Facing Crisis With A Positive Outlook

What we should do when things go bad.

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.

Everyone ISN`T acting that way of course. In fact, some people and some businesses thrive no matter where the economy is going. And when you look for why that is, you find that the answer often lies in a simple place where most people have never even looked. Let’s explore together.

When a current is going downward, whatever the reason be, the way to survive is by rowing against the current. If we let ourselves to be swept away by the current, we may sink deep down and survival might become difficult.

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-providers’

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!

So what if we turned our ‘desire to get’ into a desire to provide?

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 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!

Creative 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 explained that helping others might be the fine deciding point that could persuade people to prefer one product to another.

The essence of what he says is that when a business has ties with the idea of giving in one way or other, it is bound to be more tempting to others. It stands out above thousand businesses the attributes of which are similar.

Creative Capitalism is concerned about reaching higher than what we might reconcile for to arrive at where we hoped to arrive. When we can make the most of our design and inspiration in a way that assists and fosters the larger community of nations and continents, we are preventing the wastage of supplies, endeavours and capacities to succeed. Then we are crafting the most authentic success for ourselves and for the financial stability of the countries across the world.

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.

Business ventures and people who ‘donate’ become popular. The zeal and sincerity that prods them to act is recognized by the people with whom they interact. This response is on top of what is spun by way of the company’s public relation efforts.

What would be the result if part of the amount that is meant for marketing is diverted towards charity?

Giving creates something bigger than who we are. Giving creates inspiration. Inspiration can only be created when it resonates with the people whom we want to inspire. And we get inspired when we are involved in the experience. It is not just about hearing the nice stories of others. It’s actually participating in those stories. After all, we all want to feel good in life by making a contribution-to our family and friends, to our company and to our community.

Transaction-based giving makes it inevitable

The ability to give just got so much easier too, thanks to an initiative (some would say a ‘movement’) called Buy1GIVE1 (Buy One Give One). Buy1GIVE1 is the home of transaction-based giving. Transaction-based giving changes everything. Let’s use some imagination to see why.

How would you like the scenario whereby every time you have a coke at a nearby eatery, a needy child in Africa gets clean water at least for a single 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?

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).

Or if a conference sponsors has arranged a speaker, part of whose income goes to help kids who has speech impediments due to deformities, wouldn’t that be a matter to feel satisfied? Just by attending the conference and paying for it, you are becoming part of a noble 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 actual winning economy

Already, companies right around the world are ‘getting’ the power of this transaction-based giving. Just one example-the UK’s leading supermarket chain, TESCO now gives a school uniform to a child in Kenya whenever a customer buys a pair of school trousers.

Volvic is a Mineral Water Company that launched its scheme of transaction-based giving program last year. They help the cause of making wells in Africa. They call the scheme Buy1 GIVE 10 as it helps in generating a flow of 10 litres of water in the well, by every single litre of water they sell.

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 heart of a most powerfully persuasive transaction-based giving globally, correlating business ventures of all sizes to any noble cause anywhere. It is weaving a universal society of business givers and for SME`s, Buy1GIVE1 links up businesses, their clients AND charity requirements in a most passionate and mutually satisfactory manner. The whole thing is completely automated.

Any person can become a citizen of this phenomenon of global giving merely by getting a Buy1GIVE1 `VISA` directly off the Buy1GIVE1 site at www.b1g1.com. Those who have their own enterprise can become a B1G1 Business through applying online and selecting the charity and the primary service or product for launching the giving. Buy1GIVE1 forwards the entire contribution amount to their international Worthy Cause Partners (more than 528 projects are available for members to choose from) thereby making their contributions highly productive.

Are you aware?

* Half the world-nearly three billion people-live on less than two dollars a day.

* Even in the 21st century, which is the age of the internet, there are about a billion people who have never put a pen to a paper.

* 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.

* Just 12% of the people worldwide utilize 85% of the water available for human consumption. And this 12% does not belong to any of the underdeveloped countries.

* About a billion people have no access to minimum health care facilities.

* Every year about 63,000 square miles of rainforests get decimated.

Data From Global Issues

Buy1GIVE1 Businesses- scrutinize these examples

* Buy1BUILD1 (www.sunsplashhomes.com, www.arkgroup.com.au)

* Instruction to Instruction (www.kipmcgrath.com.au)

* Medical practice providing medical benefits (www.primanora.com)

* Telephone card helping in 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 protecting feet from frostbite (www.socksforhappypeople.com)

* Coaching to educate social entrepreneurs (www.b1g1forcoaches.com)

* And for an overall look, simply go to www.b1g1.com.

Finding what we are looking for-Nature gives us the clue

So let’s let us return to the starting point-turbulent economics and managing to get what we need. The needs are in fact not all that knotty. They are just a group of three words that begin with the letter S – strong bonds, solidarity and society.

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.

And nature gives us a real clue to that.

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 crisis hits the world, we can see an opportunity to get back to the simplicity. It is now actually time to be grateful for what we have in order for us all to keep thriving.

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.

Find out more about how Buy1GIVE1 (BOGO) can transform your business using Cause Marketing. Don’t reprint this exact article. Instead, reprint a free unique content version of this same article.