Facing Crisis With A Positive Outlook
How we should react when economy slows down.
When the financial market is unstable worldwide, the first reaction of most people is to hold on to what they have and also cut costs. They also presume that practically everyone is doing the same thing, as that is the impression that newspapers create.
However, each and every person ISN’T doing so. There are sections of the society which prosper, come what may. Those, who feel surprised about this odd equation, can find the clue for it in a most obvious place where they might have missed it. It might be worthwhile to analyse it together.
Whenever there is a downward trend, whatever it is, the best way to overcome it is by rising higher than it. If we drift with the wind and go where it takes us, we might find ourselves in dire straits, waiting for the wind’s mercy for deliverance.
The fact is that when we know our strength and can hold sway over ourselves, we can rise above the mundane and not worry about what is going on all around. Let us visualise it properly.
’Go-getters’ or ’Go-contributors’
Let’s say we want more – more profits, a pay raise, more holidays, more freedom, and more opportunities.
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.
The crux of the problem is that after ’getting’ and ’owning’ a thing, what eventually happens is ’dropping’ it. We either actually throw it away or become indifferent to it.
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?
Most of you are aware that the act of providing gives a sense of fulfillment. This ensues from gratefulness and not from panic or avarice. A person can go on providing more and receive more and know full satisfaction in the voyage of life.
Our generous and giving attitude creates generous and giving customers and team members while our price consciousness and ’getting attitude’ attracts precisely those types of customers and team members. And they’re the very ones we don’t want!
Inspiring 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 appeal 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.
However, ’giving’ people and businesses always attract more. The passions and beliefs behind what they do are shared with the people with whom they connect. They attract something beyond what the slick PR or marketing campaign provides.
What is likely to be the upshot if some of the capital meant for marketing is apportioned for contributions?
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
The facility for contributing became so much simpler because of a programme (or one can say a ’development’) called Buy1GIVE1 (Buy One Give One). Buy1GIVE1 is the heart of transaction-based giving. Transaction-based giving revolutionises things. Let us use our creativity and analyse how.
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.
Consider the scenario of someone attending a coaching session. It would be commendable if someone who needs similar coaching would get it as a direct consequence (and just at the cost of not more than 60 cents for the day’s coaching).
Where a motivational speaker at a conference is connected with a charity, part of his income might go to helping kids who have speech problems due to facial defects. It will be a matter of great satisfaction for the participants at the conference to know that their very participation is helping a deserving cause.
Imagine the perfect scenario where transaction-based giving can be applied in one’s own special manner to correspond with the available products and services to include every member of the group and customers. It is possible.
The actual winning economy
Business ventures, on a global basis, have already internalized the efficacy of this transaction-based giving. A case in point is TESCO, one of the foremost supermarket chains of UK. The company’s programme ensures that a Kenyan child gets a school uniform when someone buys a pair of school trousers from them.
Mineral Water Company Volvic also rolled out their transaction-based giving program successfully last year. For every 1 litre of Volvic people buy, Volvic gives funds to build wells in Africa in a program they call Buy1 GIVE 10 (since every 1 litre sold essentially creates a flow of 10 litres in the well.
Lesser to middle level businesses have now begun to spearhead the movement of increasing the idea of global giving through Creative Capitalism. Buy1GIVE1 (www.b1g1.com), a Singapore-based Social Enterprise came up with a procedure that has turned this transaction-based giving into something each and every human being can be part of.
Buy1GIVE1 is the home of the most impactful transaction-based giving in the world because it connects any business of any size to any cause in the world. It’s creating a global community of business givers and for SME`s, Buy1GIVE1 connects businesses, their customers AND charities in a way that hasn’t been done before. And it all happens automatically.
You can enroll yourself as a citizen of this marvel of universal giving by simply getting a Buy1GIVE1 `VISA` directly from the Buy1GIVE1 site at www.b1g1.com. And if you are an entrepreneur, you can become a B1G1 Business through making an online application and choosing the requirement for which you would like to donate and your product or service through which you would prefer to do it to initiate the giving. Buy1GIVE1 forwards the whole of the donation to their international Worthy Cause Partners (with more than 528 projects to choose) making the giving entirely satisfactory.
Do you know?
* Half the population of the globe -about three billion people-is forced to survive on less than two dollars a day.
* Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their name.
* UNICEF has reported that more than 30,000 children die every day due to abject poverty, which makes it 20 child a minute and 210,000 a week.
* 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.
* Medical aid is not available for one billion people of the world population.
* 63,000 square miles of rainforests are destroyed each year.
Statistic From Global Issues
Buy1GIVE1 Businesses- take a look at these examples
* Buy1BUILD1 (www.sunsplashhomes.com, www.arkgroup.com.au)
* Education to education (www.kipmcgrath.com.au)
* Medical practice providing medical benefits (www.primanora.com)
* Phone card to communication (www.ultimatecomms.com)
* Mind Expansion to curing (www.meditate.com.au)
* Shedding pounds to providing food for children (www.bodychain.com)
* Blind installation to lighting up schools (www.blindscouture.com.au)
* Socks for comfort to feet free of frostbite (www.socksforhappypeople.com)
* Learning to educating social organizers (www.b1g1forcoaches.com)
* And to get a complete picture, just go to www.b1g1.com.
Finding what we are looking for-Nature gives us the clue
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.
The secret was always alive in nature
In nature, bees and butterflies pollinate flowers and create sustainable flower gardens for many generations to thrive on. It’s been in front of us all along!
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. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory