Wendy Smith - Give a Little: How Your Small Donations Can Transform Our World

How and Why We Give

Doers and Donors

Four Big Secrets About Giving

Ripple Effect Giving

Ending Extreme and Cyclical Poverty

Hunger

Filling Bowls with Small Gifts

KickStart

Heifer International

Feeding America

Health

The Cycle of Poverty and Poor Health

Asthma Care on Wheels

The Big Three

Path

Education

Education and Poverty

Developments in Literacy

Safe Passage

Ounce of Prevention Fund

Infrastructure, Tools, and Technology

Bridges, Bikes, and Buckets (of Clean Water)!

Bridges to Prosperity

Potters for Peace

World Bicycle Relief

Giving, Lending, and Clicking for Good

The Multi-Front Attack

Social Investment and Fair Trade Purchasing

In a League of Its Own

Sixteen More Ways to Make Waves

Organization Contact Information

Charity Navigators Approach to Evaluating Nonprofit Financial Health

It was the worst natural disaster in recorded history. For years, two colossal slabs of rock, the Indo-Australian tectonic plate, supporting the continent of Australia and the Indian subcontinent, and the Eurasian tectonic plate, supporting Asia and Europe, had been moving against each other, the Indian plate sliding beneath the Burma plate of the Indo-Australian plate. On December 26, 2004, the Indian plate slipped about 20 meters under the Burma plate causing an earthquake of 9.1 on the Richter scale and unleashing pent-up compressional forces equal to 23,000 explosions of the nuclear bomb that decimated Hiroshima .1

In addition to causing the great earthquake, the sliding of the Indian plate beneath the Burma plate displaced ocean waters, creating waves that rushed toward coastal areas surrounding the Indian Ocean at hundreds of miles per hour. When the nearly undetectable waves hit shorelines, they grew to monstrous heightssome nearly 100 feet high. They pushed inland as far as three miles like concrete walls of water, destroying everything in their paths.

Nothing stood a chance against the dual forces of the quake and the waves. Virtually everything that took a direct hit was annihilatedhumans, property, the environment. Approximately 230,000 people died that day. Twelve countries bordering the Indian Ocean reported a total of over $10 billion in damages to infrastructure, services, and industries.2

Wed never seen anything like it. With twenty-four-hour news coverage from cable television, we saw it all, almost immediately. It was unbelievable. It was horrifying. We were overcome by sorrow and sympathy.

We jumped into action like never beforegovernments, aid agencies, you, and me. We knew what was needed. Everything was needed. The agents of relief and reconstruction needed cash. Immediately. So, we gave. And gave. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, as of January 2009, governments and civil society around the world had contributed a total of $6.2 billion.3 Nearly two-thirds of that total came from the United States. The U.S. federal government provided $841 million in aid.4 Thats 13.6 percent of aid from across the world, a healthy share of the whole.

What Im going to tell you next, however, will seem unlikely. Maybe impossible. Yet its true. It just didnt get any news coverage.

Together, foundations, corporations, and individuals in the United States gave $3.16 billion.5 The first surprise is that American civil society gave 3.7 times the federal governments contribution to relief and reconstruction following the tsunami.

If that surprises you, this will shock you: $2.78 billion of the U.S. share, or 45 percent of total giving from around the world , came from ordinary American citizens. U.S. corporations gave $340 million, and foundations gave $40 million. But you didnt hear reports about the tremendous generosity of everyday citizensonly the large donations made by individual companies or foundations.

And theres more. According to a study by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University:

Despite the highly publicized million-dollar gifts from corporations and celebrities, most of the giving to the tsunami relief efforts came from gifts of less than $50 made by millions of Americans across the country, said Patrick M. Rooney, director of research for the Center on Philanthropy. These giving patterns are very similar to the charitable response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and what we believe occurred after Hurricane Katrina.6 (Bold added by the author.)

One-quarter of all of the 106 million U.S. households in 2004 donated to tsunami relief efforts.7 The median donation was $50, while the average donation was $135.8 Everyday Americans sent a second tsunami of $50 donations to repair a corner of the world 15,000 miles away.

Thats how it works. Youve heard it takes a village to raise a child. It takes all of us to fix the world. That means you and medoing good, lifting lives, remaking the world.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM GIVE A LITTLE

This book is going to change the way you think about charitable giving. Im going to show you that there are organizations using small contributions from everyday donors to address four critical issues related to poverty: (1) hunger, (2) health, (3) education, and (4) access to tools, technology, and infrastructure. Im going to describe those organizations and the value of their work in ways that you may not have considered before. Give a Little cuts through the muddle of hyperbolic language found in fund-raising letters and gives you straight factsfacts you can rely on that will empower your philanthropic decisions.

Youll find its not the size of the contribution that matters; what matters is the outcomes your giving produces. Im going to describe the outcomes created by your gifts from a variety of viewpoints, including simple economics, basic science, and stories straight from the sourcesbeneficiaries, donors, and founders of organizations. Youll see how you hold the power to transform the world by improving the lives of those living on the furthest margins of daily lifethe bottom billion among us.

While researching the organizations and stories for this book, I was inspired over and over again by the wisdom and determination of people living in desperate situations and by those creating new opportunities for them. I was also inspired by you . Specifically, your concern for the well-being of folks youll never meet, living in faraway places, and whose lives would be unrecognizable next to your own. I congratulate your optimism and determination that everyday citizens can improve those lives.

I share that optimism and determination, and Im going to tell you exactly how each of us can afford to transform the lives of folks halfway across the world or in our own communities. Together were going to help end extreme poverty. Were going to treat and control the spread of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Were going to build bridges; ease asthma so children can go to school; help mothers give birth to healthy babies and survive their deliveries; get irrigation pumps to millions of subsistence farmers and help them create commercial enterprises; give families goats, bees, or llamas to make them microentrepreneurs; provide clean drinking water that is accessible, safe, and affordable.