At 6:00 pm on September 20th, Forbes magazine will release their annual 400 Richest People in America list. The usual names you’ve seen the past few years. One name you won’t see on Forbes list is Ed Payne who has multiple sclerosis though he has never allowed it to deter him from improving the lives of others. Payne has worked tirelessly to help others who suffer from MS for nearly 40 years. Payne helped put Fairfield County on the map for having the largest MS Walk Team in Ohio, generating more than $400,000 for the National MS Society. He and his wife Cheryl even serve as co-chairs of the Lancaster MS Walk. Payne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1963, but he’s never let his own struggles stop him from doing things for others, according to his wife, Cheryl Payne. Ed said he missed being around people after he retired as a doctor in 1994. He decided to volunteer full-time at the Fairfield Center for Disabilities and Cerebral Palsy. Now he gets to meet people every day. That’s why he’ll never stop volunteering as long as he’s healthy enough. He has no use of his upper leg muscles,” Cheryl said. “It makes it difficult for him to even get around from the bedroom to the kitchen. But he would never tell me that. He would never tell you that. But you know that it is.” Cheryl has not heard Ed complain during the 40 years they’ve been married. It makes her feel a little guilty about complaining when she’s sick. But she’s proud of him for it. Doctors told Ed’s mother he should drop out of Ohio University in Athens when he was a student after he was diagnosed with MS. She refused to tell her son because she wanted him to achieve his goal of becoming a doctor, Ed said. Ed went on to become a radiologist and later a community activist and volunteer after graduating from OU. That’s rich!

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go to www.TimRichardson.com

After giving a keynote speech recently, I had breakfast with a guy named Ed
Gallagly, a CEO for over forty years. He was in the audience where I was the
motivational speaker. I was honored by his presence and realized that he was
obviously committed to something I believe in: Life Long Learning. The
contrast was interesting. In the audience sat this seasoned CEO with
extensive experience who has traveled all over the world, has heard the best
of the best industry and professional speakers, has networked with other
industry leaders and given advice to other CEO’s sitting there listening to
a relatively young (18 years speaking) professional offer view points on
life, success, and living rich.

I truly was humbled when I reflected on it. He probably could have given my
speech. When I thought about how he sat through my presentation with all the
wisdom he had, it blew me away. Of the many things he shared with me that
day, I was most impacted by a story he told me of how he counseled a CEO of
the IBM Credit Union (now called Visions) several years ago. He was telling
him about the needs that the community had and how the credit union could
use their influence to help. He told that CEO “Whether you are doing good
because it’s the noble thing to do or whether you are doing it for purely
selfish reasons, you’ll be the ultimate benefactor when you give.” Some
people live an entire life and don’t get that. He, fortunate for me and the
others he’s mentored, led, and taught over the years, understood it early and
has shared it all over the world. Now it’s your turn….

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks
about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover,
increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for businesses,
professional associations, insurance companies, and health care
organizations. For more information go to  www.TimRichardson.com

Yesterday was Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I am sure there was a lot of trash on the street but probably a lot less thanks to the efforts of Katrina Krewe. Becky Zaheri started Katrina Krewe in November 2005 to provide relief along the common thoroughfares of New Orleans from the trash and debris that resulted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Since Katrina, Becky and her Krewe have mobilized thousands of local and national volunteers to bag and remove over 250,000 tons of Katrina debris from the streets of New Orleans. The Katrina Krewe coordinates anti-litter awareness among residents, schools, and businesses within the New Orleans area through various public service programs and activities.

Before Katrina, Becky was a self described soccer mom who lived a pretty good life. She enjoyed her upper class lifestyle playing tennis frequently, socializing with friends, and regular outings and travel with her family. Becky didn’t subscribe to a newspaper, wasn’t politically involved, and wasn’t a community activist. On August 29, 2005, a nasty woman named Katrina changed all that.

Becky was able to return to New Orleans earlier than most residents because her husband was a doctor. She quickly realized that the New Orleans sanitation department had their hands full. In November, Becky emailed everyone in her address book, and asked them to help clean up New Orleans. Within one hour she began receiving responses (over 75 the first few days including many from people she didn’t even know). Fifteen people gathered to pick up trash the day after Thanksgiving in 2005. Soon that number grew to 30 people, then 50, 100, 250, 300, 500, and even as many as 800 volunteers at one clean up session! As the news of their work continued to spread, thousands of people were coming from all over the world for her bi-weekly trash parties. Becky never imagined her influence would be international. Her initial idea was for “my buddies and me” to clean up a few neighborhoods.

