David T. Levinson - Everyone Helps, Everyone Wins: How Absolutely Anyone Can Pitch in, Help Out, Give Back, and Make the World a Better Place

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Table of Contents

To Ellie, Becca, Jack, and Izzie,
who all make the world a better place every day
just by being yourselves

Preface

Thank you for buying this book. Thanks for reading it, too. If youve gotten even this far, you must somehow, in some way, want to make the world a better place. For that, thank you most of all.

Youll be glad to know that your timing is great. After all, volunteering is in. The winds have been shifting for a while. But now, volunteering and helping and serving and giving are everywhere. Personally, I think thats great.

And Im not alone. Everyone is getting into the actOprah, the NBA, American Idol, Ashton Kutcher, and everyone in between are making pledges, giving back, and being the change (before, during, and after tweeting their pants off about it). Even dead people are pushing the cause; recently I saw a commercial about volunteering that showed, as examples of individuals who made a difference, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, and, last but certainly not least, Gandhi.

Its exciting, but its a little daunting, too.

Watching that commercial, I couldnt help but think, Okay, I need to get this book to my editor, plus Im not remotely prepared for that very big meeting on Tuesday, one of the kids is in a show on Thursday, and the shower is still leaking, I have to do my taxes, Id really like to lose those ten pounds I recently found, and it would be nice to actually spend a moment or two with my wife. I have about three dozen e-mails to return, and we really must do something about the weird way the dog smells. OhI almost forgot that one of the cars has been recalled, and I should bring it in and that light in the other car is on again, but what Id really like to do is get a new car, and that new BMW is really nice. Oh, and I have to try and be more like... Gandhi?

Yikes.

The fact is, in todays world, everyonewhether youre sixteen or seventy-six, a CEO or a stay-at-home mom, a surgeon or a studentis busy. But you can always find some time and some place between doing nothing and being Gandhi. Believe me, there is some way and somewhere you can help someone else. The key is figuring out what place works for you.

I started and run a large community service event in southern California called Big Sunday. Our motto is Everyone helps, everyone wins, and thats a sentiment that I truly believe. We put everyone to work, from homeless people to movie stars, and everyone is treated equally and valued equally, too. This will be our twelfth year, and with all due respect to the great volunteering momentum out there now, in my experience there have always been lots of people and lots of places that need a helping hand, whether the economy is good or bad, whoever is president, and whichever way the winds of the world are blowing.

This book is for anyone, anywhere, who wants to lend that helping hand.

Introduction

The Accidental Activist

Not long ago, I sat in my living room watching myself marching across my TV screen on the NBC Nightly News; Ialong with millions of othersheard myself described as volunteerisms reluctant rock star.

If ten years ago someone had told me this would happen, Id have told them I was as likely to be watching myself be crowned Miss America.

It was a bit of a shock. Not being on TV, but what got me there. You see, it was Big Sunday Weekend. NBC was doing a piece on us. They showed terrific footage of all kinds of people helping out at a bunch of our volunteer sites. It was a very kind and flattering segment.

The weekend had gone off great. We had more than fifty thousand volunteers of all ages and all walks of life working together at hundreds and hundreds of different nonprofit sites throughout southern California. The driving idea behind Big Sunday is that everyone has some way that they can help someone else. I truly believe that. NBC must believe it, too, because now they were telling the story to America.

And, as I watched myself, and listened to the praise of good works, my first thought was, My hair looks really good.

You see, Im not a natural do-gooder; I am not one of those saintly people who are so nice and so sweet and so damn... good that you cant imagine where they come from, why they never complain, or if they ever gossip, drink, swear, or fart. Im cranky and can be an awful pain in the ass, and if Im gonna be on TV, all things being equal, I want my hair to look good.

Truly, the whole helping/volunteering/community service thing has been a shock. It wasnt my goal; it wasnt my plan; it wasnt anything I expected. It wasnt even anything I particularly wanted. I would tell anyone who listened that I had no idea what I was doing. That I backed into it. That it was all a surprise. An accident.

This isnt because Im modest. Im not.

The fact is, while watching that segment, I felt presumptuous. After all, who am I to think that I could actually help anyone else? What did I know about homelessness? Or battered women? Or ex-cons, AIDS, the environment, gangbangers, seniors, literacy, hunger, stray dogs, returning vets, at-risk teens, runaways, blood banks, or any of the thousands of other worthy causes out there?

But here I was.

This is how it happened:

I live in Los Angeles and moved out here years ago to write for the movies. Dont ask me what movies Ive written, and dont look me up on IMDb. You havent seen them. For I am one of those weird writers who have become stuck in something called development hell. Id write scripts. Id sell scripts. Id get paid real money for them. Then Id rewrite scripts. Sometimes my own, sometimes others. Again, Id get paid. And all along people would talk about the great movies they were going to make from these scripts (or the lousy but lucrative movies theyd make from these scripts). Id follow famous writers on their versions of scripts, and once I was the first writer on a script thateight years laterI heard was still in the pipeline, having been worked on through the years by countless other writers. Id worked with big-name directors and actors and Id scouted for locations. I had start dates for when filming was set to begin. I had a producer who called me every year for more than a decade telling me, David, this is the year were going to get it made! I had a script about two old women that was kicking around for a while. The studio kept trying to get an actress to commit to it, but every time Id suggest a new nameboom!the actress would die. (You see, before I was a do-gooder, I was the kiss of death.) In any case, none of the movies ever got made.

For a while, it was actually kind of cool. Id go to lots of exciting meetings, meet lots of interesting people, talk about lots of exciting movies, and cash a bunch of nice checks. And when they wouldnt make the movie it felt like one of those funny, funky Hollywood things, where I was getting money for nothing, which was, in a weird, ironic way... cool.

Until it wasnt.

By the midnineties I was married to a great woman and had three amazing little kids and two cute mutts in a neat old house in Hollywood. It was a great life with a lot of love (except between the dogs, who never really liked each other that much)except that my movies still werent being made. Worse, what had seemed in a weird, ironic way cool was now unbelievably frustrating, annoying, irritating, and depressing.

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