It was Christmas day and our family was getting ready to volunteer at our local homeless shelter, where we expected to help distribute clothes, shoes, and other donations. My four kids had been excited to go, but since they were now snuggled on the couch with their new Christmas presents, they were less than thrilled to get up and leave.
As we were leaving the house, I shoved some cash I had received for Christmas that day into my pocket and asked my kids to do the same. “Hey,” I said, addressing all four of them. “I’m bringing some of my Christmas money with me. God might ask us to give it away. You might bring yours, too, just in case.”
“Dad, we’re tired. Can we just stay home?” they echoed in unison.
“It’s important that we go,” I reminded them. “Always be open and willing to give.”
My kids would tell you now that they knew I was right, but they left their Christmas cash wedged between wrapping paper and cards. We all hopped in the car and our white Suburban pulled out of the driveway.
The parking lot was packed. Wrapped around the gated fence surrounding the edges of the parking lot was a line of homeless people waiting to get inside. On the concrete lay rows and rows of donated shoes. There were kids’ shoes no longer than the length of an index finger, along with adult dress shoes, slippers, and sneakers all lined up ready to be worn.
An hour flew by. My daughter Lauren was frantically hunting for a pair of men’s dress shoes that would fit the homeless man who had just found pants and a suit in his size. To her right, she watched as a young volunteer walked up to the shoe pile and silently deposited his own clean, new shoes next to the homeless man’s pile of clothes. Just white socks covered his feet as he walked away on the chunky concrete with a small joyful smile on his face, ready to seek out someone else who needed help. As Lauren stood there watching, tears filled her eyes. She wondered, What if I gave freely like that?
Another man approached my son Conner and asked if we had any size 10.5 shoes. Most of the bigger sizes had been taken, so Conner shook his head, but at the same time kneeled down and began untying his own Adidas. “Here,” he said, holding the shoes out to the man. “These should fit.”
Immediately another woman approached the shortened rows of shoes. “I’m looking for a size 7.5 in tennis shoes,” she whispered. Lauren stepped across the row and slipped off her shoes. “These are exactly what you’re looking for,” she said. The woman objected, but Lauren insisted. “These are yours,” she told her, and slid the shoes into the woman’s bag. Without anyone else knowing, Hannah and Dillon had also slipped off their shoes and given them away.
My eyes filled with tears. Two hours before, our kids hadn’t even wanted to leave the comfort of our couch, and now they were walking around in socks on the coarse concrete.
A few minutes later, Lauren turned around to see a woman facing her across the rows of women’s shoes. “Hi, I’m a reporter for a local newspaper,” she said. “I saw what you did just now. Why did you do it?”
Lauren smiled and told her of the man who had led by example. She had simply followed.
As a dad, my heart beams with pride when I see my kids open their hearts to others. It wasn’t a million dollars or a brand-new car. It was just shoes. Replaceable. Shoes will rip and tear and get muddy and fall apart one day, but the look of shock on that man’s face when Conner reached down and began untying his own shoes—I’ll never forget it.
That afternoon, five members of my family walked back to our Suburban without shoes on their feet and a look of pure joy on their faces. That’s the power of giving—and it all started with one stranger leading by example.
When you give, you create a ripple effect that encourages others to give. Artist Kent Youngstrom points out that generosity is not just about giving back. It’s about giving forward, which can reset today’s culture.
In other words, giving is contagious. A study by Harvard researchers James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that when one person behaves generously, it inspires observers to behave generously too. In fact, the researchers found that altruism could spread by three degrees—from person, to person, to person, to person. “As a result,” they write, “each person in a network can influence dozens or even hundreds of people, some of whom he or she does not know and has not met.”
Jesse Cole invested in a low-performing, unprofitable Minor League baseball team in Savannah, Georgia. His energy and influence turned the Savannah Bananas around, and they’ve had sold out games ever since. How did he do it? He put people first. “For us, making a difference in the community is one fan at a time,” he said. “Many people think, I’ve got to start with this big cause, this big effort, but when you impact one life at a time, that translates into multiple lives, and that reaps the benefits of what you have planted.”
Jesse is right. Whether it’s the shoes off your feet or the cash in your pocket, giving changes things. It changes you and the people around you. It can even transform your business and make you wealthier. But remember, money only makes you happy up to a certain point. What you do with your money—your Generosity Purpose—is much more important than how much you have.
Dr. Mike Norton reminded me that what he calls “investing in others” is an integral part of every world religion. “Every world religion and philosophy has something about not focusing on yourself and helping others,” he says. “Investing in others is the idea that when we use our money to benefit other people, like buying gifts or giving to charity, again that tends to make us happier than buying another thing for ourselves.”
Mike is not alone in his findings. A comprehensive report published in the Journal of Personality and Psychology analyzed more than a dozen academic and psychological studies. Taken together, they provide evidence that human beings around the world experience emotional rewards from using their financial resources to benefit others. Among its specific findings:
- Prosocial spending, defined as using one’s financial resources to help others, is correlated with greater well-being, even when allowing for income differences.
- North American students who were randomly assigned to spend a small windfall on others were significantly happier at the end of the day than those assigned to spend money on themselves.
- Children as young as two years old exhibit increased happiness when giving a valued resource away.
- Kind acts offer emotional or recuperative benefits.
- Buying a small gift for charity leads to higher levels of positive effect than buying the same gift for oneself.
- Examining over two hundred thousand respondents drawn from 136 countries, prosocial spending was linked to higher subjective well-being around the world.
- People experience emotional benefits from sharing their financial resources with others not only in countries where resources are plentiful but also in impoverished countries where scarcity might seem to limit the possibilities of reaping the gains from giving to others.
In addition, the rewarding properties of generosity can be detected at a neural level. According to a separate study supported by the National Institutes of Health, when people give to charities, it activates regions of the brain associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust, creating a “warm glow” effect. Scientists believe that altruistic behavior releases endorphins in the brain, producing the positive feeling known as the “helper’s high.”
For his tenth birthday, my son Dillon wanted to help the homeless. Instead of birthday presents, he asked people to purchase blankets and socks. He took the donations; added peanut butter, crackers, and water bottles; and made individual bags to hand out. We kept them in the back of our Suburban, available to give to a homeless person anytime we saw one when we were out in our community. Of course, every ten-year-old kid wants birthday presents. Dillon did too. Yet he understood that the happiness from a new gift would wear off in a few days (or the gift would be broken). Helping the homeless was his Generosity Purpose. Not only did it make Dillon happy to help a problem he was passionate about, but our family and his friends loved participating in the project.
Whether it starts with a pair of shoes on Christmas Day, making a homeless pack, or simply paying for a meal for a friend or stranger, your giving makes the world better and inspires others to do the same. The act of giving changes attitudes, changes hearts, changes lives—and makes you healthier.
(To be continued...)
This excerpt is taken from “Good Money Revolution: How to Make More Money to Do More Good” by Derrick Kinney. To read other articles of this book, click here. To buy this book, click here.
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