we would crack open the big problems of poverty. That day on the subway I started to hear a voice that I had been ignoring. That day, I felt a pull back to the core of what brought me to social change work in the first place. I felt a connection back to the “why” of my work and started to see a reality that I’d been intentionally ignoring. I started to wonder if part of the “why” of Acumen’s success had to do not just with accountability but also with generosity. I realized that I knew almost nothing about generosity. On one level, the decision to dedicate one’s career to trying to improve the lives of people thousands of miles aw... posted on Feb 14 2013 (19,116 reads)

a restaurant where there are no prices on the menu and where the check reads $0.00 with only this footnote: “Your meal was a gift from someone who came before you. To keep the chain of gifts alive, we invite you to pay it forward for those who dine after you.” This restaurant exists, and it’s called Karma Kitchen, a self-described “volunteer-driven experiment in generosity.” Karma Kitchen was first opened in Berkeley, California in 2007 by volunteers inspired to seed the value of a gift economy. Karma Kitchen has served over 74,700 meals and generated over 60,300 volunteer hours in Berkeley alone, but ultimately, it’s impossible to measure all t... posted on Dec 24 2018 (7,897 reads)

generous. Americans gave a record $390 billion to charitable organizations in 2016 through a combination of individual giving and philanthropy from estates, corporations, and foundations. And people give in myriad other ways as well, from everyday acts of kindness toward loved ones to volunteering to large acts of altruism, like donating a kidney to a stranger. This isn’t surprising, given how wired we appear to be for giving. But there are limits to our generosity—and many people want to be more generous than they actually are. We can all recall times when we refused to give to a person soliciting for a charity or failed to offer as much assist... posted on Jan 18 2018 (11,115 reads)

to the design of a gift economy. This is an emergent, irreverent, rule-breaking search for a new way to relate to the world, and each other. It is a playful subversion of the so-called "laws" of economics, no more evident than in the term itself, which puts "gift" first, thereby casting a new hue to the so-called gray science. There are many permutations of the gift economy. But what binds them, I think, is a core motivation to be generous and the striving to put generosity first. The economy as most of us experience it is a system of fixed and rigid exchanges. It is a transaction model built on the notion of knowing exactly what we are getting for what we ... posted on Jun 26 2013 (24,165 reads)

Gratitude Lady when you’re not around. And the reason is, you write me so many beautiful notes of gratitude, and I’m sure you must have hundreds and hundreds of people on a list that you write such birthday notes and thanksgiving notes to. And I just want to know, first of all, how do you do it? How did you become the Gratitude Lady? Angeles Arrien: [Laughs] I don’t know how I became the Gratitude Lady, but I just feel so blessed in my life that it’s increased my own generosity of spirit, of excitement, and gratefulness about what has been extended to me. And certainly you’ve extended to me so many wonderful opportunities, as have others, that it’s jus... posted on Sep 17 2012 (29,918 reads)

yes, alright, gifts are coming all the time—the air we breathe, life, sights we see, the people we know—but there is also the opposite of gifting coming at us. The world is not all smiling faces, as St. Augustine said. So how can you face, how can we face, the so-called realistic perspective which is “it's a jungle out there” as well as being a glorious array of God’s gifts. Nipun: Yes, I think a lot of people, when they process giving, when they process generosity, or even compassion, it tends to get boxed into a feel-good box and they do it to feel good. That’s actually not how I classify generosity or giving. For me generosity comes when you&... posted on Feb 22 2016 (11,960 reads)

enjoy! For more than 20 years, Nipun Mehta and his parents have been opening his doors to friends and strangers every Wednesday evening, creating a space for people to sit in circle together, meditate, share thoughts, and enjoy a meal. The invitation is to "wake up to wisdom in stillness and community," a simple gesture of service and connection that now takes place in people's living rooms across the globe. All of Nipun's life work comes front this same place of generosity, be it Karma Kitchen, a restaurant chain where the meal you oat is gifted to you from a previous customer; Kindspring, a space to practice small acts of kindness and share inspiration with ... posted on Nov 19 2019 (7,461 reads)

how to rescue each other.   Yet, deep inside we all still have that capacity.   We know we have it because we saw it at Sandy Hook, in the brave teachers who gave up their lives to save their students. We saw it during the Boston Marathon when runners completed the race and kept running to the nearest blood bank.  We saw it just this week in Oklahoma when a waiter at a fast food chain decided to donate all his tips to the tornado relief efforts and triggered a chain of generosity. So we know that we can tap into our inner goodness when crisis strikes. But can we do it on a run-of-the-mill Monday? That’s the question in front of you.  Will  ... posted on May 27 2013 (548,683 reads)

how to rescue each other.   Yet, deep inside we all still have that capacity.   We know we have it because we saw it at Sandy Hook, in the brave teachers who gave up their lives to save their students. We saw it during the Boston Marathon when runners completed the race and kept running to the nearest blood bank.  We saw it just this week in Oklahoma when a waiter at a fast food chain decided to donate all his tips to the tornado relief efforts and triggered a chain of generosity. So we know that we can tap into our inner goodness when crisis strikes. But can we do it on a run-of-the-mill Monday? That’s the question in front of you.  Will  ... posted on May 4 2017 (26,539 reads)

passenger seat, you not only enjoy the ride but become aware of the vast conspiracy of the universe to drop us at the doorsteps of greater good. With an effortless bow, you let go that which is leaving, and let in all that arrives. Such a grand mystery of life is not meant to be traced backward. It must be lived forward. Today, I want to leave you with three qualities, three G’s, that have lighted my journey in living it forward. The First G is Generosity. The best part about generosity is that we don't need to learn it. We simply need to unlearn greed. Science confirms that we are innately wired to give, even before we learn about words and concepts. Every time we giv... posted on Jun 11 2018 (14,170 reads)

on the spot, the name and phone number of someone who wants to give or receive something to/from you. It is essential to follow up, or the gift circle will end up feeding cynicism rather than community. (photo via George Eastman House Collection) Finally, the circle can do a third round in which people express gratitude for the things they received since the last meeting. This round is extremely important because in community, the witnessing of others' generosity inspires generosity in those who witness it. It confirms that this group is giving to each other, that gifts are recognized, and that my own gifts will be recognized, appreciated, and recip... posted on Jun 13 2012 (26,434 reads)

of the best ways to increase our own happiness is to do things that make other people happy. In countless studies, kindness and generosity have been linked to greater life satisfaction, strongerrelationships, and better mental and physical health—generous people even live longer. What’s more, the happiness people derive from giving to others creates a positive feedback loop: The positive feelings inspire further generosity—which, in turn, fuels greater happiness. And research suggests that kindness is truly contagious: Those who witness and benefit from others’ acts of kindness are more likely to be kind themselves; a single act of kindness spreads through ... posted on Dec 12 2015 (20,986 reads)

of silence before meetings, 21-day challenges as a group, circle of sharing. Instead of dramatic, overnight changes, we find small nudges to be much more potent. At a Denmark hotel, guests chose apples over sugary-snacks when they placed a "apple a day, keeps the doctor away" sign next to it. On organ donation forms, countries with default of 'yes' lead to 97.56% donations, while default of 'no' leads to 22.73% -- what is the default for igniting greater generosity? Research shows that introducing just one consistent contributor tilts the entire network towards more generosity. Small acts make a big difference. (Reference: Designing For... posted on Jan 12 2017 (18,980 reads)

this week I was rendered speechless by the power of unexpected generosity. The first was an actual gift from someone I barely knew, and the second was a story of survival that took such courage to write that I experienced it as a gift.  The gift was brought by one of my students, from her mother who I only met once. It was her mother’s way of saying thank you to me for loving her daughter so well, and I literally could not speak when I unwrapped it. A weaver, she raises sheep for wool which she shears, cards, cleans, spins and dyes with plant dyes before weaving it into blankets and shawls.  She made a shawl for me, determining my colors from that one time we met ... posted on Feb 2 2022 (3,978 reads)

with, packing more punch than you might imagine. This approach to life starts with the following premise: What exactly did I (or you) do to deserve to be alive? If you can process that question and come out thinking it was a gift that you can't ever pay back, then beginning a life of greater giving is the only logical and remotely reciprocal way to go. If the most valuable thing you have isn't anything you earned, why be stingy with all the lesser stuff. You can start that practice of greater generosity with greater gratitude. And where better to start than with your mother, but don't stop there. Family, friends and the final frontier, strangers, are all worthy subjects. Let's review what... posted on Jul 9 2011 (31,272 reads)

Microsystems. I contacted Nipun and he responded very quickly with, “Yeah, we’d love to talk about what we’re doing.” I didn’t have any expectations one way or the other. We met at a café in Berkeley. He was very engaging and it seemed like it was going to be an okay story. Then he said something that sort of blew me out of the water. Just off-handedly he said, “CharityFocus is really not about helping anybody. It’s really about engaging in generosity to help yourself.” It wasn’t the construct I had in mind. It was going to be about these brilliant young engineers helping, right? Then the more I thought about it, wow! That... posted on Apr 18 2014 (8,994 reads)

wonders in seventeen places around the world. What works, though, isn't the intellectual idea -- it's actually the experience. It's actually realizing that when you walk in, the greeter is a volunteer. The person who is waiting on your table, the person who plates your food, the person who's bussing your tables, they're all volunteers. That guy doing dishes in the back, who signed up to be on his feet for six hours, to just do dishes so you can have an experience of generosity, is also a volunteer. When you realize this, it begets a very different kind of generosity in you. A flow of deep compassion emerges. It's very natural. Minah Jung was a student at U... posted on Oct 28 2015 (32,437 reads)

a greater good gives us a sense of purpose. "To forge community then, we must do more than simply get people together.... Community is woven from gifts." And that shared sense of community builds on itself: "On a less tangible level, any gifts we give contribute to another kind of common wealth – a reservoir of gratitude that will see us through times of turmoil, when the conventions and stories that hold civic society together fall apart. Gifts inspire gratitude and generosity is infectious. Increasingly, I read and hear stories of generosity, selflessness, even magnanimity that take my breath away. When I witness generosity, I want to be generous too. In the com... posted on Jul 2 2017 (9,070 reads)

I can carry on Carry on. Carry on. Carry on. Pavi:  Such medicine for these times. Thank you so much. Carrie Carrie:   Oh, well thank you. Pavi:  And as serendipity would have it, just that we were sharing the story of Parker Palmer, we had a comment come in from him and a question for you. He said, “You are one of the most generous people I've ever known. Can you talk about where that impulse comes from in your life and though I know you don't do generosity in expectation of a return, how do you experience the rewards of being generous?” Carrie: As usual, a wonderful question from Parker. Generosity and if  kindness is a country ... posted on Jul 15 2023 (2,637 reads)

all know gift giving is an essential, ritualized part of the holidays. But what about the rest of the year? There’s good reason to practice generosity even after you’ve greeted the New Year. As we’ve reported in the past, giving activates parts of the brain associated with pleasure and social connection; releases endorphins in the brain, producing a “helper’s high”; and provides many long-term health benefits. But we aren’t always as giving as we could be. Fortunately, Greater Good has published dozens of articles on how to foster generosity in children, institutions, society—and within ourselves. Here are seven top tips, culled from ... posted on Dec 25 2011 (12,287 reads)