The Katrina Krewe continues to foster anti-litter awareness among residents, schools, and businesses within the New Orleans area through various public service programs and activities. After nearly a year of cleaning up the streets of New Orleans, the group hung up its gloves on August 26, 2006, to begin placing the primary focus on their “Keep it Klean” public awareness campaign. The Katrina Krewe is reaching kids in their pilot “kids against trash” school program.

Becky has some advice for others. “Whatever your gig is, just do it. Pick the thing that works for you. Be diligent about it, until you make it happen. Be patient, be willing to sacrifice and don’t stop until you achieve your goal. Start with your friends, your family, your co-workers and get it going. As long as you feel good about it and are making a difference, you don’t need an army of people. One person can make a difference.” Check out www.cleanno.org.

HELP! Some of this material from this blog MAY appear in a book I am writing. While a grammar or spelling error MIGHT pass here, it certainly won’t in the book. PLEASE email me and let me know what you think of these post and offer a correction if needed. Please contact me here.

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go to www.TimRichardson.com

Finally a reality show I can get excited about. I received an email today announcing a new reality show…The Big Give Open. It’s Oprah Winfrey’s concept and casting calls are happening this week in LA and in coming weeks in Nashville, New York, and Chicago. Here’s what was on the web page:

Are you America’s greatest unknown philanthropist? Are you the type of person who makes things happen and will do what ever it takes? Do you have a big personality and lots of charisma? Are you ready to pay it forward?

Harpo Productions, Inc. is pleased to announce our first primetime network series, The Big Give. This show is all about inspiring people around the country to do good for others. The Big Give will challenge contestants to dream up creative and innovative ways to help others. Contestants will travel through the U.S. completing tasks based around the communities’ needs and changing the lives within them. It’s a new, positive twist to primetime television created in the spirit of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

We are looking for competitive, creative, and adventurous individuals who want to use their resourcefulness to help others and will stop at nothing to do the right thing!

Apply at www.oprah.com
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Perhaps you would never apply for something like this. Pretend like you were on the show in your community. What do you consider the biggest challenges that need addressing? How would you creatively tackle them? If you had Oprah’s money and influence, how would you make a difference?

NEWS alert: I am actually sponsoring an essay contest for high school students to write about the REAL “Richest” people in America who are making a difference in the world. Contact me online for details.

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go to www.TimRichardson.com

I just read this article on www.slate.com by Henry Blodget. The title: How to make giving it all away part of the American success story Let me know what you think of this.

After two-plus centuries of nationhood, it’s time to update the American Dream. Not because Americans can no longer go from rags to riches. Rather because, after two centuries of the great American experiment, it’s safe to conclude that our particular blend of free enterprise and government alone leaves too many important problems unsolved. From education to health care to energy to wealth disparity to the environment, we’re living proof that being a rich nation doesn’t necessarily make us a great one.

How can we become the latter? By developing a not-for-profit sector as creative, competitive, and well-funded as our corporate sector. Private for-profit enterprises and public government agencies each have their place—the Department of Health and Human Services would do a lousy job running Wal-Mart, and the Air Force, for obvious reasons, shouldn’t report to Boeing. But each is also constrained by its own organizational principles: Government agencies need to maintain a political consensus, and corporations need to make a profit.

Between these two forms of organization, however, is a third that has the freedom to operate without the need for consensus or profit. The nonprofit sector could solve a lot more of our problems—if we make it bigger, more effective, and more central to our economy.

How can we do this? First, we can adopt more of the organizational and financing practices of the corporate world. In the past decade, for example, “venture philanthropy” has begun to build the equivalent of a Silicon Valley-style venture culture for “social entrepreneurs.” That’s a good development. But we also should vastly increase our collective investment in the sector by making over the American Dream. For future generations, getting rich must only be the first goal. To complete the dream, any self-respecting American capitalist must feel compelled to follow in the footsteps of the Slate 60 and give all (or a lot of it) away.

Before we discuss some ways of making this happen, let’s look at the big picture. According to the Urban Institute, Americans devote about 2 percent of their after-tax income each year to charitable donations. According to another nonprofit, Giving USA, these individual contributions totaled $199 billion in 2005. This is an impressive number, but it amounts to less than a quarter of the $927 billion in individual income taxes collected that year by the federal government alone. It also amounts to less than one-sixth of the collective net worth of the 400 richest Americans ($1.25 trillion). So, it does not seem a stretch to suggest that compared to the government and the corporate sectors, the nonprofit sector is, well, underfunded.

Thanks to a century’s worth of quiet philanthropy, combined with some heroic efforts in the past decade, this may be about to change. For decades, the foundations established by Carnegie, Rockefeller, Mellon, et al., have quietly and tastefully distributed billions. In recent years, however, high-profile megagifts by Ted Turner, Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett, and others have begun making those who simply buy toys and hoard their piles look selfish, shallow, and un-American in comparison.

How can we do more to make such folks into heroes—and inspire the entire nation to follow in their footsteps? Lists like the Slate 60 and BusinessWeek 100 are a good start. Here are some more suggestions:

Find image magicians like those who created Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Diamonds Are Forever, Just Do It, the Marlboro Man, Santa Claus, and other marketing concepts that have become integral to our culture. Tell them to make philanthropy—and our great philanthropists—part of our national DNA.

Banish the words charity and gift from the nonprofit lexicon. The new American Dream can’t be about passive, condescending check-writing. It must be about leadership, inspiration, and problem-solving.

Change the tax code to further encourage philanthropy, especially among the rich. For example, increase the income-tax rate on incomes above, say, $200,000 a year, while also increasing the tax-reducing power of charitable donations. Currently, charitable donors can only deduct 50 percent of their adjusted gross income in any given year (and in some cases, only 30 percent). This discourages the 2.5 million Americans who make more than $200,000 to give the bulk of it away, let alone the 10,000 who make $10 million or more.

Re-brand the “estate tax” as the “un-American activities tax,” the “Scrooge tax,” or the “keeping America great by motivating your lazy kids tax.”

Expand the Slate 60 to the Slate 400. Go back to the image magicians and make inclusion on this list more prestigious and impressive than inclusion on the Forbes 400. Competition inspired the Slate 60 to begin with; up the competitive ante.

Supplement the public-adulation carrot with the peer-pressure stick. Cross reference the Slate 400 with the Forbes 400 to create a new list: America’s 100 Stingiest (those who are worth more than $1 billion who contribute the smallest percentage of their net worth each year). Update this list in real time, online, and post it everywhere that the billionaires’ friends, colleagues, and neighbors will see it every day. Include pictures, of course.

When will we know we’ve arrived? When we hear about the latest rags-to-riches high-tech or hedge-fund billionaire and think, “Wow, he or she is halfway to achieving the American Dream.”

Put the web address below in your brower and read about 60 largest American charitable contributions of the last year. www.slate.com/id/2159774/nav/tap1/

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go to www.TimRichardson.com

My friend Carol Schillios works in the cooperative credit union movement helping the poor gain access to micro-credit loans to improve the quality of their lives and she’s fifthly stinking rich! What makes her rich? Her volunteer work in working in developing countries’ with the credit union movements made her realized how far little amounts would go. With a mortgage on her home, she formed The Fabric of Life Foundation to fund small projects to help get people out of poverty. It started small with $40 to treat a gangrene wound that would have killed a young beggar, $500 to a woman caring for 13 AIDs orphans in Zimbabwe, $1,000 to start a micro-credit lending program in HoChiMin. Then she started a training center Carol with her Malian friend, Kaaba. Both women have full time jobs and in their “spare” time run a center to help the poorest of the poor — young begging girls — learn sewing, fabric weaving, dyeing and beading skills to generate income and break the cycle of poverty. Two years later — still as volunteers — she and Kaaba graduated the first class of 10 begging girls from the streets of Bamako, who went from begging to businesswoman in 18 months. The First Lady of Mali, handed out the diplomas at graduation ceremonies in the capital city of Bamko in front of a crowd of 300 officials who thought it could not be done.

