Collaborate and bring your ideas to life.
Think of Expedition Give as The Amazing Race with a unique charity twist. In this five-hour scavenger hunt, teams of two will race all over the city collecting items, taking pictures, and completing community service projects to earn points. At the end of the race, the teams with the most points take home some really cool prizes.
There are a few goals for the hunt. (1) HAVE FUN, (2) help a lot of local nonprofits, and (3) earn as many points as possible by completing a variety of different tasks throughout the city between noon and 5pm on the day of the event.
Teams earn points by returning to the finish line by the end of the event (5:00pm) and completing the check-in process with a staff member. Points are earned for:
There are a variety of tasks you’ll accomplish in order to earn points for your team of 2. It’s a fantastic way to help local charities by being apart of a unique and fun experience. It’s going to take place on October 30th and if you use the promo code TAKE10 you’ll get a 10% discount off your registration!
Expedition Give is apart of a non-profit called Giving101 who is dedicated to developing the next generation of Givers, Civic Leaders, and Philanthropists. Their programs educate the public about charitable giving, inspire individuals to act, and provide people with the tools, information, and resources to make a difference in the lives of others.
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You know that bit in the film Braveheart where William Wallace (Mel Gibson) turns to his men and tells them it’s all about FREEDOM? Well, I’d love to tell you the last 9 months have been like that, followed by a big charge down the hill with all the challenges being taken head on. But I’m not Mel Gibson………..
It’s absolutely amazed me as to how many of the battles you face in a new venture are in your own head, the doubts, the fears, the constant wondering of whether you’ve done something crazy. But in that, I’ve begun to find that I can tell that voice to take a long run off a short pier, and just carry on with what I was doing! I have this card on my wall that says “What would you do today if you could not fail?” and I keep looking at it regularly.
I’ve had to become a team builder this year, in ways I never thought I would. And I’m pretty rubbish at it (I’m a task first, people second sort of person, despite my best efforts). But I’ve realised it is so much better when you are all happily pursuing the same goal with a single focus. (Not that this is a one-off). I’ve also learned to be a project manager of my Indian outsourcing partners (they’re legends and I love them!). I can give a bit more chat about web design as a result, and I’ve become au fait with anything tech startup finance related as that’s where I live most of my days for our investment fund!
Seven Men has gone through some changes in our business start up portfolio. We killed our first startup, we re-jigged our 2nd one in quite a major way just this month which will hopefully pan out, and we are finally getting decent momentum in our seed fund into for-profit UK startups. So business wise, 2010 has been a year of slow-ish progress. We hit profit overall this year, so that was something!
I’m learning the value of networking / chewing the fat / blue sky thinking with others, both as an encouragement, but also as a helpful way of seeing where and when we can use our profits to enable good. We’re currently working on one idea that would help people who have been homeless in the past, back into the workplace through teaching them to bake and giving them employment in a baking enterprise. It’s a passion of Kathy, my wife, and we’re both hoping this can get kick-started in the not too distant future.
We set out on the back of this amazing talk from 2007 to create a portfolio of for profits that could fund year after year some interesting social ventures, both ours and those started (or to be started) by others. To date almost all of our focus has been on building the for profit side, so we’ve lived this year in the reality of one step at a time, but still worked to keep the dream very much in our sights.
I’m looking forward to the next few months with renewed enthusiasm about our businesses, but also finally getting into why we started all of this – being enablers of lots of exciting social ventures. Thanks for following the story as we’ve gone along.
Leroy Barber, President of Mission Year was interviewed by CNN.
What could you do with $30,000? I don’t know about you, but I love playing this game. What sits on your wish list? A big downpayment on a house, a different car, a bigger tv, pay off school or credit card debt, maybe just have a little extra money in savings, take a nice trip with friends? We can all think of all the places we could make $30,000 go to. We would like to tell you about where charity: water is having $30,000 go.
We joined with Charity: Water in a 30 day challenge. 30 days, 30 bloggers, $30,000. We’re helping to raise money for clean water projects in developing countries. So what Charity: Water wants to spend their $30,000 on is to build wells in the Central African Republic. There are 4.3 million people living there, and 1.5 million of them don’t have clean water. Their average age expectancy is only 48 years of age. 64% percent of the population live on less than $1 a day. So there are a lot of statistics. Don’t just let them be statistics. Help Charity: Water do something about this desperate problem. Help them provide essential clean water to people who need it.
