What Would You Do With $90? (A Holiday Challenge)

Here’s $90. Do something good with it by the middle of January. Go!

That’s the challenge that all of us here at the Foundation have taken on this holiday season. Holiday giving is a tradition, but we’re putting a little twist on it this year. We typically each toss in some money for a charitable donation this time of year, the Foundation generously matches our gifts, and we choose one cause in New England and one in the Rocky Mountains that each get half.

This year we’re mixing it up with a little experiment in microphilanthropy, and I wanted to take this opportunity to get some help with my own task and issue a challenge.

The background: Last year I was really inspired to read a story in The New York Times about Courtney Martin, a young writer who created the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy. Courtney came into some money on a book advance and wanted to give it away; rather than give $1000 away to a single charity, she gave $100 each to 10 friends and invited them to a gathering a month later, at which they’d be expected to report on what they did with it.

Courtney’s friends all used the money in very different ways—some high in impact and low in creativity, many just the opposite, and some perhaps hit a sweet spot in between. One paid strangers to walk through a city park holding hands and sharing secrets. One bought a video camera for a public school. One cashed it all into 10,000 pennies and hid lucky pennies around the city. One bought flowers for overworked teachers. One donated it all to earthquake relief in Haiti. Many threw in their own $100 to match, helping Courtney’s original donation to multiply and scale up, and some started new chapters of the Secret Society in other cities.

Unique as it is, the Society is actually part of several growing trends—to democratize philanthropy, to go small, and to get creative. Big institutions with billion-dollar endowments and high-stakes grant applications have traditionally dominated the foundation world: people often feel that they need to donate hundreds or even thousands of dollars to make a difference, and that only money talks. But a bunch of new initiatives are upending that conventional wisdom, showing that anyone can be a philanthropist, giving doesn’t have to be stiff and formal, and even pocket change can make a difference. A few of my favorites:

• Detroit SOUP (http://www.detroitsoup.com/) is a collaborative, open dinner that funds creative projects. Participants show up, pay $5, get a great soup dinner and vote on a local project to receive the night’s proceeds.
• The Awesome Foundation (http://awesomefoundation.org/), now with 11 chapters around the world, gives away $1000 a month to “forward the interest of awesomeness in the universe.”
• Small Change Fund (http://smallchangefund.org/) is a Canadian organization that “empowers people to make big change with small change,” by matching people with small community projects that just need a little bit of funding.

So here we are at Orton, members of a new, unofficial and unauthorized chapter of a Not-So-Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy. Each of us on staff now has $90 in hand, and we’re charged with doing something good and reporting back at our January 12 staff meeting.

What would you do? (Seriously. I have $90 up for grabs.) Do you have a great idea for how I should use it? Do you need $90 to do something great in your community? Can you think of a way to leverage it, get matching contributions, or spread this challenge even further?

Kyle MacDonald traded one red paperclip for a house in 2005; get creative and help me see how far we can make $90 go. Post your ideas in a comment or a tweet and speak up if you see something you like…best idea wins.