BOOK NOTES

You don’t have to be big to be powerful. Consider the cluster of atoms weighing less than a gram that entered the human body in 2019, killing more than seven million people worldwide. One of the lessons of COVID 19…you need not be big, just infectious!

Author Chris Anderson, longtime leader of TED, believes generous acts, if they move from isolated to infectious, can make extraordinary impact. The internet can turbocharge generosity and generosity can transform the internet. They feed each other. Indeed, Anderson suggests the most important moral question people should ask of themselves is this: Am I a net giver or net taker?

Generosity is essential for happiness and contentment in life. Generosity includes gifts of time, talent, creativity, connection, and kindness—not just giving money away. TED taught the world that giving things away can give back enormously. TED began with a paid conference with great speakers on topics of Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Their results increased when they gave their talks away. It became a global brand. Their radical openness was, according to Anderson, infectious generosity. They even gave the brand away with TEDx—local organized events. And what did they get back? Worldwide spreading knowledge. The multiplier effect of generosity.

WHY INFECTIOUS GENEROSITY NOW?

In our connected era, Anderson suggests three features make the infectious generosity movement possible. These include: (1) What we value is increasingly nonmaterial…for most of history gifts were collectible objects. Today information brings empowerment. Knowledge improves our lives. Inspiring individuals can inspire in digital format. While we still have lots of goods, we now value a lot of intangibles.

(2) Nonmaterial things can be given away at limitless scale…digital goods (i.e., courses, lectures, recipes, etc.). Many types—not all—of intellectual knowledge can be given away with zero distribution costs.

(3) Everybody is watching…reputation is critical currency today. Someone’s actions can spread virally with good and bad consequences.

These three factors can play a role in strategizing and amplifying generosity. There is no perfect generosity. Some give without expectation of return. Others may have different reasons to give. We should focus less on motivations of giving and more on the effectiveness of it.

Humans, over time, have built adaptations that include sympathy for those in need, and gratitude for those who help. Those emotions drive our instincts to be generous. Most of us have a natural desire to respond in kind with social behaviors. Consider this experiment…students were given $1,000 each to spend however they chose but they had to report on it. Almost all spent it on causes they supported. Influenced because they had to share? Perhaps. We also know according to psychology that when we witness a good act helping someone, it inspires us to follow. And then there is this clear-cut fact in social science research: Generosity makes you happier. Gallup reported that 230,000 people in 136 countries shared that those who had donated money the previous month were significantly happier than those who didn’t.

This Chinese proverb summarizes it best. “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. For a day, go fishing. For a month, get married. For a year, inherit a fortune. For a lifetime, help someone else.” (This proverb goes with my apologies about the view of marriage). What’s clear is that generosity is at the core part of who we are as humans.

THE MYSTERY EXPERIMENT

In 2019, a married couple donated $2 million dollars to the TED community but wanted it given in $10,000 increments anonymously to strangers. They made it a mystery experiment by inviting people to participate in a mystery experiment with no mention of money—just announced it would be exciting, time consuming, and stressful and life changing. TED tagged it the mystery experiment as 200 people from the applicants were selected to receive $10,000 each. It was given anonymously, and they were told to spend it however they wanted. The only rules…spend it over the next three months and share what you spent it on.

Here’s the twist. 100 of the folks were encouraged to keep everything private, the other half were urged to share social posts about everything. What happened? On average 1/3 of the money was spent on their needs and wants. The rest was devoted to family, friends, and causes. Even 2/3 of those with the lowest incomes spent it on something or someone else. No real differences between the groups indicating natural instincts to help others rather than approval from social audience. Stories of what they did included giving $500 mini grants, donations to food banks. It just confirmed evidence of people’s inclination to respond to generosity with generosity of their own! Even better, the study confirmed that the couple’s $2 million donation had created more than 200x amount of happiness for themselves.

HOW CAN YOU GIVE?

Infectious generosity isn’t writing checks. Six gifts of time and attention can spark ripple effects. What are they?

(1) Shift attention…pay attention to others, not just yourself. There are countless examples of how kindness, smiles, and giving others a little attention can matter a lot.

(2) Build bridges…withhold judging until you know someone’s story. Listen to those you disagree with.

(3) Share knowledge…anyone can be a teacher today in one form or another. Chances to speak at TED is a gift of sharing free valuable ideas with an audience.

(4) Enable connections…an important form of viral generosity is to help people connect with others.

(5) Extend hospitality…it’s a deeply held value of most religions. Anthropologist Don Brown documents hospitality as a human behavior observed in every single culture ever studied. It’s a key expression of our generosity and humanity.

(6) Create enchantment…this has potential for artists as others yearn for beauty, wonder, laughter…all elements of enchantment.

To make generosity exponential, you need first to get it noticed. Any authentic act of human kindness might capture other’s imagination. Anderson offers countless examples of when real emotion is unlocked, or givers get highly creative. Consider the humor from the ALS ice bucket challenge that caused the spread. While there are no rules—-having the courage to be audacious, thinking of unusual collaborations—can amplify your messages and spark a contagion of generosity.

Sadly, in today’s media world 100 violent deaths guarantees you top billing in the news. It is shocking when a plane goes down, but the truth is 170,000 people die every day. Of those—35,000 are children—many dying from preventable things. We are distorted by two things. Our cognitive bias to feel longer and stronger for dark things in life. Along with that is the second thing—good happens slowly, bad happens fast! As a result, we make ourselves believe the world is worse than it is. When you amplify generosity, you are helping turn the tide.

FINAL POINTS

Planning your own philanthropic strategy (the money kind) begins with considering the size of the problem you want to help solve, picking metrics that matter to you, and determining the overall impact of your gift. For extra impact, consider the leverage of your contribution. For example, education—the acquisition and use of knowledge can last a lifetime. Entrepreneurship can certainly amplify your gift too. Giving Tuesday raised $3 billion dollars to non-profit organizations in a single day in 2022. Many of whose very existence depends on financial support.

Anderson suggests the single biggest thing each of us can do is to embrace a generosity mindset. Your drop in the ocean can become a wave. Amplify possibilities, inspiration, and solutions. Social media, despite the downsides, can turbocharge generosity.

Ask yourself, what is the most audacious act of generosity you might undertake?

Publisher: Crown, New York, NY, 2024