Over here at Plywood People we make no bones about the fact that we’re cupcake lovers! We have our favorite places, and let me tell you, we won’t ever turn a cupcake down. We also are huge fans of unique fundraising. Cupcakes for a Cause combines both of these.
As though we NEEDED more incentive to eat more cupcakes, Cupcakes for a Cause provided one. It started in New York with CancerCare looking for a unique way to raise funds for their organization. They asked for businesses and individuals to bake and sell cupcakes to provide free services to children and families affected by cancer. It has turned into a nationwide phenomenon. It’s a wonderful way to help raise funds to help continue giving hope to families devastated by disease.
There are 2 main components:
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Nick is the President & Founder of Georgia’s newest craft beer brand, Wild Heaven Craft Beers. Wild Heaven was founded to enhance the southern beer scene with brews exhibiting the very highest levels of creativity and craftsmanship, all with the motto “Serve Your Neighbor.” Nick is also the founding Publisher of Paste—formerly an award-winning print magazine and now a leading music & entertainment website, PasteMagazine.com. He is married to Jenn and has 4 kids.
Plywood People: How did you move beer brewing from a hobby into a real business venture?
Nick Purdy: I apparently have difficulty remaining on the sidelines if there’s something I’m passionate about. This craft beer project stems from the same impulse as Paste—to help more people choose better for things they are going to consume anyway (beer, music, film, TV, books, video games). Our “Serve Your Neighbor” motto guides our product development process with a focus on quality, craftsmanship and avoiding excesses. Paste’s “Signs of Life” ethos is similarly-minded—a focus on the good, true and beautiful. More practically, I’ve been friends for a long time with Eric Johnson, a brilliant brewer and just am very lucky to be the guy to build a business around his brewing talent.
Plywood People: What’s your best advice to someone turning something they enjoy doing into their work?
Nick: Kristian Bush from the band Sugarland once told me “The first time you do a thing you love for work, it’s fun. But then you keep doing it and eventually, it’s just work.” The point is not to be deceived into thinking doing something you love will mean you always will love your work. I also have little patience for the idea that we deserve to do what we’re passionate about. Most humans don’t get to and it’s naive and presumptuous to think that it should be a standard. So all this boils down to my advice for anyone getting to do work that also happens to be something they enjoy: Stay grateful and stay hungry.
Plywood People: What has surprised you the most as you’ve pursued this project?
Nick: How much easier it is to raise money for beer than for anything else for which I’ve tried to raise funding for. I guess it’s not really surprising.
Plywood People: You have interesting names for your beers. Can you explain the meaning behind the names?
Nick: Invocation is simple -it’s our first beer. Invoking the brand, I guess you could say. Ode To Mercy is a name of a song Eric wrote about 15 years ago. We won’t necessarily keep using religious sounding ideas in our naming convention. The company name, Wild Heaven is a nod to an old R.E.M. song called “Near Wild Heaven.”
Plywood People: Where can your beer be found?
Nick: Right now at a bunch of terrific places around Atlanta and also a couple places in Athens. Just see our Locator page. Follow us on Twitter @BeerWildHeaven and Facebook at facebook.com/wildheaven.
At least that is how they say it down South! The seasons are beginning to change for most of the country, of course here in Atlanta, the weather is still 90’s during the day, however the evenings are in the 60’s. This weather feels amazing and makes me want to jump into my sweaters and boots and then I remember that I will still need the AC on during the day, and I change my mind.
I think one good thing about the South pertaining to our garden is that we are able to continue a garden through fall and part of winter. This is very exciting since I was so sad that most of our garden had parched and did not make it through August.
So with the changing of seasons comes a changing of the garden. We started over!
We re-planted for fall with all seeds, and this time tried a new technique. We decided to plant large sectional mounds instead of rows. Since we don’t have as much variety as we did in the spring, we thought we would try this new way and experiment. We planted an assortment of lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, beets, mustard greens, and carrots.
How wonderful it feels to have a fresh start and get rid of those dead dried out plants from summer. This brings a fresh new energy of wonder and excitement, as I imagine new recipes with tasty fall vegetables from the garden.
I am dreaming of sipping hot drinks and eating homey vegetable soup. Are any of you as excited for fall as I am?
