We’ve all seen powerful heartwarming stories. A child is inspired to help a neighbor, hospital worker, or some other cause that led him or her to action, to try and make a difference no matter how small. At first, it might be a lemonade stand or making bracelets out of thread to sell for $1 each with a modest goal of $50 or $100. And then something unexpected happens.
Someone is inspired by the child’s effort and dedication and decides to bring it to the attention of the media, which leads to more donations, which leads to others in the community and beyond deciding to take action to help the underdog by supporting the worthy cause of choice. Suddenly, they’ve raised tens of thousands of dollars – inspired by a child’s selflessness – while getting the feel-good benefit of creating a community around doing good works and a desire to be part of the solution to a real need.
I think about these stories a lot and can’t help but see how they are reflective of the work of our own Best Year Yet Foundation. We’ve certainly been made aware of needs all over the world – children on the streets and their families in Poland, young people trying to find ways to be community leaders in Kenya, women in the arts working to create support for their businesses, women and young people striving to break out of poverty and into opportunity in tech fields, nonprofit leaders who are burned out and overworked while still dedicated to serving people in need in their communities – and we decided we wanted to help.
We started the Best Year Yet Foundation with a couple of individual donations from people who were inspired by our cause and wanted to help. They could see the results of the work and opportunities we could offer our grantees through training leaders of agencies who serve the people of their communities and beyond. And then they started telling others about us.
In keeping with our story comparison, the next chapters depend on you. We’re now nearly three years into our journey, in large part because of people like you who wanted to join us to make our impact ever larger, building a community of like-minded people who also see the need. They want to support our work to leave our grantees, their clients, and the world at large much better than we found them.
The immediate impact has been phenomenal, but the tertiary impact has been even greater as participants report seeing changes beyond their work environment and in their own relationships, as well as in those of their clients. That is the ripple effect at its finest.
We hope that this is a story that will inspire you to partner with us and support our cause. We have endless opportunities to create so much good together and have the kind of impact that inspires future generations to continue building on the work we are doing today.
If you’d like to join us, there are many ways to do so. Here are just a few ways we work with donors and supporters to get our work out to those who need it:
- Partner with businesses that have their own foundation to increase impact for the organizations they already support.
- Create new ventures with individuals and businesses who want to support agencies and nonprofits serving the people in their communities.
- Use individual donations to fund and expand new and existing Best Year Yet Foundation projects.
- Start dedicated projects funded by individuals, corporations, or other foundations (such as the Jinny Ditzler Legacy Fund).
We hope you’ll reach out and join us in our crusade to make a real, inspiring, and sustainable impact. When we all come together in a common cause, the sky is the limit.
Thanks and I look forward to seeing what we can do together.
If you would like to learn more about how InteraWorks and the Best Year Yet Foundation can work with your company or foundation to create a huge impact for the nonprofits you support, please reach out for a conversation: info@interaworks.com