Carol grew up in a traditional neighborhood in Seattle with both parents working at the Boeing Company to make ends meet. When her father was offered a junior executive position in Switzerland, Boeing moved their family to Geneva. At the age of 12 Carol was surrounded by multiple cultures in an international school environment that would change the course of Carol’s life. While friends back home were preparing for proms and football games, Carol was learning about political conflict at student sessions of the United Nations; debating issues with citizens from war-torn countries; learning about poverty and collaboration and cooperation.

For three decades Carol has worked on 5 continents, helping the poor improve the quality of their lives. One day, while at a stop light in Bamako, Mali, West Africa, Carol and her colleague, Kaaba, in their car, were –as usual– surrounded by begging children with their hands out. It was a moment of truth for both who had had many conversations about how ordinary people could make a difference in the world if they would only take one action. Their conversation turned to how they could help the poorest of the poor –begging girls– off the streets before the girls had to turn to prostitution. The idea of a school for begging girls was born. Three young beggars to whom Carol and Kaaba had been donating over the years, became the first recruits. Atou, 25, and a paraplegic had been sitting on the ground in front of a bank every day for 15 years. Kadia, 16, and lame since birth, begged on the street near where Kaaba worked. Awa, 16, was not allowed in school because of her hearing loss. Now these three girls and 7 more from the first class are producing beautiful fabrics and jewerly being sold directly from their Hèrè Jè Cooperative Training Center in Bamako, Mali West Africa. Now the second class of 20 is being recruited. Their dream is that hundreds will be able to attend school to break the cycle of begging. That’s Living Rich…

You can check out their products on their EBoutique that is run by the girls themselves: http://www.schillios.com/schillios/section.cfm?wSectionID=1384

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go to www.TimRichardson.com

In my post Super Bowl week, MVP series, I want to introduce John Hope Bryant. Bryant is on a mission to eradicate the world of poverty. To date his organization, Operation Hope has raised over 350 million dollars which has helped over 190,000 children learn about financial literacy, provide business and home loans for low wealth individuals, and serve as an economic Red Cross delivering economic aid to victims of disasters like 9/11 and hurricane Katrina. They have partnerships with 300 of the world’s largest financial company’s and major companies (including Toyota, Bank of America, ING, Citigroup, US Bank, FDIC, State Farm, E-Trade, Banco Popular, and H&R Block). They also work with over 200 non-profits, 700 schools, and 100 bipartisan governmental agencies. John says they are into the conversion business: converting check cashing customers into banking customers, converting renters into home owners, converting small business dreamers into small business owners and entrepreneurs, and converting minimum wage workers into living wage workers with new job skills. Operation Hope has resources in twenty five of the largest USA cities and will soon be in Africa.

The LA Riots in 1992 inspired John to start Operation Hope. Part of his motivation was guilt for not showing in his own community to help. Through watching the events unfold, he decided that his mission was to help eradicate poverty. With a strong financial background, everyone thought that he was talking about financial poverty but John meant spiritual poverty as well. Through Operation Hope, John desires to enrich the spirit of people, give them a hand up not a handout, use education as a ultimate poverty eradication tool (John says, “when you know better you tend to do better”), and to break the back of the psychology of poverty. He realized that people need a mechanism to help themselves so John coined the term the Silver Rights movement. He wants to help make capitalism and the free enterprise system work for the poor. It all started with a dream, a $61,000 loan from his company and a vision to change the world and eradicate poverty.

John says, “There is a difference between being broke and being poor. Being broke is a temporary economic condition, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind and a depressed condition of the spirit, and we must vow to never, ever be poor again.”

“Nobody wakes up in the morning and starts a cancer foundation. You either lost someone or had cancer yourself. There are rainbow after storms, Millions of lives were saved because a little girl gave her live to a drunk driver which resulted in the formation of MADD”.

While raising 350 million is out of reach for most of us, we can being that person who makes the life of someone else better today because of our kindness.

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go to www.TimRichardson.com

 On the occasion of the 25th installment of Forbes annual 400 Richest American’s the filthy stinking rich got even filthy stinking richer (for the fifth consecutive year!)  In their 25th annual edition of The Forbes 400, the collective net worth of the nations wealthiest climbed from $120 billion to $1.25 trillion. A trillion dollars! (a ginzu knife set for the first person who tells me how many zeros in a trillion). Also notable, for the first time ever, everyone on the list is a billionaire. That’s with a B!

In fairness to Forbes, some of the people they profile are wonderfully generous. Bill Gates are Warren Buffett are certainly prime examples as are Google founders. There are others to be sure. What they support indeed has far reaching impact all over the globe.  I probably could have written about what difference they are making and how they are inspiring other wealthy Americans to give even more.  But they get lots of attention and their giving is easy – they have so much money it would make your head spin.  What about the everyday person.  The couple that lives in your neighborhood, you kids school teacher, the single mother one step away from welfare, the waitress at your favorite restaurant, and local civic group.  These are the people deserve the press and attention given to the mega wealthy (and you’ll meet some of those people occasionally in this blog).

Note:  I read recently that Bill Gates, founcer of Microsoft, said he wishes he wasn’t the richness man in America. Provided it wasn’t some urban legend, you could even write him and plead your case for financial help.  I went to Seattle to plead my case to Mr. Gates (actually, I just hoped I’d bump into him while giving a motivational speech to leaders in the credit union movement). I did interview some multi-millionaires for this book. I wanted to readers to see that it may not be everything it’s cracked up to be. One person I interviewed sold his internet company for well over 100 million dollars. He told me he really hated being rich. “The day I became rich, people around me changed,” he said. “I was still the same person but now everyone wanted a piece of me. I had ‘relatives and friends’ coming out of the woodwork”. He gave most of the money away to literacy programs noting that if you can’t read, you have no future. He said it’s so much more enjoyable to be a “regular guy” (granted he’s a regular who probably still has a few mil tucked away somewhere). Now he is living rich as a professional photographer and author. The week after Forbes released their list, I scanned the business magazines’ cover stories. Here’s what I saw on the covers as I quickly scanned them: two had Retire Rich! one featured Young Millionaires, another mentioned How Poor Nations Became Rich. Then as I walked out of the store I saw a book title Why We Want You to Be Rich. That was just a quick scan. When I Googled How to be Rich recently, I got about 240 million responses. Compare that with stories of people creating richness by investing in the lives of others. With the exception of one story in a column entitled “Do-Gooding”, the business publications I scanned seem intent to focus on how good (or rich) you could be, not on what good you could do. And Forbes and other publications only further perpetuate it.So, if you really want to be rich, richer than most on the Forbes list, trying giving. It cost nothing and produces the biggest return on investment ever measured. Here are some thoughts:

1. Inventory Your Interests – Matching your hobby or interests to a need, may fulfill a passion you already have though often experiencing something totally new will create a new interest. Whatever your interest, there is a need.

2. Find a Cause – When you start looking (and sometimes when you’re NOT looking) you’ll see, read, or hear about something that will stir your soul. If you have a bent toward complaining about how bad things are in (fill in the blank with a place in the world or your community), why not use the complaining energy volunteering in that area.

3. Start Close to Home – While I admire and respect the great work many are doing in all corners of the globe, there’s a lot to do in our back yard. Call your local United Way, church or synagogue, or a community outreach organization. You don’t have to travel far, to have far reaching impact.

4. Leverage Your Knowledge - Do you like computers? Photography? Web work? Sewing? Horticulture? Music? Some organization needs what you have.

5. Involve Your Friends and Family – If you have used age of children, size of family, or lack of time with friends as an excuse, participate in a volunteer project together.

6. Actions produce more richness than donations – Here’s some proof:

Ken Behring made a ton of money in his life. He also gave away a lot. But it wasn’t until he gave of himself that it made all the difference in the world (literally). His organization Wheelchair Foundation (www.wheelchairfoundation.org) has donated more than a half million wheelchairs to over 140 countries helping to eliminate immobility for an estimated 100 to 150 million people worldwide. “I spent too much of my life pursuing things money can buy. I’ve always given money to charity, but in the past I didn’t give myself with it. When you actually get an opportunity to personally help somebody, it changes your life. “ ‘Nuff said.

Question: Who is richest person you know and why?

Tim Richardson is an inspirational speaker who speaks about how giving increases employee morale, lowers employee turnover, increases customer loyalty and creates higher profits for Fortune 500 companies, associations, and national conventions. He is the founder of the The Worlds Biggest Blog Party an event which will connect bloggers from all over the world to raise money for charity. He is also founder and president of the Bill Walter Melanoma Research Fund. For more information on Tim, go to www.TimRichardson.com