Facing Crisis With A Positive Outlook
What we should do when things go bad.
When the financial market is in chaos all across the world, people consider clinging on to whatever they have and also reduce expenses. And they think that everybody does so, mainly because newspapers proclaim as such.
Everyone ISN`T acting that way of course. In fact, some people and some businesses thrive no matter where the economy is going. And when you look for why that is, you find that the answer often lies in a simple place where most people have never even looked. Let’s explore together.
When a current is going downward, whatever the reason be, the way to survive is by rowing against the current. If we let ourselves to be swept away by the current, we may sink deep down and survival might become difficult.
The truth is that when we know how to steer ourselves and be our own masters, we will able to stay afloat or swim against the current, come what may. Let us see how we can manage it.
‘Go-getters’ or ‘Go-givers’
Imagine a scenario where we want to have more – better profits, a higher salary, more leave, better liberty, and wider chances.
When we want something, the first thing we tend to do is to go and get it. So, we call ourselves ‘Go-getters’. And being a ‘go-getter’ is, let’s face it, a sign of leadership, activism and an early-adopter mindset. This is of course one of the keys to the success formulae we often read about. But there is a problem. It turns out that when we use this ’strategy’, there are some unexpected (but quite predictable) consequences.
Because after ‘getting’ and ‘having’ it what tends to follow is ‘losing’ it. We either lose it physically or we lose interest in what it was we got.
And when we are tired of one thing we concentrate on getting something new. And these fresh cravings never end. The more we go in search of newer things, the wider the chain of desire that makes us continuously yearn for things. It simply becomes an addiction!
Why don’t we turn our ‘getting’ into contributing?
You might be conscious that the act of contributing produces a unique pleasure. This arises from gratification and not from alarm or self-indulgence. One can go on contributing and get so much in return like a most rewarding expedition.
Our abundant and providing attitude creates abundant and providing clients and team mates while our cost awareness and ‘getting approach’ would draw towards us only similar clients and team mates. And those are the type of people we would not like to be friends with!
Creative capitalism
Many businesses see this now. They are now starting to give more and more in various ways. There’s a veritable ’sea-change’ going on as more people ‘get’ the role that giving can play in their business. Bill Gates is a class example. In a July 2008 lead article in TIME Magazine he referred to it as ‘Creative Capitalism’.
He opined that the idea of providing for others could become a crucial factor in encouraging people to buy one product rather than another.
What he’s actually saying is that when a company links its business to giving in some way, that company and its products become more attractive to customers. It takes us way, way above what’s been called ‘the sea of sameness’.
Creative Capitalism is about rising above what we reluctantly settle for to reach what we truly aspire to. When we can capitalise on our ideas and imagination in a way that benefits and nurtures the wider community and network; we stop wasting our resources, efforts and talents in trying to temporarily win. We start creating the real win for ourselves and for the sustainability of our global economy.
The charm of effective giving
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the phrase that’s often used to describe giving back at a corporate level. It’s becoming almost a required part of corporate business practice. Yet when it’s done out of a sense of obligation or with the intent to just make ourselves look good, people eventually get what it is. It still is a temporary strategy.
Business ventures and people who ‘donate’ become popular. The zeal and sincerity that prods them to act is recognized by the people with whom they interact. This response is on top of what is spun by way of the company’s public relation efforts.
What would be the result if part of the amount that is meant for marketing is diverted towards charity?
Giving gives rise to something greater than what we actually are. It has the power to inspire. And true inspiration is possible only when it echoes on the people whom we want to enthuse. And we are enthused only when we put our heart and soul into the procedure. It is simply not sufficient to listen to the interesting tales. One has to become part and parcel of the whole process. Everyone has this inclination to make one’s own input – to one’s immediate relatives, friends, and to the society at large.
Transaction-based giving causes it to happen on its own
A far better atmosphere for donating has become possible because of an idea (or we can call it a ‘phenomenon’) by the name Buy1GIVE1 (Buy One Give One). Buy1GIVE1 is the abode of transaction-based giving. Transaction-based giving overhauls everything. Let us put to use our resourcefulness and decide why.
How wonderful is the situation where every time someone buys an ice cream, a child somewhere in an underprivileged country gets a cup of milk?
Imagine if every time you subscribed to a magazine you love, a tree got planted automatically just because you bought the magazine? Or every time you dine out, you fed a child in need? Automatically again.
