Why are we doing this?

These last 10 days I have had an incredible travel schedule, NYC, Mexico and Oregon. During my time I got to meet with tons of NPO’s and their representatives. Passionate people living with enormous sense of purpose and making every encounter count. Very inspiring!!

Having been in the non-profit world a over 12 years it seems easy to get somewhat hardened to the next set of statistics and yet another plight for help, I sometimes can feel overwhelmed with the huge need and the “stuckness” of the resources to match the cries for support. This is known as compassion fatigue and is what causes the high turn over in staff in the larger non-profits. I guess through the whole throws of being a start-up and getting everything going, I too had been suffering from a form of compassion fatigue; that is until yesterday.

Yesterday morning I was introduced to Jeff Leeland from the Sparrowclubs based in Bend Oregon. In his kind manner he shared the personal journey that started this amazing organization. Everything - in detail from his son’s leukemia to the young kid Dameon in Jeff’s PE class (Jeff was the coach then) that with his gift of 12 five dollar bills started a flood of compassion that supported Jeff’s family both in emotional and financial ways. They raised over $227k in 4 weeks and this is nearly 15 years ago. As he was telling his story and how from that miracle of one child deciding to make a difference for another child in a medical crisis a whole organization was birthed I kept trying to fight the tears. No use, they just kept coming and it felt good to just cry for a moment. Funny how allowing, myself to share or empathize with Jeff provided much needed healing to me. I walked away feeling somehow reconnected to why I started MobileCause.

Jeff says: “Kids will do heroic things if they are given heroic things to do.” That is what we are about: using the most ubiquitous piece of personal technology that an individual owns to do heroic things. By participating in Mobile Campaigns that have cause elements we can actually change the world. There are over 235 Million cell phone users in the US alone. Imagine what would change if the whole world’s cell-phone users (2.7 billion people) decided to do a heroic act just like Dameon did for Jeff. We can actually achieve unprecedented transformation.

I got on the plane back from Oregon last night and read Jeff’s book “One Small Sparrow”. I totally lost it again. I was the guy in seat 2A balling as he was reading a book. Somehow that just didn’t matter. I felt compassion for Jeff and the myriads of kids that have decided to do heroic things for others. Through the tears I got in touch with a deep seated passion for why I do this and why I am committed to enabling Non-Profits and people to do heroic things via the mobile phone.

It’s easy to get lost in the day to day tasks, even if you work (and perhaps especially so) for a non-profit and yet hearing the story and the miracle that sprung from the act of kindness that one person started and allowing that to go deep into my soul, restored in me the passion to make a difference.

Connect. Change the World!
Hendre