The $5 philanthropist

Written from the back of my cab as I head to YYZ. Published a day later from my office in Vancouver.

“The chicken is involved, the pig is committed”

If an online community is just the “plumbing” that facilitates engagement amongst its members, what real value does the brand have?

Next year, you're going to be hearing a lot about CommunityLend. It is to consumer lending/borrowing what GiveMeaning is to philanthropy.

For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Used (Mark Twain). What is your six-word biography?

“The problem with the Bible is that it’s had too many Wikipedia edits”

Wiki’s fall short around capturing subjective knowledge. What is the tool that mediates the disagreements around subjective knowledge?

ScotchCamp was fun. But ScothCamp AFTER a long, wet dinner? Not as fun.

The most enviable thing about me? How many great friends I know and people I get to hang out with. Good news for the people I hang out with? Most of them know each other.

So here’s the deal with “Merry Christmas:” I’m going to share my celebration with you and I hope you’ll do the same with yours to me. What I don’t like is that in our desire for political correctness, we’re watering down each special celebration to this homogenous grey as Toronto slush, meta-celebration.

The problem with capitalism is it seeks infinite growth in a finite world. How much is enough? What do you do with the rest?

I think we're going to try and get a bunch of UI/UX people together and do a Design Slam for GiveMeaning in the New Year.

Merry Christmas my Toronto friends. See you soon.

Labels: toronto

I'm now back from Toronto. I have so many friends and interesting people I know in Toronto that any trip out there starts early in the morning and ends early in the morning the next day for every day I'm out there.

One of my favorite meetings was with my friend Salimah, an activist and journalist. Thanks only to Facebook status updates, Salimah messaged me to let me know that she was headed to Toronto for a few days and our schedules would overlap.

We got together at the Park Hyatt's rooftop bar on Thursday afternoon and started to catch-up. Our conversation traveled the world from Afghanistan, Iraq, India, New York and Vancouver. Salimah and I are cut from the same cloth. We're passionate extroverts who never miss an opportunity to evangelize our beliefs and passions. The conversation ran a million miles a minute and we both lost track of time. We realized we were both late for our next meetings and shared a cab back downtown.

As we continued to gab and snake through rush-hour traffic, we both realized we had to pee. Of course, the verbal acknowledgment only put more pressure on our respective bladders... The snails pace of our cab became more worrisome. At that pace, there was no way either of us would, well, make it. So we ran out of the cab in frantic search of a public washroom - which despite the fact we were smack dab in the financial district - seemed a fruitless search.

We left each other promising one another that next time, we would remember to pee.

The moral of the story? When running around the world pursuing your passion, we run ourselves ragged. It's impossible to take care of the world's work when we forget our own basic needs. So don't forget to pee.

Off to see Rendition.

Labels: activism, care, personal, toronto

I'm very thankful for the kind words and messages of support I've received from people watching the Hour last night. Overnight, we've received dozens of new "proposals" for fundraising ideas at GiveMeaning.

Before we accept fundraising for a new proposal, we first require the proposal to collect 100 votes of support within 30 days of it being posted on the site.

This process of collecting votes helps us ensure that there is enough support for a new proposal.

It's up to the person who submitted the proposal to recruit those votes amongst their own social network of potential supporters.

So if you've submitted a proposal, thank you! Now it's time to start recruiting support for your idea. By simply emailing a link to your proposal, and asking them to vote, you can get the ball rolling.

Lastly, a lot of people have asked what they can do to help GiveMeaning. In all honesty, the best way to help us is to make a tax-deductible donation in support of our operating costs. You can donate online through GiveMeaning by clicking here

Labels: cbc, thehour, toronto

Taped the Hour this evening and now back at the hotel watching it online. The link I posted below in an earlier blog entry has the entire interview on their website.

I really enjoyed meeting George. He's a great guy, great mind.

If you're reading this blog entry having watched the show and have questions for me, don't hesitate to post them here on the blog or email me at tom [@] givemeaning [dot] com.

Thanks for watching.

Labels: cbc, media, thehour, toronto

I'm in Toronto rushing to a meeting but wanted to share that I'm going to be interviewed on the Hour tonight. It airs at 11pm on CBC.

Here's the promo clip which apparently doesn't work on a Mac.

Labels: cbc, media, thehour, toronto

Yesterday, Terri Polet (a fundraiser at GiveMeaning) called the office. She told me that her sister runs a hot-dog stand in Toronto and had been using one of our Pig-e-Banks to collect spare change in support of Terri's fundraising initiative

Her sister Marianne has already raised over $100 in spare change through her Pig-e-Bank . So yesterday, I posted a Facebook note and tagged many of my friends living in Toronto. I asked whether anyone would be willing to take a picture of the Pig-e-Bank at Marianne's hot-dog stand and the very next morning: voila!

I met Jamie Drayton at this year's Mesh Conference. He's started a site called "Be a Good Buzz" which is a user-generated content site posting heart-warming, inspiring content.

In Jamie's post about the Pig-e-Bank and Marianne's hot-dog stand, he included link to a video about Marianne who is a bit of a living legend in Toronto.

Go to Jamie's post and click on the video link.

I'm honored that our little Pig-e-Bank is part of Marianne's stand.

To see the project that the Pig-e-Bank is benefiting, click here

I love how a real-world action was easily instigated through Facebook.

Labels: charity, facebook, fundraising, pig-e-bank, toronto

I am writing this entry on a train headed from Ottawa to Montreal. The wireless is awfully slow but I'm nevertheless impressed that I'm rolling through farmland, eating a meal slightly better than airplane food (when planes served real food) and surfing the web.

I was in Ottawa to attend a fundraising event for Giselle Mansfield and her fellow climbers. Gigi has been actively fundraising at GiveMeaning for about 8 months now... She calls the office often enough that most of us recognize the sound of her voice and we've all developed a bond with her.

I've said that if GiveMeaning had more Gigi's using our site, we'd be more popular than Google. She is everything a fundraiser needs to be: Passionate, doggedly determined, tenacious and relentless. So far, she has raised over $30,000 and at the event she held on the weekend, she raised over $10,000.

Giselle is part of an initiative of the Stephen Lewis Foundation called "Grandmothers for Grandmothers" where Grandmothers in North America fundraise in support of Grandmothers in Africa who are caring for their grandchildren (due to their own children being orphaned due to AIDS.)

In October, Gigi and several other women are climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. This was their last big fundraising event before they leave in October.

Jess and I came out for the event held in a small town called Dunrobin. Jess played a few songs and I gave a few words at the closing of the event. It was a long way to come for just one day but as I said at the event, we would have flown around the world to show our support for Giselle. She really demonstrates the power of one incredibly motivated individual able to get a lot done.

Jess flew back early on Canada Day leaving me alone in Canada' capital city. To be on Parliament Hill watching a beautiful fireworks display explode right behind the Parliament buildings was truly awesome.

I'm only in Montreal for the night and then headed to Toronto for a few days before heading home. If you're reading this and in Toronto, please drop me a note. I'm in town until Wednesday night.

Labels: fundraiser, fundraising, gigi, montreal, ontario, ottawa, quebec, toronto

Mesh officially starts tomorrow. Year 2 (version 2?) of Canada's preeminent web 2.0 conference officially kicks-off tomorrow am. I'll start my participation off by posting this blog entry and knocking back a few with other speakers in the next couple of hours.

My experience is that some of the best tech visionaries I've met like to shoot first and ask questions later. When it comes to changing the world, this is almost always a bad idea. Steve Jobs asked John Sculley whether he wanted to sell bottled sugar-water his whole life or whether he wanted a chance to change the world. We who want to change the world need to ensure we don't do so by selling the electronic equivalent of bottled-sugar water.

There, I've just figured out what I want to say in the talk I'm giving with Austin Hill tomorrow morning. You heard it here folks.

Labels: mesh, mesh07, meshconference, toronto, web2

I'm here tonight in Brandon, Manitoba to support my wife, Jessie Farrell, who is starting her tour opening for Emerson Drive. I arrived from Toronto a day earlier than her (we had both been in Toronto earlier in the week) and checked out a local country music talent competition last night at the bar where Jessie will be performing tonight.

I'm very excited about Jess' show tonight. She plays tomorrow in Winnipeg and then rejoins the Emerson tour in the second week of March for dates in Kamloops, Kelowna, Calgary, Edmonton and Fort McMurray.

I've had an incredibly hectic week myself starting in Toronto with some great meetings with both old friends and new. Amongst some of the new friends I met this week were Owen Charters (the new executive director of CanadaHelps.org), Adrian Bradbury (the co-founder of GuluWalk), and Peggie Pelosi (principal of Orenda Connections). I also had the chance to meet-up with some old friends, Mark Dowds and Darian Kovacs. It was great to see them and have a night-out on the town up until the point where I was convinced I had lost my credit cards (turns out they were at the hotel all along).

I had some very exciting business meetings (the most exciting of which I can't talk about in a public forum) and every-time I head out to Toronto, I feel like more of Corporate Canada gets what I've been talking about for the past two years and that more and more big charities are slowly starting to acknowledge that while they might want to own the donor relationship donors increasingly don't want to be owned by anyone.

