[Editor’s Note: This is a weekly series. If your company is doing something amazing to help a charitable cause or doing some good in your community, please reach out.]
What if you found a blue envelope outside and it had a few dollars in it that you could use on whatever you like, say a coffee on Monday? This is a possibility with a new initiative that took off in London and is starting to spread itself throughout the world.
#GiveMondays is a community of anonymous givers who thought that it would be nice to start off everyone’s week with a random act of kindness. The act of giving makes you feel better, and it doesn’t matter what you give or how much you give, either. I don’t even know who started the website.
Here’s the story behind GiveMondays:
One fine morning we had an epiphany – giving feels good and Mondays are blue. Blessed with this wonderful insight we decided to set up GiveMondays and encourage people to give their week the best possible start by good deeds every Monday. So who are we? GiveMondays is an anonymous community of givers. And we’d like you to join us.
To get started, all you have to do is get a blue envelope and leave it in a random spot with some instructions on how to pay it forward. Really small campaigns like this excite me, because it’s proof that the Internet isn’t just a place to post pictures of your cats. You can learn about and participate in some really amazing stuff.
Seeing the tweets from people who are preparing and finding the envelopes is kind of neat to watch:
If you took the time to stuff a blue envelope and add the instructions below, you could inspire just one other person to do the same. That person could inspire someone else, and so on. This is true virality for good. You could leave an envelope by the bus stop or on a co-worker’s desk and just watch how happy someone is when they open it up. The best part is that you don’t even put your name on it. You just get to feel good for giving.
If you’re giving kindness or receiving kindness in a blue envelope, go to the website and sign in to share your location. The site then displays on a map all of the places where envelopes were given and found. Jump into the comments and let us know if you plan on participating tomorrow.