Or supposing you are undergoing some training. How wonderful it would be if another eager student far away is also getting the necessary training as a corollary (believe it or not, the training does not cost the training institute more than 60 cents a day).
Or maybe even the speaker you hire for your conference makes sure that kids who can’t speak (because of facial deformities) now can by automatically giving back to a worthy cause connected to those kids. All of a sudden, you feel good too because you’ve done some good!
Consider whether you will be able to use transaction-based giving in your own exclusive way to go with your services or products to make your customers and other team-mates part of the saga of contributing. This is how you can do it.
The economy where all benefits
As of now, enterprises all across the world are realising the power of transaction-based giving. TESCO, one of the better known supermarket chains of UK, has correlated its sales in such a way that when someone buys a pair of school trousers from them, a child in Kenya gets a school uniform.
The Mineral Water Company known as Volvic is one that has followed swiftly in this transaction-based giving program. They connect their water selling to well digging in Africa and call it Buy1 GIVE 10, because when one litre of water is sold, the money that comes from it helps in making a 10 litres flow in the well that is being dug.
Middle level and comparatively small enterprises are now in the forefront in widening this global giving phenomenon through Creative Capitalism. Buy1GIVE1 (www.b1g1.com), a Singapore-based Social Enterprise came up with an effective strategy which has turned this transaction-based giving into a movement that anyone who wants can participate in.
Buy1GIVE1 is the abode of the most powerful transaction-based giving in the world because it ties up any enterprise of any size to any worthy cause in the world. It is creating an international community of entrepreneurial givers and for SME`s, Buy1GIVE1 correlates enterprises, their buyers AND causes in an unsurpassable way. The system has been so perfected that it is automated.
You can become a citizen of this global giving movement by simply getting a Buy1GIVE1 `VISA` directly off the Buy1GIVE1 site at www.b1g1.com. And if you own a business you can become a B1G1 Business through a simple online application and select your cause for your main product or service to kick-start you’re giving. Buy1GIVE1 forwards 100% of the contributions to their international Worthy Cause Partners (there are now over 528 projects you can select) making the giving even more effective.
Have you considered?
* Half the world-nearly three billion people-live on less than two dollars a day.
* Even when the new millennium dawned there were still almost a billion people who were illiterate.
* According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. That is about 210,000 children each week, or 20 children every minute.
* A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water; and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.
* About a billion people have no access to minimum health care facilities.
* 63,000 square miles of rainforests are destroyed each year.
Figures From Global Issues
Buy1GIVE1 Businesses-check out these examples
* Buy1BUILD1 (www.sunsplashhomes.com, www.arkgroup.com.au)
* Instruction to Instruction (www.kipmcgrath.com.au)
* Medical practice providing healthcare (www.primanora.com)
* Telephone card helping in communication (www.ultimatecomms.com)
* Mind Expansion to curing (www.meditate.com.au)
* Weight loss to kids’ meals (www.bodychain.com)
* Aesthetic blinds to lights to schools (www.blindscouture.com.au)
* Socks for protecting feet from frostbite (www.socksforhappypeople.com)
* Coaching to train social entrepreneurs (www.b1g1forcoaches.com)
* And to get a complete picture, just go to www.b1g1.com.
Discovering what we are looking for-Nature has got the answer
So let’s begin again from where we had set off-financial instability and succeeding in having what we need. The requirements are in reality quite clear-cut. It is just a triumvirate starting with the letter C – correlation, cooperation and community.
When we can collaborate instead of isolate and when we can create an effective way to add to each other instead of taking away from each other, we discover there is so much abundance and resource already available in our world. And when we connect, not just with each other but with our true selves, we discover something really interesting-that we’re all ONE. Then we understand how easy it is to create a global community from something as simple as giving.
And the truth is there in all its glory in nature.
In earth’s natural workshop, beautiful butterflies fertilize flowers and help to produce gardens that continue generation after generation. It was there even before recorded history.
When a fiasco inundates the world, it should be leveraged to turn it into a benefit to return to normalcy. Now is the time to acknowledge what we have got and forge ahead to succeed.
And when a person chooses to donate now itself, in spite of the financial crisis, he will feel more contended. And with this contentment he will find a hope that is rekindled anew, which will ring a bell on how the ebb and flow of things can change. Today’s charity might be that which will reverse the flow.
Discover more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing.