Just yesterday I wrote a piece for the July issue of the B1G1 newsletter.

I called it ‘Yikes: the giving is disappearing’. And it told the story of how, like the honeybee vanishing, giving is going down worldwide (with the exception of parts of the Asian region).

Yet something else is going up – yes, you guessed it – the number of charities is booming! Last year alone the IRS in the US registered 1000 new charities per week!

There are now nearly 1.5 Million of them in the US alone - that’s more than double what it was 10 years ago. And of course, that doesn’t count the literal thousands of ‘personalised’ causes we’re seeing on the web each day either.

So, let’s pause and ponder – donations going down, charities going up … then the clear impact must be that more causes are competing for fewer dollars. But it’s really worse than that.

And that’s because now the causes are ‘fighting’ harder for 'their' share and that probably means more money going into fund raising which means less money going to the beneficiaries and on and on it goes.

And bear in mind too that according to the latest available US Government stats, in 2007 charities had revenues of a staggering $1.4 Trillion and an equally staggering expense bill of 1.3 Trillion. So if my ….illions are correct that’s $0.1Triilion or 100Billion or (if you like lots of zeroes 100,000,000,000) ending up impacting the beneficiaries.

That seems like a lot. But it can’t really be. Because, whichever way you look at it, the challenges remain. For example:

• To offset the environmental impact we create, we should be planting about 13 trees per month per person
• Half the world — over three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day
• Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names
• According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. That is about 210,000 children each week, or 20 children every minute
• One billion people lack access to basic health care
• One child dies every 20 seconds due to poor or no sanitation.

These issues remain for ALL sorts of reasons. Yet they remain in spite of the UN Millennium Goals, in spite of all the good work being done by Charities, in spite of fundraising Concerts, in spite of great celebrity endorsements, in spite of the wonderful proliferation of new Social Cause sites on Facebook and Social Networking platforms (and the interesting ‘twists’ we sometimes see as in the photograph opposite).

So one way of interpreting that is to say that Governments and even famous individuals aren’t enough. Perhaps there’s something fundamental that’s missing – something that is so close to us that we miss it. Something that is, as they say, right under our very noses.

So let’s go on a quick search for that ‘something’. And let’s begin our search with the thing we last talked about – noses.

Just consider noses for a moment. They get colds, they get straightened through the surgical process know as Rhinoplasty. They ‘run’. Oh and they smell things of course. Like, for example, the lovely smell (to some) of freshly roasted coffee. (Stay with me; I know it I seems random but believe me it’s going somewhere….)

So the runny nose makes us stop off at the Supermarket to pick up some pills. And it just happens that outside the supermarket there’s a neat little coffee shop – so we stop there for a quick cappuccino to help wash down the first pill.

Back to the car again on the way home now. Ooops, petrol light comes on so best to fill up. So we do. And as we’re paying for the fuel in the petrol station shop, we notice the breakfast cereal that we meant to buy at the Supermarket for the kids breakfast and so we add that on to the bill too.

And finally, we get home, eat dinner and settle down to watch that final of the Euro Champions League game. And finally ….. bed.

And as we drift off, we decide to search for the answer to that , ‘is there something fundamental that’s missing’ question. We ponder and we ponder and we allow ourselves just one ‘what if’ question. Here it is:

What if: Somehow, someone had stood up and said:

“Look, what we’re doing isn’t working so something has to change  - and I reckon it’s that we as businesses have to ‘unite’ under one banner as it were – not by giving to a particular cause but by saying ‘heh, we all know that BUSINESS is really the only way to get the changes we want to see in our world so let us all as businesses commit right now to supporting GIVING – just giving. Not some special cause that I like, but GIVING. Period."

"And let’s develop systems and processes to make that happen – in fact, let’s figure out a way where we can proudly say that from this moment in time, businesses came together and said, ‘every transaction makes a difference’. Let’s do that by taking a small piece of every transaction and ‘matching’ that (even if it’s only 1 cent) with a specific giving action (like feeding a child) and then let’s build a resonant story around it so that you can say ‘every time you buy this cup of coffee, a child gets access to water’, or ‘every time you buy this drug someone somewhere gets an anti-retroviral drug to fight AIDS’. Oh and lastly, let’s make sure that 100% of the funds go straight to the selected cause. How’s that sound? Put up your hand if you’d be in that right now.”

So where would your hand be? Right up in the air, right?

And as a result our little hypothetical journey that began with noses would look mighty different right now. For instance:

• Perhaps when someone has a rhinoplasty maybe someone in an underprivileged country might get life-saving surgery – automatically
• And when we bought the cold pills, perhaps someone in Africa got an anti-retroviral drug
• And when we were buying the cappuccino, we noticed how the café owner had a little sign reminding us that she was part of this new movement and that every time you had a cup of coffee, a child got access to water
• Then when we bought the fuel, instead of the 4 cents per litre fuel ‘discount’ the retailer was offering, we instead took the option of planting trees that we saw displayed at the cash register
• And then when we watched the football, we noticed how the supporters of both teams had committed online to (and were actually doing it) donating to poverty alleviation with every goal scored and how we’d seen pictures of the new wells being dug in African communities because each footballer had contributed one tenth of a well every time they played.
• And of course, when we bought the TV, didn’t that act itself mean that a cataract-blind person automatically got the gift of site? Yes, of course.
• And we went to bed happy.
• And in the morning it continued again when we realised that just buying that box of breakfast cereal meant that a child in the Geertanagar slum in Mumbai India got fed and educated for one day just because of what we’d bought for breakfast.

The day had indeed started well. And we reflected on the way to work what a different world it was now that each business was giving and that practically every transaction made a difference in some way.

We remembered too how we’d been there when that person stood up and said, “Look, what we’re doing isn’t working,” and how, even though we didn’t own a business, we’d been inspired. Because at last we saw happening what we always knew to be the truth – we’re all connected; we all are one.

And we saw too now how businesses had taken the lead. They’d united in giving joyfully, every second, every day and in every way.

That’s the B1G1 dream . We’re making it happen right now. You can join us too .