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I am a white, upper middle class American. And in terms of relative power in the world, in the United States, in Michigan, and in Lansing, I have more power than I realize on a day to day basis.
I know well how the majority of systems work in my city. If I don’t know, it is highly likely after almost 30 years living here that I know someone who does. Someone who would quickly answer when I call and do what they could to help. I have knowledge and social power.
I can easily purchase everything I need and most everything I want with little to no worry or even second thought. I can cook whatever I feel like eating on any given week. I can eat as much of it as I want and have a snack 2 hours later. I can buy a new outfit before a special event. I can buy new shoes for my kids when their feet grow one full size over the summer. I have financial power.
I can speak with confidence in any situation I enter. Not only do I have a master’s degree in my chosen field, I also have a liberal arts degree in sociology and psychology. My education and variety of life experiences offer something to talk about with almost anyone I meet. Many people have invested in me by giving me ways of thinking. Because of them, I can walk into most new situations with a framework by which to evaluate what is or is not appropriate and proceed accordingly. I speak English in a country that speaks English. I have culture and language power.
Over the last 9 months, my life has become intertwined with several recent immigrants to the United States. While they know intimately the structures and systems of Bhutan, Nepal and India, the United States holds a confusing configuration of procedures and programs waiting to be explored. While they know how to make the most of everything they own, by American standards, they don’t own much yet. While many of them have earned college degrees in their own countries, can speak 2 or more languages and know how to communicate across African tribal cultures, English and American culture is literally a whole new world. My knowledge, social power, wealth, education and simple grasp of the English language, like a baseball bat, can be swung around carelessly keeping my new friends guessing and running for my cover. Or it can be used purposefully to point the way. It can also be used to call on the rest of my American teammates to get in the game. Never again will I underestimate the power of a phone call made by a native English speaking person on behalf of a friend without a bat.
My new friends are not stupid, uneducated, or slow. They simply do not know the game of baseball. (Soccer is the rest of the world’s chosen sport after all.) I could use my baseball bat to beat them down until they somehow figure out the new game. People throughout time and across the world seem to naturally do this: ignoring, labeling, caste-ing, and enslaving. I am trying instead to hold my bat down at my side at times choosing friendship over power. I will not, however, pretend that I don’t own the bat and have it at all times. Instead, I am choosing to use small opportunities to wield the bat in helpful, purposeful ways. Like a new baseball player, I don’t have complete control over my bat yet and probably never will. That does not, however, give me an excuse to skip batting practice in whatever way it presents itself.
I’m learning how and when to use my bat.
Special thanks to my new friends who extend their hand of friendship even when I accidentally swing around and hit them; Beth Poole for the many hours of shared batting practice; and David Livermore and Eric from the CQ conference for the bat analogy.
We talk to a lot of small business owners who tell us repeatedly and often that they have a desire to be doing something greater with their business than merely carrying out the everyday functions that the business requires. We are seeing increasingly, the power of small business to make a difference in their communities and even globally, by adjusting the way they view the goal of their business. Organizations like 1% for Humanity are providing ways for companies to give to areas of great need, and then there are companies like Wash Me Fast who are taking initiative in a unique way.
Wash Me Fast has a passion for the problem of unclean drinking water around the world. Jim Dudley started a company to clean peoples cars, but has increasingly felt the desire to do more than that. His company has started a campaign called “clean car. clean water.” Every time you clean your car at Wash Me Fast, you provide one person with access to clean water for a day! Wash Me Fast donates a portion of every wash to their clean car. clean water. campaign. This money is then used to help fund clean water projects around the world. They partner with organizations whose focus is building and maintaining sustainable water solutions in order to have a long term impact. Every year this campaign will give over 500,000 people access to clean water for a day!
They’re working with two organizations. One is working in Guatemala, teaching people how to use simple water filters to prevent sickness and disease. The other organization is also providing filtration systems working primarily in Haiti. Both are educating the people they are working with on the importance of clean water for their health and everyday life.
Wash Me Fast didn’t set out to try to start a whole clean water program of their own, instead they made a business decision to strategically partner with people who already know the ins and outs of water filtration. They are a more than profit company who cleans cars, and provides essential clean water for people without it.
Check out Wash Me Fast locations and see if there’s one near you so you can help them provide clean water. Or Buy a T-shirt! Buy a Wash Me Fast t-shirt for $15 and give someone access to clean water for 10 years.
