Giving 2.0

Green Gifting Fun with Giving 2.0

Angie — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:17:41 +0000

LA-based GOOD Magazine donates 100% of your $20 magazine subscription to a non-profit that you choose. Just reading the dozen organizations is inspiring. And the magazine is actually really good, both content and design -wise.

Gifting organic shirts with meaning to friends. Take for starts, a purchase of the black shirt with a white-and-red heart funds 3 mosquito bed nets in Africa.Here’s my personal favorite: Method‘s play on the “I’m not a plastic bag” phenomenon with their “plastic bag rehab” bag. Give greener.

The New York Times this week declared Bags are the fashion. Reusable shopping bags, that is — not exactly breaking news, but a good reminder anyway. Reuse your favorite shopping bags and stop wasting new ones!

Geek Dinner and Giving 2.0

strimble — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 07:29:19 +0000

I just recently started organizing Geek Dinners in the Bay Area. We had a good turn out for our first “official” Geek Dinner. About 20 people showed up to eat with us. It was great! I must admit though, I had an “evil plan” when organizing the Geek Dinner. Mmuuuhahahaa! Ok, it wasn’t actually an “evil plan”. I just think it’s fun to say that. So, here’s the plan…

At each Geek Dinner, I’m going to try to do a Giving 2.0 thing along with it. So, I created the next Geek Dinner for next week. Since I spoke with Kevin, the Community Service Liaison at the UCSF Children’s Hospital, I thought it would be a good idea to ask for trinkets for the kids at the Geek Dinner. So, if you’re planning on joining us for dinner, bring some trinkets for the kids. The trinkets can be pencils, stickers, erasers, or any fun little kid thing.

I hope you can join us for Geek Dinner 1.0.8.3. Sign up on Upcoming. There’s a limited guestlist.

LinkedIn is In!

strimble — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:56:16 +0000

Last night I went to a LinkedIn Q&A Event called Real Guy Kawasaki interviews Fake Steve Jobs at the Computer History Museum. It was a hilarious event! Thanks to Terry Chay, I even got the chance to meet Fake Steve Jobs, a.k.a Dan Lyons, after the event. He’s a very nice guy and likes the idea of Giving 2.0.

This event was sponsored by LinkedIn and, of course, there was food. LinkedIn bought many pizzas, soda, and water for the event and there was a lot leftover. I bet you can tell where I’m going with this already. So, after the event Mark Jen, Rose Kwok, Terry Chay, Kay Luo, and Mario Sundar helped me load up my vehicle with all of the drinks that were leftover. And this morning I took them to the Goodwill in South San Jose.

I was happy to have had the chance to meet some new people and help donate the leftovers. Thank you LinkedIn!

Giving to children

strimble — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:29:58 +0000

I called the UCSF Children’s Hospital a while ago to see if we could bring Halloween candy to the children at the hospital. I spoke with Kevin, the Community Service Liaison at the Children’s Hospital. He said that it would be a better idea to get trinkets for the kids, since sugar isn’t healthy for sick kids. He also mentioned that they do Bingo nights and various other activities for the children at the hospital which they also need trinkets for. I thought it might be a good idea if we give trinkets after Halloween, for their other activities. We can get a little more organized and have more time to put something together that way. What do you think of going to buy trinkets for the kids and having dinner afterward?

Getting Creative For a Cause

strimble — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:46:26 +0000

Last week, while listening to the radio, I heard that Chili’s Grill & Bar is raising funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. During the month of September, you can contribute by making a donation, for which you’ll receive a Create-A-Pepper coloring sheet. Completed coloring sheets will be proudly displayed in restaurants for the month of September.

St. Jude is a hospital that treats children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. It’s also a place where all patients accepted for treatment are treated without regard to the family’s ability to pay. So, I thought that it would be great if we can help out.

So, I started thinking, maybe we can get a bunch of people to eat at Chili’s and make donations, before September ends? I talked about this idea with Mark Arevalo last week. Mark suggested that we do a Giving 2.0 dinner at Chili’s. So, I set up an event on Upcoming.org for dinner at Chili’s in Mountain View. Join us for dinner, donating, and getting creative.

