go small or go home

Each time the holiday season rolls around (when muzak in the department stores suddenly turns to Jingle Bells), I try to further refine my giving habits based on what’s important to me. It’s about reassessing my values, digging deeper, and coming up with creative ways to give stuff that’s more meaningful than simply giving “stuff.”

This year, my all-time fav sustainable blog and green not-for-profit, Worldchanging, is leveraging its online presence to attract donations from its readership. In a recent post called The Worldchanging Holiday Gift Guide, the Worldchanging Team suggests giving a gift in someone’s name to a worthy not-for-profit. They list organizations such as GlobalGiving Green and JustGive.org as online sites to look for charities that most clearly reflect a person’s values and interests. The Worldchanging Team goes on to suggest that if Worldchanging is one of those worthy organizations, and if readers give above $100, then they will receive a complimentary copy of Worldchanging’s first book, Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century.

I thought this was a savvy way for a not-for-profit to use its blog to not only sell its products and generate donations, but to also contribute in a meaningful way to providing alternatives to simply buying “stuff” for our significant others this holiday season. Worldchanging is not only proving itself to be in-season and in-tune to what people are thinking about (keeping green, buying less stuff, and so on), but they are showing their value as one of the top sustainable organizations in the world.

Why wouldn’t we buy their new book or donate a buck or more to their worthy cause?

We’re just launching our Go Small blog during the unusually snowy month of December in Vancouver, BC. The idea for this blog came during the writing of our first e-book called Go Small or Go Home: Not-for-profits harness their smarts using social media. We wrote the book for not-for-profits who want to learn more about social media and who want to integrate and use some of these new tools to continue to do what they do best–only better. That might be helping women start new businesses, providing food and shelter for those who are on the streets or providing services for new immigrants.

Working with not-for-profits in the area of social marketing, branding identity and strategic communications, we saw a need for a blog that looks at remarkably dynamic and resourceful ways that not-for-profits are using the new technologies so that other organizations can read their stories and experiments and learn.

Why “go small”? Well because not-for-profits are used to working in small, unsuspecting and ingenious ways in order to follow their vision and serve their stakeholders. There is no shame in being a small organization, in fact, it is something to be proud of, and especially when your reach is so great and you accomplish so much.

I think that’s about all you need to know about this blog. Stay tuned for posts on how others go small with amazing results.