While in Toronto, I saw Jamie Aaron, the founder of Shift. Jamie reminds me a lot of me when I was younger. In fact, I found out that he and I started our careers in a similar fashion: He managed to convince Apple Computer in Markham to give him a co-op position, I managed to get Apple Cupertino to give me my start. Jamie is surely going to be a major force (for lack of better term) in whatever he does and it's increasingly looking like that force will be used for good. Jamie basically was dissatisfied with the co-op placement opportunities he and his peers were being offered so he decided to start his own placement agency, reaching out to socially responsible and progressive companies and non-profits and playing matchmaker between interested students and these orgs. GiveMeaning is one of the organizations that accepted co-op placements through Shift and I met some great candidates earlier in Toronto. The person I was most impressed with was actually the youngest of the three candidates. I have done a lot of hiring over the years and I'm always amazed at how few people seem adequately prepared for the interview. What impresses me is when someone has researched the company (s)he is applying to and makes the interview as much about the company hiring the candidate as the candidate hiring the company. It's unfortunately rare to find an applicant who does this and so it makes even more of an impact when you find someone who does.

Lastly, I'm excited to say that Kevin Sites (of Yahoo's HotZone) has mentioned and linked to GiveMeaning tonight! Christine Egger, a reader of Kevin's had been touched by this story that Kevin had posted to the Hotzone and wanted to do something about the subject of that particular story. She found GiveMeaning and created this project to raise money for Yubaraj, a young boy living in Khatmandu. I'm hopeful that this exposure will help her reach her goal.

Well, Jess is on soon so I better head over to the North 40 Saloon!

Labels: charity, community, manitoba, toronto

stick around i got a hunch
we'll bomb this town and stop for lunch
and never, nevermind these awful cries
it's not as real if you don't look in their eyes

These are lyrics from Stabilo's song that I downloaded tonight.

I know why I'm restless. Before a flight, I almost always buy an armful of magazines and newspapers to read on the plane. Tonight, it seemed as though all of what I read stitched together in my mind. Here are the threads I'm weaving with:

Vanity Fair: article on neo-cons fingerpointing at the Bush administration now that Iraq is more than a quagmire.
Us Magazine's (my guilty pleasure) feature on holiday gifts that give back,
The Walrus - "Stars in Africa"
Globe & Mail - Christie Blatchford's weekend article about Shawn Denty, a Canadian soldier who with help from his family, friends and neighbours back home in Oakville, got medical equipment donated to a hospital in Kandahar City, Afghanistan.

First, on its own for a second, because I'm just so beside myself about this, I have to separate this from all other thoughts. US Magazine's feature on "Holiday gifts that give back" includes a US $2,600 Gucci hobo bag that gives 20% of sales to UNICEF-run programs in Mozambique.

Never-mind whether it's 20% of gross or net sales. I just can't help but see it as shockingly crass. Anger-making crass. In another blog entry, I want to rant about this more but I'll move on.

This article in The Walrus spoke about how Oxfam has a staff position for "Artiste liaison manager" responsible for reaching out to potential celebrity spokespeople. It also spoke about a book called "Compassion Fatigue," the title (for these purposes) says it all.

Vanity Fair's Iraq article made me think back to the failure of Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia (aka "Blackhawk down") which made me think back to the days that Republicans said that the US has no business in the business of nation building. The loss of US lives in Somalia weakened the voting public's will to support these kinds of interventions. Clinton thought there was not enough political support at home to intervene in the Rwandan genocide.

Then, I came into my hotel room and logged on to the BBC website and read a debate about what to do about Darfur. It bears noting that I accessed this link to the debate because I had originally clicked on an article about what George Clooney had to say about Darfur. It's from there that I linked in to the debate. And, you know: on one level, there you go. Clooney helped me click through. And when I clicked through, I read the Debate. So there.

But then, when I click through and I read the Debate, I think back to the neocon article. The one where a bunch of intellectuals talk candidly about the failure of the war in Iraq, a war that they all famously advocated for. The glossy pictures of these individuals all giving their best "ponder pose" that accompany their finger-pointing and deflections really does give weight to the ol' "a picture is worth a thousand words."

The connection between the debate about what to do in Darfur and the Vanity Fair article is this: There is no way that the US, or Canada (with its mission in Afghanistan) is going to send peacekeeping troops into Darfur. And a UN peacekeeping force is what's needed.

What is needed to stop the violence in Darfur is for the lives of each UN soldier to be equal to that of each innocent man, woman and child in Darfur. All life is equal in the world except in politics.

This is my new campaign idea: Give soldiers something worth dying for. If we want to end the genocide in Darfur, we must be willing to pay with our soldiers lives. It's just that I can't see any Canadian or US politician being so bold as to say so. Incidentally, I think that a Canadian military presence in Afghanistan is worthy and so this "war worth fighting for" is specifically talking about Iraq.

But are you willing to support the politicians who propose they send your country's soldiers in to intervene, knowing that any foreign troops will be treated by the government of Sudan as hostile invaders? Are you willing to risk the lives of our soldiers to save the lives of their men and women and children.

It's 4:12am now. A busy week ahead of me here in Toronto.

Labels: africa, charity, darfur, media, music, philanthropy, toronto