ThankYou RockYou

strimble — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:43:28 +0000

Today I attended Lunch 2.0 at RockYou. I got there pretty late, which was great because I had an ulterior motive. What was my ulterior motive? Well, it was seeing if they had leftovers at the ending of Lunch 2.0 and asking if they would be willing to donate the food to the St. Vincent de Paul Society.

My plan worked out perfectly! I was able to meet and chat with some great people and eat some yummy pizza. Then, Terry introduced me to Sandy, who organized the event and works for RockYou. Sandy was generous enough to offer 3 large boxes of pizza, from Mr. Pizza Man, to donate. I took the pizza to the St. Vincent de Paul Society and got a donation receipt. I’ll be mailing the donation receipt back to RockYou this evening.

Thank you ThisNext

strimble — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:14:24 +0000

I’ve been in touch with Nicole at ThisNext and Donna at OPCC this week to find out how Lunch 2.0 and Giving 2.0 went last Friday. I hear it went very well.

Nicole said that they had a bunch of food left over from Versailles. She was able to donate 5 large metal trays of Cuban food to OPCC. Yum!

Donna said that they were very happy to receive the food at the shelter and thanked ThisNext and Giving 2.0 for making the donation.

Also, Andrew Warner has posted a great article about How Lunch 2.0 came to Southern California and some nice photos to accompany it.

Thank you ThisNext!

Lunch 2.0 at ThisNext

strimble — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 22:36:49 +0000

If you’re in the Santa Monica area this Friday, check out Lunch 2.0 at ThisNext. I had a chance to talk with the PR Director at ThisNext, Nicole Jordan. We had a good chat about leftover Lunch 2.0 food and she was generous enough to offer the leftovers to be donated to a nearby charity. So, I found a local charity called the OPCC. OPCC stands for Ocean Park Community Center. They empower people to rebuild their lives. I called them to make sure they accept donations of food, and of course they do. They were so happy to hear that the leftovers from Lunch 2.0 might be donated next Friday. I can’t wait to hear how it goes.

Thank you Spock and Lunch 2.0

strimble — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 03:12:41 +0000

Today we were able to donate a van full of food to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Yay!

It all started when I dragged Terry Chay, kicking and screaming, to BarCampBlock last weekend. We had a fun time there and while walking over to The Blue Chalk Cafe for BarCampBlock’s party Terry mentioned Lunch 2.0 was going to be at Spock on Wednesday, today. Spock is in Redwood City, so I decided that wasn’t too far for me to drive for a chance to go to Lunch 2.0. So, I said I would go.

Then wheels started turning in my head and I got this bright idea. I started wondering if there would be leftover food after Lunch 2.0, and if there was, I was thinking we should donate that food to a local food kitchen. So, I asked Terry if there is usually leftover food after a Lunch 2.0. He said that sometimes there is. So, I offered my suggestion of donating that food. I thought it was brilliant because food wouldn’t be wasted and the people in the community who need it most can get it.

So, today I went to Lunch 2.0 at Spock. I talked with a bunch of really nice people. Toward the end of lunch, Terry mentioned that there was quite a lot of salad leftover and a few boxes of pizza. He then suggested that we donate the food and introduced the CEO of Spock, Jaideep Singh, to me. Of course, I had no idea where we were going to donate the food. So, one of the other Lunch 2.0ers, Peter Robinett, suggested that we take it to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. It was an excellent suggestion. So, we loaded up a lot of boxes of food in Peter’s van. Here’s the proof…

(Those boxes in the back seat are boxes of salad. There were a lot of boxes.)

(Four gigantic boxes of pizza were sitting in the front seat.)

And we took the food to St. Vincent de Paul and got a donation receipt for Spock.

Tax deductible food that gets eaten by people who need it the most in the community! What can be better. Thank you Spock and Lunch 2.0.

TechSoup

strimble — Thu, 31 May 2007 05:10:09 +0000

A few weeks ago, I met with Erica Rios from the Anita Borg Institute. We talked about things that we can do to grow Giving 2.0. She was a great person to meet with and gave me some excellent ideas about what we can do in the long run.

I also just received some information from her regarding TechSoup. TechSoup is looking for people to answer technical questions nonprofits post to their forums. To this end, they created TechSoup – Donate Your Brain.

It is a pretty light weight way to give back.

Thank you Erica!