I’m telling you, someday someone is going to write a book about Alan Graham, founder of Mobile Loaves and Fishes. No, a book isn’t right. Too flat.

They’re going to make a movie about him. He’s just that charismatic of a guy. But it’s beyond charisma; it’s the way he uses his brain.

Alan Graham has the rare ability to find the shortest path from problem to solution. You won’t spend 10 minutes talking with the man before he says something so fresh and so startling that the only possible reaction you could have to what he just said is, “Duh.”

Not in an “Everybody knows that,” way but rather in a “Well, shit, why didn’t anybody else think of that?” way.

For example, a couple years ago a short-lived ice storm hit downtown, closing office buildings and reducing traffic to almost nothing. The shelters and soup kitchens were closed, but people still needed food that day, probably that day more than others. Alan Graham got a phone call. Could he bring a truck down?

No, he couldn’t bring a truck down. But he could send some pizzas. How many pizzas did they need?

He called pizza delivery, made them a deal, and had several dozen pizzas delivered downtown. Couple hundred bucks. Lots of people fed.

Maybe that sounds obvious now, but who else thinks to deliver pizza to homeless people during an ice storm, when no one else can come up with a way to help them? Duh.

You could almost stop worrying about the future of Austin philanthropy thanks to Linda Brucker and the team that created A Legacy of Giving.

Since 2007, the program has exposed almost 6,000 students in the Austin, Eanes, and Round Rock school districts, plus a couple of private schools, to the concept of philanthropy. The program is more than a video or a field trip to the food bank; the lessons in giving are actually weaved into the curriculum.

“What we do is engage the students – from financially secure to low-income – to make sure they realize that being a philanthropist isn’t just about money,” says Brucker, “We tell them that every single one of them has time and talent to share.”

For example, one of the program’s early projects introduced students to the problems of hunger and poverty, first describing it at the global level, then describing the problems closer to home. “When we told them that 41,000 children in Travis County have food insecurity, there was this pause,” says Brucker. For the next lesson, a representative from Capital Area Food Bank came in and introduced them to idea of the food bank … and what a nonprofit is. And then for the next lesson, a storage unit arrived on campus. Students got inside, walked around, used math to figure the dimensions, and decided it would be a great place to store food. Fourteen schools and 3,600 students participated in the project they called ‘pack the pod,” raising 32,000 pounds of food in two weeks.

Program administrators train more than 125 teachers on how to use a Web-based platform hosting downloadable lessons and how to bring in resources from the community to make the lessons come to life. Aside from the poverty project, teachers could also choose a project based on Earth Day, which was coordinated with Keep Austin Beautiful. Another project revolved around financial literacy.

“It’s remarkable how these projects are having such an immediate impact on their lives,” says Brucker. One of the schools that took on the Earth Day project started recycling plastic and aluminum – at the students’ request. And students who participated in the financial literacy project reported talking to their parents about the family’s debt.

“We think we’re changing the conversation so that students feel like they’re part of the solution.”

LINDA BRUCKER’S FAVORITE MOMENT

“I was at Paredes Middle School, in the middle of the courtyard, and we were using meat scales to weigh some of the food that the students had collected. One of the students came up to me and said, ‘Are you Mrs. Brucker? Would that be okay if I talked to you?’

So I said, ‘Absolutely!’ Then she got very quiet and very close and said, ‘This is the coolest program we’ve ever had at my school.’

She took two steps back and said, ‘Mrs. Brucker, I’ve always been the one who had to get the food, and this is the first time I got to be the giver.’”

This article first appeared in GivingCity Austin #3 magazine. To download the entire magazine, click here.

The data referred to in this article can be accessed via Greenlights here.

The data is in – the Austin community has more nonprofits per capita than any other city in Texas. Now what should we do about it?

We demand efficiency from nonprofits, requiring them to do more with less – and these days to do even more with even less. So when we see two or more nonprofits with the exact same mission, going after the same donations from the same people, we might wonder why they don’t join forces.  We might also wonder how they survive in this economy. Inevitably, the market will take care of it, right? Just as it does in the for-profit world?

Well, sometimes the market doesn’t  take care of it. That’s because nonprofits aren’t fueled by just donations, they’re also fueled by passion – which is sometimes all you need to keep your organization going. And thank goodness for that; we’d be in serious trouble if it weren’t for volunteers and underpaid nonprofit professionals. On the other hand, you have to ask yourself, as a donor or a volunteer, “Am I supporting a nonprofit that shouldn’t exist?”

Austin has more nonprofits per capita than any other city in the Texas. Which means we’re caring and entrepreneurial on the one hand, but probably frustrated and disillusioned on the other. When someone starts a nonprofit it means they feel there’s a need in the community that’s not being met And while one can appreciate their energy, it takes more than a 501c3 classification from the IRS to be an effective nonprofit in the long-term.

We asked five nonprofit advisors their views on the issue; these aren’t just nonprofiteers, rather they’re people in the position of changing the way Austin nonprofits work as a community. Here’s what they had to say.

Deborah Edward professor at the RGK Center, a nationally recognized philanthropy think-tank.

The idea that there are too many nonprofits in Austin is a refrain. But while we complain about it, a city like Boston boasts about it.

From our perspective that means we’re not thinking collaborations or efficiencies. We’re not taking advantage of opportunities. In business, these new ideas for a company come up, and you get investment bankers invested so they can see the idea, and in the end, everybody makes money and everybody’s happy.

But in the nonprofit world, we don’t have those investment bankers…except for these funders. They are in the wonderful position to respond to these new nonprofits and say, “Hey, why don’t you get together?” I bet you can find a number of funders that have experience asking two organizations to merge, but the lessons learned are kept within the family. They don’t have a forum to share those stories and encourage people to think differently about going from the initial idea of merging to creating a program that’s sustainable.

I think we need to map the different nonprofits visually in terms of access, value, and fees you can see distinct dimensions … but who’s going to make that happen? The funder’s in the position because he gets 20 groups that knock on his door, and he can do a better comparison than the groups on the ground. It’s not that he has the responsibility to do it, but he does have the opportunity.

Greenlights has done a great job of helps nonprofits discover opportunities for synergy. But otherwise there’s nobody driving the train. The Austin Community Foundation would be a great place, though traditionally it has been donor centered. The Community Action Network or the United Way have that macro view that could be enlisted to help with this. The zeitgeist is to say that there are too many nonprofits. The challenge is to flip that and say, “We are the best connected system of nonprofits in the United States.”

Matt Kouri, executive director of Greenlights, which helps Central Texas nonprofits by providing consulting, resources, and nonprofit training in areas from fundraising to how to start a nonprofit.

What’s most remarkable about this data we’ve put together is that it validates what I’ve been hearing from funders anecdotally – that we do have a disproportionate share of nonprofit organizations, especially compared to other cities of similar make-up. The data for Austin is not totally inconsistent with what we see in other communities. And we might have a disproportionately large share of nonprofits that don’t serve Central Texas solely or that serve all of Texas. But we share the belief with donors that having too many nonprofits is a problem.

That being said, there are some positive sides to having so many. It can mean that more is being done in our community and that there’s lots of innovative problem solving at work. But it can also mean there are some redundancies and inefficiencies in the sector.

The silver lining in this down economy is that it might force more nonprofits to realize that they can’t cut it on their own and maybe it’s time for them to make some hard decisions. That’s our hope. I can think of at least 10 different organizations now that really need to do it, and they’ve needed to do it for a long time, yet they continue to bang their head against the same wall every year.

As to who’s responsible for identifying and leading these mergers and collaboration, I think funders need to be careful. They aren’t at the street level. They can demand and expect results and impact but it’s the nonprofit’s job to make sure those dollars are spent accordingly. At the same time, funders can exhibit influence over their grantees, especially when they see logical opportunities for collaborations.

Greenlights is investing a lot of time into this issue this year. We worked with RGK to develop a continuum of steps nonprofits can take in terms of strategic consolidation. A lot of nonprofits are already engaged in some form of collaboration, which donors may not realize. But there needs to be a lot more, and it needs to move further down the continuum toward merger.

People who follow the nonprofit sector know that in 2010 it’s going to see some radical changes. We want to help make that change intentional as opposed to just happening to us.

Barry Silverberg , president and CEO of Texas Association of Nonprofit Organizations, a statewide organization that offers training and support to Texas nonprofits and individuals who want to start a nonprofit.

Personally, I don’t believe in the numbers games because they’re always a function of who’s asking the question. I’m also not concerned with donors who believe they are getting too many requests. I encourage them to make their requirements more clear.

I don’t believe it’s our responsibility to eliminate those choices. Obviously funders can openly decide the fate of the industry by not giving funds, but I don’t believe they’re in the position to say what a nonprofit should do to be more effective. I think the question should be, “How do we get nonprofits to be more effective?”

TANO believe individuals have the right and the means to create better possibilities to serve the community. We help people understand the issue and determine if the best response is to create a nonprofit. From there, we emphasize what it means to run an effective nonprofit.

I think the nonprofit sector has a significant advantage in that people engaged in that sector are able to “do good,” and I don’t think we do enough to leverage that. There are probably too many nonprofits that are ineffective… because they ignore the stuff that could help them be more effective. I also think that funders need to strike a balance between the information they can gather quantitatively on the various forms they use, with the information they gather qualitatively. The fact is, some folks aren’t as good as completing a grant application – but they have a passion that’s unbelievable. That passion, if it’s combined with skill sets and competencies, will result in something effective if it’s guided and focused.

Janet Harman , founder, and Jenifer Esterline, program officer, KDK-Harman Foundation, a family foundation that focuses on education for economically disadvantaged Central Texans.

Harman : It’s a complex issue because at first glance one would say there are so many that we should consolidate and reduce. However, there’s a lot of room for creativity, so squashing that innovation would be a mistake.

We have actually brought several national nonprofits to Austin, so I couldn’t very well argue that there are too many nonprofits here.

I really think it’s the job of a lot of area foundations and organizations like the Austin Community Foundation and Greenlights, to point out where there is some opportunity to optimize by merger.

We reach out to other funders on a regular basis. In fact, we co-founded an education funders group, Central Texas Education Funders, a little over a year ago. We meet every other month and there are 30 members. One of the projects we’re working on is to put together a matrix of our fundraising efforts to identify the gaps.

Esterline: The model for Central Texas Education Funders is based on the Ready by 21 Coalition, which put together this matrix identifying common indicators, and we’re trying to create a similar one for the funding community. It would help us, but it would also help the nonprofits; they create about 15 different reports to different foundations, so we’re doing this to learn what they’re doing and how they can do it better. Then the other part of that is communicating this information.

As far as whether there are too many nonprofits in Austin, I would say that we are not overwhelmed with requests, but we are pretty focused on what we fund. In conversations among the education funders, we see that everyone’s funding the same nonprofits. They’ve been identified as effective and able to show their impact, so they rise to the top every time.

Everyone has the responsibility to collaborate and communicate. The new face of philanthropy is more transparent, more cooperative. A lot of our colleagues are embracing this because of people like Janet Harman who are young, entrepreneurial, and have a new way of thinking about philanthropy.

To see a list of existing nonprofit collaborations in Austin, click here.

For three years, Shelley Seale would travel to the orphanages of India, bags loaded with treats and toys to share with the children who had made such an enormous impact on her. After all, these were the same children who inspired the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Each time she got to know the children’s stories a little more, which compelled this Austin writer to compose a new book called, “The Weight of Silence: The Invisible Children of India.”

“I hope that people will see that even though this topic is serious and the stories often heartbreaking, it is not a depressing book or subject!” says Seale. “The kids’ hope and resilience amazed me time and time again; the ability of their spirits to overcome crippling challenges inspired me. The issues are tough, what has happened to a lot of these kids makes you want to cry – but the bottom line of their stories is a very strong, hopeful voice.“

I interviewed Shlley to find out what compelled her to travel, return, and make the children of India such a big part of her life.

What prompted you to travel in India and get to know these children?

In early 2004, I read an article in Tribeza magazine about Caroline Boudreaux, who had visited India three years earlier. She had happened upon an orphanage full of children living in incomprehensible conditions and had returned  home and started The Miracle Foundation, a nonprofit which raises money and recruits sponsors to help support the home. I began volunteering for the organization and sponsored a child, and Caroline invited me to go to India with a volunteer group. My first visit was in March 2005.

Was the situation what you expected?

Yes and no. When I arrived that first time, I assumed all the kids there were orphans in the true sense of the word – their parents had died. Instead I was shocked by how many of them had been “orphaned” by poverty; their parents had left them at the Miracle Foundation home because they were too poor to feed them, which in some ways seemed an even greater tragedy. I wondered when each of them had stopped wanting to go back home, or if they ever had. Afterward, there was simply no way to go on with my life afterwards as if they did not exist.

I had gone expecting it to be a sad place, an emotionally wrenching experience with these parentless young people. But those expectations had been turned on their head. Yes, there were stories behind each one of these children – many of them painful and tragic. Yet the man who ran the orphanage, and the house mothers, had made the kids their own in a community of sharing and acceptance. They were poor in wealth but not in spirit; limited in resources but not in joy and laughter. They gave me a complete unconditional love, for nothing more than showing up.

This kind of journey isn’t for everybody… is it?

Probably not. The specific type of trip I took with The Miracle Foundation, the volunteer trip to the children’s homes, is not the same as a sight-seeing vacation.

India is definitely a complete culture shock for someone who’s never been there, especially if you haven’t traveled in a developing country before. The poverty and hardship is stark and in your face. At times, quite honestly, I just wanted to look away and say I’d had enough. But the suffering remains whether we choose to look or not. They do not go away simply because we decide that to be a witness to them, to say I care about your story, is too difficult for us.

But still, like I said before, the moment you meet these kids, that all goes away. I have been on four different trips with all kinds of different people, some of whom love India and some who barely tolerate it, yet every single one of them fell in love with these kids and had the time of their life.  It’s amazing how this experience hooks you – I sometimes tease Caroline Boudreaux about putting something in the water. But the truth is, we go thinking about giving something back, and in the end it’s us who end up getting something amazing out of it. We are the ones who get rescued.

I guess sometimes it seems hopeless. There are so many children who need help. What do you think?

The truth is, each person can create incredible impact with even small actions. It’s a ripple effect, and I have seen it happen over and over, so many times I can’t even count them. Most of us could never sell all our belongings and go work in the trenches in India, but that doesn’t mean we should think, then, that we can’t do anything at all.

If you can change the course of the life of ONE person – still, that one person’s life is different and better because you impacted it.  I think that’s worth it. Don’t focus on the big picture, just focus on what you are passionate about, what you want to do. For me, I can’t constantly think about the 25 million kids in India who live in orphanages or on the streets – I can only think about the one who is in front of me at that moment.

What do you hope to accomplish with the book?

My sole purpose in writing the book was to give these millions of children a voice that could be heard by others in the world who, I was convinced, would be as moved by their plights as I was. And so, the main thing I hope to accomplish is awareness – followed by action. Some kind of action. I think the key is to discover what you are passionate about, what you have genuine feelings and caring about – and then do something about that issue. But just do something.

To learn more about the book, go to Seale’s website or purchase one from The Miracle Foundation. Note that for all books purchased through The Miracle Foundation, all proceeds are donated to them.

I grew up in the shadow of that big American Indian chief statue on NW Loop 410 in San Antonio, the one that sits on the Red McCombs car dealership, so I’ve known the name Red McCombs all my life. For a while, I thought he was an Indian chief.

I was able to meet him this past weekend (he is not, BTW, and Indian chief) and the emotional and inspiring YMBL Sunshine Camps grand opening celebration. McCombs donated about $1 million toward that project, which opens next week to about 70 at-risk Austin kids with high leadership potential.

(There’s a concert tonight to benefit the camp tonight at Umlauf Sculpture Gardens. Tickets $10 for teens, and $25-$75 for adults. Kids under 12 are FREE. It’s from 6 -9 pm. Great place to take kids, see sculpture, have some wine/beer/appetizers… consider.)

ANYWAY, doing what it is that I do, I interviewed him. He’s got such a great voice and presence (he was one of the best car salesman in the country, remember?) that video was the best medium.

And he did not disappoint:

BTW: Along the lines of this article, consider giving $5 to a charity this month. Every bit helps, or as the badass Pamela Benson-Owens puts it: “Even a donation that jingles is a donation.”

I spent yesterday afternoon with seven volunteer leaders from the Capital Area State Employee Charitable Campaign (SECC), learning about how the campaign works and some of their challenges. These are remarkable people who’ve taken on the job – in addition to their full-time job – of inspiring and encouraging their co-workers – tens of thousands of them – to take advantage of the payroll deduction opportunity for charitable donations.

What’s so amazing about their energy is that they wholeheartedly believe, as do we at GivingCity, that all people want to give, and that they just need to be asked or given an easy opportunity to give. The positive vibes in that room made me want to sign up for paycheck deductions, too. And I don’t even work for the state. Or have a paycheck! (My temporary unemployment, though, is a whole ‘nother story.)

One thing they said toward the end, though, has stuck with me. In this sour economy, it’s inevitable that some donors would make smaller or less frequent donations. But there’s a inspiring phenomenon that happens as well.

At a time when everyone is rethinking their spending, more people of less income tend to donate a higher percentage of their income more often.

“People criticize us because we invite state employees who don’t make that much money to participate,” said Tammy Vega, chair of the Capital Area committee.

“Some people assume that they wouldn’t want to give,” said Holly Chacona of Hospice Austin, an active supporter of SECC. “But why would we assume they don’t want to give?

“It’s not about tell people they should, it’s about givine people the opportunity,” says Chacona. ”What we’ve seen at Hospice Austin in the past is that donations from individuals from low incomes homes actually increase. They also tend to give a higher percentage of their income that high-income donors do.

“And I don’t know if it’s because maybe they finally feel secure and now they want to help the people below them feel secure. Or that they’ve been recipients of services in the past, and realize that more people are getting those services and so they should help… we just don’t know.”

Vega, who works at Texas Youth Commission, concurs. “We repeatedly see the correctional officers, who don’t make a lot of money in the first place, give the highest percentage of their wages and give on a more consistent basis than a lot of other TYC employees.”

The other part of this, they say, is that a lot of these people wind up giving more later, when the economy improves.

“People don’t mind being asked when you present it as an opportunity,” says Chacona. “This just gives them a chance to shine.”

More about Laurie Loew and her real estate agency that gives 25% of its commission to the charity of your choice in your name (still blows me away) in our next issue. In the meantime, enjoy this short interview by Christine Cox.

Check out more GivingCity videos on our YouTube channel.

In  GivingCity Issue #2, we interviewed three African-American social entrepreneurs to get their opinions on East Austin, gentrification, and being African American in Austin.

I was a little worried about running that interview. What worried me is that I had never heard anyone say these things before. Yes, I’m a little naive and ignorant about East Austin issues, so maybe none of it was news; but I also worried about things like fact-checking and getting the other side of their stories.

But then I figured … you know, we’ve heard the other side of their stories. I’m just going to give these guys some space and hear what they have to say. So I just had the interview transcribed and just got out of their way.

This is an excerpt from that story. To read the whole thing – and see some gorgeous portraits taken by Austin photographer (who still shoots film!) Owen Laracuente – download GC2.

Michael Lofton, Director of The African- American Men and Boys Harvest Foundation
Lofton is a community leader who has worked for many years on behalf of the African-American community in Austin, with a particular emphasis on education and mentoring.

What inspires me is the salvation of the kids. It bothers me to no end to see 56 percent of our kids dropping out. Because you have to realize that when you have 50 to 60 percent of the kids dropping out, and the stats are 6 out of 10 that don’t graduate will end up in jail, we as a community need to come together and address not only the community but address the educational systems and try and bring in whatever social service programs needed in order to turn the kids around.

Kids have lost hope in the educational system. Too often kids recognize the disparity in the disciplinary process. But that is what prompted us to start hosting the African-American Men and Boys Conferences, because we saw so much disparity in the disciplinary process in putting our kids in the juvenile system.

Now, you’ve got tons of kids that are coming out of high school with a criminal record already. And it’s sad that as big as Austin is, we only have 280 African- American males in the 12th grade right now, and how many of those are going to graduate?

So what I’m saying is the community is going to have to come together to talk to our young men, talk to our young ladies, and find out what the problem is, and give them those strategies to deal with things that they don’t have somebody at home to talk to them about.

Gator, Co-Founder of The Cipher
Gator is a hip hop and spoken word artist, community activist, and youth leader.

I’m a native of Austin, and I’ve stayed in East Austin and Northeast Austin all my life. I’m only 22, and I didn’t develop a conscience at about community until recently, you know. But I remember the Juneteenth festivals and how they used to be, and just seeing a lot of African-Americans come together; it was real positive back then. You had more adults involved in that process.

When you fast-forward to today, it’s just not what it used to be. I see the gentrification and the effect that it’s having on the people. A lot of youth, when they see it happening they don’t really know what’s going on and don’t realize that it’s going to have an effect on their lives.

But there are a lot of community organizations involved in educating the youth, for example Michael’s organization and our organization. We try to get Eastside kids involved, because they don’t feel like school is that important anymore.

On the other side of I-35 it’s totally different, and at those schools they have more to work with. In our schools, some of them, it’s different. Like Reagan, for example, that’s the school that I went to; I remember a time where Reagan was full of pride, and it was just the school to be at. And now it comes to a point to where it’s almost sad.

It’s like what Michael was saying about the dropout rate—they just don’t feel like school is that important anymore. You have to question that and why do they think that.

Harold McMillan, Founder/Director of DiverseArts Production Group
McMillan is a nonprofit producer of multidisciplinary art and culture projects and programs, and has been involved and active in Austin’s art and music community for the past 20 years.

The black community has to do a lot of that. And like I said, I hate to be cynical and jaded, but my area of interest and expertise is cultural history and cultural preservation, that piece of a community’s life. And I am heartbroken over what has happened on East 11th Street and what’s not happening on East 12th Street at Rosewood. And I fear that it just might be too late—it just might be gone.

As the population declines, as the African- American population inside the city of Austin declines and that money goes in this wave, two waves ago many of the foundation bedrock families of central East Austin that actually do and did have money, they moved out, too.

Part of my disappointment is that many of those people that really do or I think should have an emotional stake in the community took their money with them, too. We can blame the gentry for coming in and developing on East 11th Street. But we can also blame moneyed black folks whose families grew up in that neighborhood who walked away a long time ago and never brought their money back. You know, that’s really disappointing to me.

Langston Hughes has a poem that has a line in it: “Lord have mercy, they done stole my blues.” Sometimes you give your blues away. And I am disheartened by the high rate that people are cashing out and just getting out of the community. It will never be the same, we know that—we can’t stop progress. But there’s a legacy of a rich culture there that’s being trampled on right there that hurts me.

One of the best, most informative parts of Turk Pipkin’s new film, “One Peace at a Time,” is his interview with U.S. Congressman Lloyd Doggett, who represents part of Austin and seven counties southeast of Austin.

After traveling the world to see the true impact of organizations like Austin-based charities, The Miracle Foundation and A Glimmer of Hope, Pipkin sat down with Congressman Doggett to ask about the often-heard call-to-action, “Contact your congressman.” He wanted to know if that was actually effective.

I don’t remember Doggett’s exact words, but the impression I got was that Doggett finds these absolutely effective – but only if your communication is sincere and meaningful.  Doggett said the reality of those “Contact your congressman” mass emails he receives from auto-generating forms don’t have the impact of well-written email or letter from an individual. And even then, it takes a large number of those more sincere emails for the message to get through.

I liked that he was honest. We can all guess that our congressmen receive a lot of emails, letters, and phone calls from people wanting them to vote a certain way or support a certain bill, and that it’s impossible to heed each of their requests. I also liked that Doggett seemed to put the responsibility on us to make that meaningful connection with our representatives.

