One of my favorite things about giving is that you can do it in so many different ways—and it doesn’t always involve breaking out your checkbook.
In addition to advising clients how to save and where to invest, part of my job was to show them how to establish a procedure for giving. Sometimes it’s not the kind of giving they expected, particularly if they’re doing all they can to keep up with their own monthly bills. It’s a simple idea, yet many have never considered it before: give at work.
I often hear from friends and clients who feel frustrated that their job is devoted exclusively to making money. They want more out of their job, more out of their life. You might feel the same way—and I’ve got good news. Within almost any job, there are opportunities for doing good.
“Job purposing” is what Bea Boccalandro calls this principle. She told me several stories that illustrate the point particularly well. In one, an inner-city parking attendant walks around his place of work and systematically measures every car’s tires. If someone’s tires are bald, he tells the owner or puts a note on the dash. He leaves at the end of his workday feeling like he’s made a difference and made it less likely that someone would have a flat tire or blow out on their way home.
Another story Bea told me is a great example of the kind of work that inspired her to write her book, Do Good at Work, in the first place. After a speech she gave in Seattle, a woman came up to her who was an administrative assistant at a regional trucking company. Her colleagues had nicknamed her “TP Tina.” Tina had been working late one evening when she noticed the janitorial staff throwing away partially used rolls of toilet paper and replacing them with new ones. That may have made sense to avoid the calamity of some unfortunate soul running out of paper in the middle of the workday, but tossing half- or three-quarter-used rolls was tremendously wasteful. So Tina asked the janitorial staff to drop them off at her desk. Soon her office was covered with rolls of toilet paper. Now, a few times a week, Tina delivers the toilet paper to a local homeless shelter, which has saved enough money on its grocery bill to be able to host a monthly ice cream social for the families living there.
