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How we should react when economy slows down.

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.

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 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-contributors’

Let’s say we want more – more profits, a pay raise, more holidays, more freedom, and more opportunities.

When we yearn for a thing, our response is to try to get it. By that yardstick everybody is a ‘Go-getter’. And a ‘go-getter’ is understood as a dynamic, enterprising person with leadership qualities. Such an attitude is a prime requirement for succeeding in life as we understand it. Nevertheless, there is an innate conundrum. When these approaches are put into practice, there are certain unanticipated, though unavoidable upshots.

The gist of the matter is that after ‘getting’ and ‘possessing’ it we tend to ‘get rid of’ it. We might actually jettison it or might become apathetic to the whole idea.

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 fulfilment. 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 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!

Inspiring capitalism

Most enterprises are conscious of this now. Companies have now started providing for others in myriad ways. A complete change has come over as companies understand how the idea of giving is crucial to their business. In an article in TIME Magazine in July 2008, it was Bill Gates who coined the word ‘Creative Capitalism.’

He explained that helping others might be the fine deciding point that could persuade people to prefer one product to 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 attraction of effective giving

The initiative of bigger enterprises to contribute back to the society is known as Corporate Social Responsibility or CSR. It is fast becoming mandatory for large corporations to do so. Still, when it is done for image building or as a mere compulsion, public may eventually realise the truth. Nevertheless, it is a face-saving mechanism.

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.

So, what happens if we allocate some of the marketing budget to go toward giving?

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.

For example, imagine if every time you had a cup of coffee at your favourite caf, a child in Africa automatically got access to pure, clean water for one day?

Or a different scenario where with every subscription to a journal that you would like to read, a sapling gets planted somewhere where it was badly needed? Or whenever you ate out, someone routinely got fed out of its profit?

Or let’s say you’re being coached in your business. How interesting would it be to know that a child was educated for one month as a direct result (and by the way, all it cost the coaching company to do that was 60 cents per day).

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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 your 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.

* Poverty and malnutrition robs the lives of 20 children every minute, 30,000 every day, and 210,000 children every week, as per UNICEF records.

* 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)

* Education to education (www.kipmcgrath.com.au)

* Medical practice providing healthcare (www.primanora.com)

* Phone card to human interaction (www.ultimatecomms.com)

* Relaxation to healing (www.meditate.com.au)

* Weight loss to kids’ meals (www.bodychain.com)

* Blind installation to lighting up schools (www.blindscouture.com.au)

* Socks for protecting feet from frostbite (www.socksforhappypeople.com)

* Coaching to educate 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 come back to where we started-economic turmoil and getting what we want. What we all really want is actually very simple. You can sum it up with ‘C’ words – connection, collaboration and community.

When we can team up rather than break up and thus create a perfect way to combine resources rather than carry away from one another, we will perceive that there is so much more profusion and so many reserves present on the planet. And when we build relationships, not just with one another but with our innate selves, we understand something infinitely beautiful-that we’re all ONE. Then we realise how simple it is to form an international society from something as commonplace 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 opts to begin giving today itself, the sense of euphoria would be much more, notwithstanding the economic problems. And with this sense of elation comes a reawakening of hope that will remind him of how the power and direction of tide can easily change. And his giving might be that which brings about this change.

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