tweets seen by millions of people, hundreds of articles and blog posts (too many to count), three amazing organizations made videos on their own dime that were seen more than 40,000 times in one day (here, here and here). Kevin Bacon even tweeted and took an awesome photo to help spread the word, and best of all we got to capture some amazing generosity stories on the Generosity Day Causes site. And not a single dollar was spent to spread the word – everybody donated everything.

I was really touched by so many stories: someone shared that they’d told an 80 year old woman how beautiful she was and she shed a tear and said that no one had told that to her that in years; another guy bought $50 worth of Starbucks gift cards and shared his honest challenges in giving them away; a group in London spent the morning talking about generosity and all committed to specific generous actions – including walking around London giving out croissants to people on the street and talking about Generosity Day! It’s all fun and positive and it cracks the door open to new kinds of conversations and reflections.

If everyone were a little more generous would all our problems be solved? Sadly, no. Solving big problems is hard work, and generosity alone isn’t enough. But I’m sure that everything would be better, that more trust would be built, that more connections would be made, that we would see more possibilities if we all were more generous.

What are your top three priorities right now? We just had our 10 year anniversary at Acumen Fund where I’m the Chief Innovation Officer, so that was an opportunity for real reflection and also looking to the future. With more than $75 million invested in sustainable businesses that have served more than 85 million low-income customers, we have a lot to be proud of but also a lot of work left to do! So my top priorities are around scaling our impact: getting a much deeper understanding of the social impact we’re having on the lives of the poor and sharing those models with the world; helping people who are interested in our space (which has been termed “impact investing”) to understand that we have to be laser-focused on creating large-scale social change, and that if you make unattractive financial returns that create massive social dividends that is OK; and the global expansion our Fellows programs so we can deepen the bench of leaders who can do this work globally.

You’ve tried some other experiments recently like giving up meat, and the 360 project. What experiments are next? None of these are planned, so I honestly don’t know. They all come from a recognition that there’s nothing special or necessarily right about the way I’ve always done things, and a lot of old habits, attitudes and approaches aren’t serving me well.

The leaders I admire the most seem to have an almost unending capability to evolve, to learn, and to grow, so I’ve made a firm commitment to being willing to change and am enjoying seeing where that takes me. Learning how to change is probably my greatest accomplishment over the last 5 years.

Joy is

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Watching an idea grow, seeing someone else take it places you didn’t know it could go.

I’ve already shared the wonderful Jubilee Project video for Generosity Day, which magically captured how Generosity Day is fundamentally about reconnecting to love and genuine human connection – on Valentine’s Day and every other day.  I watched it again last night after the dust had settled and I like it more each time I watch it.

But I never would have imagined anyone passing out croissants in the streets of London.  I never would have imagined someone sharing, so openly and honestly, the actual struggle of giving away 10 Starbucks gift cards.   I never would have imagined someone telling a woman in her 80s how beautiful she is, and making that woman cry.

I’m thankful for all the stories I’ve heard, and I know they are just a fraction of the stories there are to tell thanks to the work we did together to spread this idea and to challenge ourselves and our own perceived boundaries and limitations.

Let’s keep pushing (and pass the croissants!).

What would be great

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

…is if yesterday was the beginning of seeing how we could act the other 364 days of the year.

Not necessarily each and every action, totally unfiltered, but an orientation to the world.

Happy day-after Generosity Day.

(and give us all an extra gift by filling in a square in this beautiful generosity tapestry: bit.ly/g-day-actions)

Happy Generosity Day 2012

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

I’m so excited – the day is here and I’m getting wonderful generosity stories from far and wide.

One person went to a simple, down-home restaurant and appreciated the service so much that he left a tip “as if it had been a four star restaurant;” another guy asked the flower vendor how much he was going to charge for roses on Valentine’s Day (double) and just paid that amount yesterday; someone else had a long conversation with the security guard at the bank who was counting the minutes until the end of his shift.

Today you can give yourself permission to be outrageously kind, irrationally warm, improbably generous.  I promise it will be a blast.

(BONUS: please share what you did or generous acts you witnessed in text/photo/video on the Causes site)

Sitting at the center of this fabulous maelstrom, it’s a joy to see the spirit and love people have put into making today everything it can be.  We have three (three!!) beautiful videos – Celebrating Generosity Day (See3 Communications); Generosity Day: What is Love (Jubilee Project); and Me to We – Generosity Everyday (Hodge Pictures).   These videos are alternately fun, irreverent, heartwarming, joyful, and profound, and to see other storytellers take this story forward is a true joy for me.

The Huffington Post’s take on Generosity Day is on the home page of their Impact section and the lead story of their Good News section, and we have blogs and tweets coming from all directions.  (click here to see it all unfold in real time).

Also a special thanks to all the bloggers out there who have helped spread the word, with a special shout-out to Beth, Brene, Katya, Scott and Seth.

Have a great day!

One day to go – nothing to lose

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Generosity Day is tomorrow, and it’s hard not to stare at the #generosityday twitter search results and feel a little bit excited.

At the same time I’m realizing what a tricky thing expectation is.  Last year, when I was hesitating about writing that first (outlandish, crazy) blog post announcing that we wanted to turn Valentine’s Day into Generosity Day, a friend pushed me over the edge by saying, “Go for it!  The worst thing that happens is nothing, and no harm would come of that!”

That’s right.

Great things happen when you realize that no real harm will come from coming up short, but nothing will happen if you don’t try.

It’s possible that a few huge things will happen tomorrow that will catapult Generosity Day into the main- mainstream.  It’s also possible that they won’t and that this will continue to be a grassroots, distributed effort that builds every year without some giant step-change between here and there.

Either way, Generosity Day will always be owned by everybody, for everybody, and we’ve got nothing to lose.

Thanks for being part of it.

Dear Hakiem

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Dear Hakiem,

I know everything at the Apple Store is designed to be techno-blissful, but you really took things to another level.  Not only did you shake my hand, make me feel welcome, and help me get a Genius Bar appointment in less than five minutes, but you managed to make me feel just a little bit less bad about dropping my iPad on 6th avenue and cracking the screen (and I was feeling REALLY bad).

I was already appreciative of you for that, but then as I was walking up 9th avenue, you ran out of the store and up to 15th street and stopped me to make sure that my problem had been solved.   Wow.

I bet you go above and beyond every day for folks, and I’m sure they appreciate it more than you know.  I’ll be sure to tell everyone who goes to the Apple Store at 14th and 9th in New York City to look out for you.

Next Tuesday we’re rebooting Valentine’s Day as Generosity Day.  Thank you, already, for being part of it.

Yours in generosity,

Sasha

Generosity Day – in graphs

~ Sasha ~ 52 Comments

It’s been more than two years since my original Generosity Experiment. The experiment was an intuitive, gut reaction to an incongruence I felt between my commitment to creating massive social change, my work with philanthropists to support this mission, and how I saw myself behave in the face of acute need right in front of me.  The “Experiment” was just that: a chance to test what it felt like to live with a totally different orientation.  It was a commitment to take a door that was too closed for my taste and open it wide.

Of course the story spread thanks to Generosity Day last year and my Generosity Experiment talk getting posted on TED, so I’m having (and witnessing) a lot more conversations about generosity and Generosity Day.

One thing I’ve observed is that the powerful original story – of giving to a homeless person when asked – is both helping and hindering my ability to explain what Generosity Day is all about.  To be clear, generosity day is not designed to be a philanthropic strategy (“say yes to everything”). Rather, the whole point is to use the day (the month) to develop a different practice of generosity in our lives – whatever that means to you.

Since I’m a visual thinker, I’ve drawn some graphs to explain what the Generosity Experiment meant in my life.  The red line represents my perceived “ideal” level of generosity (for me).  The blue line represents my perception of how generous I actually am.

In the time leading up to my original Generosity Experiment, two things were happening.  First, because I was spending so much time with philanthropists, I was gaining a deeper understanding of philanthropy and of giving, and part of my reflection was that generosity was more important than I’d understood it to be. That’s why the red line slopes upwards: what I understood to be the “ideal” in terms of generosity was going up.

Second, you’ll notice that the blue line (my perception of how generous I actually am), is sloping down.  That reflects my experience of spending all my time and energy understanding how difficult it is to create social change efforts that really make a difference.  And so, increasingly, I began to feel like more and more things didn’t hit the bar (“what’s the model for sustainability?” “show me your impact numbers!” “what’s your broader theory of change?” etc.), which, practically speaking, meant that I was saying “no” to more and more people/organizations that were asking for my support.

This is what I meant when I said that I felt like what was smart was keeping me from doing what was right.

This next graph represents what happens (could happen) when you conduct a generosity experiment. You choose to be exceptionally generous and open for a period of time.  That experience changes you.  It gives you the opportunity to reflect on old habits and consider whether they’re still serving you well.   Of course the experiment eventually ends, and you revert to “regular life,” but if the experiment changed you in some significant way, then you reset to a “new normal” of generosity (again, whatever that means to you) – in the graph, that’s why the blue line stays above the red line after the Generosity Experiment.

To you psychoanalytically-minded folks out there, a generosity experiment is a tiny undertaking in cognitive behavioral therapy.  For those on the more spiritual end of the spectrum, it is like a yoga or a meditation practice – a chance, in a controlled environment for a defined period of time to practice acting differently so that, over time, new practices pervade your life.

Of course the big question is: what happens in just one day?  Does it touch peoples’ hearts enough to create a little shift?  Are enough people touched by millions of acts of generosity that they’re changed as well?  And if we can create a shift for millions of people, will that create a massive change?  I think it will.

Outside of revealing what an incredible analytical dork I am, I hope this post can help broaden the conversation – your conversation – about generosity day.

Generosity Day – the video

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

When we got our Generosity Day planning group together last summer, there was a strong vote that the principles of generosity needed to pervade all our actions and our execution.

At the same time, we wanted a snappy, beautiful video that told the story of Generosity Day.

Awesome video + free = pretty hard to come by, it turns out.

Then we met the folks at See3 Communications and it was a match made in heaven.  See3 is where causes go to tell their story better.  They’re a Chicago-based company specializing in video, web development, and internet marketing for nonprofits and social causes.  Not only did they made our fabulous Generosity Day video for free, but they were an absolute pleasure to work with and did everything incredibly quickly and with literally no bumps in the road.

To Michael, Danny and Stacy at See3, thank you!!!  And if you’d like to see more of See3’s work, sign up for the Daily DoGooder here.

Please share the video far and wide!  For example, for Facebook/Twitter:

Curious about Generosity Day next Tuesday? Watch this fun one-minute video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oftICP0JQw8

Generosity Day is next Tuesday

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

I can hear the quiet whirr in the background – an email here, a tweet there, a stolen conversation in the hallway.  Folks are getting revved up for Generosity Day next Tuesday, February 14th.

Could we really break through this year and get millions of people involved? Imagine the power of masses of people spending one day being generous, saying YES to all requests that come their way.

So how do we make it happen?  Between now and next week we want as many people as possible to know the day is coming and to get excited about being a part of it and spreading the word.  So:

If you haven’t yet, make your Generosity Day pledge here (it takes less than 5 seconds): http://www.causes.com/generosityday

If you’re a blogger, please write a post about Generosity Day – pledge your support and share the idea with your readers.  The post could be about what generosity means to you.  Post sometime over the weekend or on next Monday or Tuesday.

If you’re a blog reader (of COURSE you’re a blog reader), you could post comments on blogs that you love, and ask the blogger to become part of Generosity Day – refer to the Causes page or to Ellen’s Fast Company article or my talk on TED.com as background.

If you have friends who blog / are in the media reach out on behalf of Generosity Day and ask if they’d write about it.  There’s no downside, and I’ve found that people generally say YES to this request.

If you’re a Facebooker / Tweeter start posting about how psyched you are for #generosityday (using the hashtag helps) and refer to the Causes page

If you have other great ideas for how we could spread the word about Generosity Day, please share your comments below (or, if you prefer, email me).

(p.s. this is the moment when you think these are nice ideas and it’s for other people to do something.  Why not give it a try yourself – whatever works for you?)

Norms, tipping, generosity and scarcity

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Buy a sandwich from the deli, or a hot dog from the guy on the street, and the rules of the game are clear.  You’re told a price, you pay cash, done.

Reroll the tape, but this time you pay with a credit or debit card.  Depending on the machine they’re using, there might be a spot for “TIP _______” and you find yourself wondering whether and how much to tip for that same sandwich.

When a friend emails you about a cause that’s dear to him, there a normal set of responses you have to that situation – nothing, something, it’s up to you, but the steps you take follow a well-worn path.  Same story if you’re, say, at a Wall Street firm and a colleague asks you to buy a table at the benefit where she’s being honored – the numbers are just bigger.

On and on we go, hurtling through life with shorthand response to situations, because that makes things so much easier, because it feels like the only sensible way to process everything that’s coming our way.

But, just to be clear about what’s going on here, that shorthand is a function of norms, previous practice and social expectations.  Scarcity and real economics have very little to do with how we act.

The fun part – a piece of Generosity Day – is turning these norms upside down to see what that feels like: a $20 tip on a $5 taxi ride; telling the hot dog vendor to keep the change; telling your waiter that you’ll also pay the bill for the couple sitting next to you; agreeing to help a person who emails you out of the blue even though you don’t feel like you have the time.

My bet is that breaking these norms feels totally outrageous, that your heart races a little when you do it.  That’s the feeling of acting differently.  Then, when the rush passes, your head has the chance to process how glib you often are with that extra $20, but right here and right now, at the hot dog stand, handing over a $20 bill for your $5 hot dog – and not getting the change back – feels ludicrous.  Let the introspection begin.

One reason to give this whole thing a try is as an exploration of the norms and limits you’ve set around your life and your actions.  They may be just right for you.  Or your generosity experiment might afford a glimpse into how you could behave differently all the time – whatever “differently” means to you.