10. Paperwork, ick.

9. “Social venture” has the word “venture” in it, which sounds like Adventure, which sounds a lot more fun than “not-for-profit.”

8. Plus, we like profit.  Profit is a really clear, simple indicator of value.

7. Charities seem to implicitly reinforce the notion of an us/them relationship, where the Haves are bending down to help the Have-nots.  But in our experience, everybody’s a mix of Have and Have-not.

6. Board meetings, field reports, the whole Non-profit Industrial Complex, ick.

5. We don’t want to slip into feeding on people’s guilt as though that were a growth strategy.

4. We don’t know enough rich people to be very good at fund-raising.

3. Since we get so much pleasure out of helping the people we like to help, it seems a bit smug to call that charity.

2. Staying small and loose gives us more options.

And the number one reason we are not a nonprofit…

1. We don’t have anything to wear to a Gala.

Change for a Twenty is about asking the question, What could you do with $20 USD? For some of us, $20 means a movie ticket and some popcorn.  It’s a t-shirt, two lunches, a dinner.  It’s the cost of a bus ride from New York to DC.  It’s a dry cleaning bill, a hardback book, a cd.  It’s a stocking stuffer.

In Afghanistan, $20 will buy two thousand pencils.  In Myanmar, it’ll pay a teacher for four months.  In Uganda, $20 will give one person clean drinking water for twenty years.

Change for a Twenty is about asking the question, What does $20 mean to you? and then giving you the chance to make it mean a whole lot more.

How much change can you make for a twenty?