A big day -- I'm really thrilled to introduce you to GiveGetWin.com -- the basic idea is that providers generously agree to make their very valuable products and services available for purchase at insanely good rates, with all the proceeds going to charity.
We've already lined up some amazing and outstanding people, and they're bringing things for a fraction of the normal cost in order to benefit the world. We're really trying to make every offer a no-brainer: the first one, Stepan Parunashvili offering an advanced design class, is only priced at $20. Crazy-good value.
In a big sense, what are we trying to do here?
When we looked at all the good that was possible to do in the world, we saw two big barriers that stop many people from getting involved in helping out --
1. Most people already have a set charity budget (or perceive that they're not really in a position to give to a charity) -- so much of charity fundraising is playing a zero-sum game of competing for those limited charity dollars.
2. Very much of philanthropic fundraising focuses on suffering and creates a lot of guilt and bad feelings when interacting with it. I know most of my readers here are people involved in entrepreneurship, freelancing, and generally working hard and achieving a lot. Now, you can be very socially conscious but at the same time, not want to exposed to lots of negative emotions. The way I see it, doing good for the world should be a celebration! Looking to build things up and make things better shouldn't result in feeling bad, it should result in feeling amazing. The whole process should feel great.
So, how are we approaching this? Well, we've got some incredible and outstanding people who are are very graciously willing to pitch in a few hours or some of their inventory. This means, that when you put your hard-earned cash down, not only are you doing good for the world, but you're also reaching your own goals.
And at the same time, you're connecting with amazing people. It's been relatively easy to recruit people to provide their services to GGW -- people are inherently pretty good anyways, and when you toss on top of that the ability to connect with a great group of people, then it looks like a great time. The idea is, GGW can mean people are spending their normal consumption budget on things that help them reach their goals and build the world up and help build the world up at the same time. You give a little, you get a lot, and everyone wins.
The site over at GGW is still rough -- we've got some kinks to work out (the newsletter signup doesn't work yet, there's some front-end polish we need, we haven't created all the pages explaining everything yet), but it's functional and you can go check out the current deal right now. All feedback is very welcome.
Proceeds are going to go to development of Mongolia, particularly education, infrastructure, and children's development through the charity we started -- Children's Plaza Nonprofit Corp, a Massachusetts registered nonprofit with 501(c)3 status applied for and pending. There's some people there that are really smart, hard-working, great people who could use just a bit of a hand in the transition they're going through. We can talk about the narrative another time, we want to help out people who are often living on $200 per month for a family of four. And we met with one of the largest foundations there that was introduced through the American Embassy and has a very good track record of education, development, and honesty and integrity; we'll most likely collaborate on the implementation of projects and programs with them.
Okay, that's it for today -- go check out GiveGetWin.com. Feedback is very welcome. If you'd like to volunteer to work on a day-to-day basis, or you've got a skill, service, or product you'd like to consider providing, do please email me at sebastian@sebastianmarshall.com -- thanks and I'm looking forward to helping you build your life up while helping build the world up.