Helper’s Helper    (HelpersHelper.Org)

Summary: Helper’s Helper is an idea that can generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year for charities, through increased funding and in increased volunteer hours. The idea is to provide a workshop package for charities, so that they can offer time and money management trainings to their volunteers and donors. This creates a win-win: the volunteers and donors get more time, and they are asked to donate at least 25% to help charities.


The Current Approach: When charities need more money or volunteers, they do fundraisers to increase their donations, or write grants, or advertise for volunteers. This does nothing to increase the pool of money and volunteer hours in any given geographic area. As a result, when one charity gets funding there’s less money for others. Similarly, when you volunteer for one charity, that’s time you can’t give to another.  


The Upgrade: Have high-leverage charities offer time and money management trainings to their volunteers, donors and others. Then ask for 25% of the newfound time and money. Remind donors that they are ahead with the 75%, and also that the 25% is often an investment in the community or charity that will relieve great suffering.

 

Doubt 1: Most volunteers and donors won’t want to do the hard work of learning and change.

Counter-argument 1: Highlight the benefits of the increased time and money. Also point out that more overall good is unlikely without an increase to the overall pool of time and money.

 

Doubt 2:  People won’t maintain their new time and money habits and patterns. They will stop giving.

Counterargument 2:  Have a monthly follow-up in which people can keep sharing their tips and progress, and have their efforts affirmed.

 

Doubt 3: The money that is saved is money that won’t go into the economy, so jobs will be lost elsewhere.

Counterargument 3: Jobs may be lost in the private sector, but it’s likely more jobs will be created in the nonprofit sector, because it’s more service oriented. Besides, an increased nonprofit infrastructure (safety net) of services will better aid those who lose their jobs.

 

 

The Calculation:

Here’s where the $500 billion figure comes from: The richest one-tenth of the world’s population would be 600 million people, mostly the middle class of the wealthier countries. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume they are all just middle class people. If 50% of these people can save just $100 more a month through money management, that would yield $360 billion a year ($100 x 12 x 300 million). $100 a month may sound like a lot, but in an actual small group situation, I led a group of participants to trim monthly recurring expenses like insurance and utilities, producing savings of up to $1,500 a year.

Now for the other part of the $500 billion: In the United States, about half of all adults who can volunteer do volunteer. Assume that capable adults and teens make up half of the population—the rest are too young, too old or too infirm. Therefore, imagine that only one quarter of the 600 million people volunteered an extra three hours a week, using time gained through time-management. If this time were valued at only $6.75, that would yield $150 billion dollars a year. ($6.75 x 3 hours/wk x 50 weeks x 300 million.) Thus, the total of donations and volunteer time is worth over $500 billion a year.

More information is at HelpersHelper.Org, a website still being built.

 

Plans and Needs: We plan to do trial workshops to try out and fine tune the content. We also plan to do a YouTube video to promote the idea.  We will need participants for the workshops and also actors, videographers and post-production for the video.

   

Possible Impact: Few ideas on Earth are worth half a trillion dollars a year, and able to potentially do about $125 billion a year in good. The impact of this very simple idea can be huge!