Guest blog: Fred Smith- Bearing Witness

This month I’m sharing a blog written recently by my friend and colleague Fred Smith. Fred co-founded Leadership Network and is also the founder of The Gathering, an international association of individuals, families and private foundations giving to Christian ministries. In this article, Fred gives us his insightful impressions of Phil Buchanan’s new book, Giving Done Right. I hope you will take a few minutes to read it, and then grab a copy of the book and let me know your own thoughts about it.  Happy summer!

The first time I read the phrase “bearing witness” was in Elie Wiesel’s book,  “Night” recounting the horrors of the Holocaust and the responsibility he felt never to forget or allow others to dismiss what happened there. Over the years, the phrase has come to mean more. We …

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Unleashing Latent Energy of Generosity

Image by artist Mugur Kreiss

In 2007, Brian received an email from his roommate, Joe. The two were young designers living in San Francisco and trying to make rent. There was a big conference for designers coming into town, and Joe knew there would be a shortage of hotel rooms. His idea was to buy three air mattresses, put them up in their loft, offer breakfast and free wifi and let designers attending the conference stay with them for a small nightly fee. Twelve years later, Airbnb is a $25 billion company.

Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky defined the lowest abstraction (the need for rent money and the need for places to stay), latent energy was discovered, and once unleashed, abundance resulted.

What does this have to do with generosity? It occurs to me …

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