DOES YOUR SMALL CHANGE LEAD TO BIG CHANGE?

Do people believe that their small donations and small time online fundraising pages will make a difference? Will my $5.00 donation or $50.00 online fundraiser really matter? Will anyone care? Will I? Will poverty, homelessness, hunger, violence, street gangs, child abuse and neglect or my fundraising cause that’s so meaningful to me really get solved, stopped, or will one child ever benefit if I give small change?

People like to see something happen. People like to see a fundraiser or a donation mean something. They like a thank you card. A party. A connection to the cause or other people who care about the cause. So what’s $5.00 going to do?

I know that a lot of people with the small bank but the big heart are having these conversations. They might go onto crowdrise.com and think, wow, I’d like to do an online fundraiser, make a donation, but how can I really do it?

This is a huge barrier. I want you to know right now from a real volunteer, a real fundraiser and online fundraiser who’s on online fundraising teams, who cares about this stuff that this fear is unrealistic and will hold us back from making our fundraising power better and bigger and badder. It will make our communities safer and stronger and our next generation even cooler.

Do not be scared about the $5.00 donation or small fundraiser. Do not be scared to join a fundraising team. Look at the small picture and one fundraiser or donation or volunteer event at a time will be good and do good. I promise! If too many people are stunted by this fear, nothing happens, not now, not ever. And, let’s face it, it’s boring to do nothing. Get out there and be a part of the small give, the small donation, and the small online fundraiser, from the big-hearted.

If you don’t believe me, listen to this somewhat interesting, very short story. I loved college because I made the best friends in the universe and who doesn’t like biking home from the bar at 2 am all fun and crazy, and I read so many great books. One was “Fixing Broken Windows…” by Kelling and Coles. Their theory has stuck with me and I think about it nearly every day – okay maybe not every day but a lot. So sorry so intellectual, but their theories, well versed and studies are riveting and hot. Not hot as in the movie I saw last night, “A Single Man,” definitely not hot in that way, but you get the picture.

The book focuses talks about prevention. It says that if we go into our most chaotic, crime infested and impoverished communities and fix one broken window at a time, and then another, people will look at those windows and the clean up and be less inclined to break a window, or commit crime. The theories in the book are and in the areas where windows were fixed, one at a time, the levels of chaos, crime and disorder in those communities lessened.

Like the windows, one $5.00 donation, or $50.00 online fundraiser, or 5 hour Saturday spent volunteering for your community or cause will be so good.