Because it is our responsibility. Nonprofits cannot do it all. I’ve heard that a lot lately, from the nonprofit and the government agency communities. Both say that our efforts to change the world have to come through both channels. And it’s important to note that both communities have said this – not in critical ways – but in empowering ways.

I met with the leaders of the Texas  State Employee Charitable Campaign last week about their communication needs for the fall 2009 campaign. The campaign consists of 10,000+ state employees from 10 agencies (like Texas Youth Commission, Comptroller of Public Accounts, Workforce Commission, and others) from all over Texas who gave almost $10 million to charity in 2007. (The Capital Area employees alone gave more than $2 million.) What’s remarkable is that these are people who have chosen civil service to work for the people of Texas and who also choose to support the people of Texas through regular deductions from their paychecks.

I think it was Reuben Leslie of Texas Health and Human Services Commission, who’s been part of the campaign since 2005, who told me, “Nonprofits can’t do it alone. Government can’t do it alone. We have to work together. And we need the people of Texas to support that work.”

We ask a lot from our state agencies and our nonprofit charities and our foundations, and we expect them to read our minds and/or do the caring for us. Whether we write an email to our representative, make a donation, or learn about an important issue in our community, we can show our support for their efforts. Remember, we have the easy part.

So let me get this straight: Give Realty gives 25% of its commission to charity? In my name? 

Yeah, I think that’s how it works. I get this realtor, Laurie Loew of Give Realty, to help me find a house. She makes a commission when I buy it  -  from what I remember commission is 6% of the house’s selling price. So if I buy the house for $200,000, for example, Laurie and the other realtor who worked with the seller split a commission of $12,000 total or $6000 each.

But then… while the other realtor pockets all most of the $6000 (their broker/office usually gets a portion), Laurie pockets $4500 and gives the remaining $1500 to the charity of my choice. I get to make the donation. I write the check. I get the tax deduction.

So what’s the catch?

I met Laurie at Jo’s yesterday to ask her about that. The thing is, there isn’t a catch. She just wants to do this. She just wants to help the community. What makes this so odd, mostly, is that no one else is doing this. She’s done the research and cannot find a realtor anywhere in the country who is giving away so much of their commission – and in their clients’ names. I mean, I think about moving once in a while, but this makes me want to go house hunting immediately. It’s kind of unbelievable.

Lots of people want to help the community, but how many can take 25% of their income and give it away, and not even in their own name?

But still you’re wondering… what’s the catch? Let me break this down for you:

…she’s independently wealthy? Laurie used to be wealthy-ish, but she got a divorce, gave up on the stuff aquisition, and started to feel good about her life. So now she’s trading wealth for health and happiness. Go figure.

….she’s taking a cut somewhere else? Nope. She’s met with accountants, lawyers, entrepreneurs, lots of people to make sure she’s doing this in a straight-up, totally kosher way.

…she’s doing this as a marketing gimmick? She’s not, actually. But think about it… even if she is… so what? She gives 25% of her commission to charity. Nice gimmick.

….she’s a little nuts? I know why you’re thinking this. You’re thinking this because you think realtors in general are greedy or lazy or a little bit of both, so she must be a kinda crazy. But a.) realtors can be cool people and b.) Laurie’s not crazy. She’s extremely sane, in fact. And she’s definitely not greedy or lazy. She worked her butt off for years to become one of the best realtors in Austin before starting Give Realty on her own.

The thing is, there is no catch. She’s just a super-nice lady, and in fact, she has two other super-nice people working with her, Robin LeTourneau and Joe Menefe. I hope you’ll hire them or refer them to someone you know who’s looking to buy or sell their home. Because it might be fun writing a big old check to the nonprofit of your choice.

Learn more about Give Realty here: http://www.giverealtyaustin.com/

(Since August 2008, Give Realty Austin has already given away $7,400 to local nonprofits. And within the next month, Laurie thinks they’ll be at $10,000. What an incredible impact one realtor can have!)