In 2010, I had a revelation:

A successful bottom line does very little to improve your quality of life.

After advising entrepreneurs, CEOs, and other high-impact leaders for years, I recognized no matter what goal they achieved, it never seemed to be enough to deliver what they really craved – happiness, joy and contentment.

I had an existential crisis where I began to wonder… “Am I making a positive difference?”

Ever the overachiever, I started looking for the elusive “key” to helping professionals get more joy from all their hard work.

I read books, watched videos, listened to podcasts, and even attended workshops. I came across a bunch of great concepts and began to incorporate them into my coaching practice.

This helped, but something was missing.

Then, I stumbled across a book that changed my viewpoint completely – Why Good Things Happen to Good People by Dr. Stephen Post.

Dr. Post helped me understand the proven psychological and physiological benefits of making a simple change in your life – living generously.

Once, I’d uncovered this secret, I became obsessed with helping myself and others realize the positive effects of helping those in need.

I’ve spent the last 10 years working with both non-profit and business leaders to understand how we can make living generously fundamental to the way we live.

This effort has led me to 3 important conclusions:

1. Understanding the importance of living generously (from the standpoint of the giver and the recipient) is easy. Overcoming the psychological programming that keeps us from giving regularly is extremely difficult.

2. Our approach to charitable giving in the US is flawed. This leads to chronic donor fatigue and keeps generous individuals from finding the joy in living generously.

3. The rise in two seemingly unrelated factors (disposable income and stress/anxiety) work together to make this the best time in our country’s history to focus on living generously.

I’ve taken these lessons learned and developed services to help companies inspire a change in behavior that benefits everyone involved.

We (my clients – leaders in the professional community) have the resources (time and money) to solve the biggest challenges our communities are facing (poverty, homelessness, disparity in opportunity, etc.).

What we need is focus.

Generosity First has a simple goal: Inspire professionals (starting with my clients and their employees) to become charitable leaders within their communities.

A charitable leader is a talented, driven, busy professional who makes the decision to shift a portion of their valuable and scarce resources (time and money) towards a charitable cause. This commitment is often characterized by an active board role and/or helping to raise money for the organization.

This is very different from a passive volunteer position and writing a nominal check every year during the fundraising campaign.

The charitable leader:

• Is in the game to make a meaningful difference

• Recognizes that the satisfaction/joy/contentment they get from being involved far surpasses the commitment they’ve made

• Inspires their peers, family, and friends to find their own cause and give generously

• Changes their community at the ground level

Everyone is at a different stage in their journey, and this affects their perspective on giving back to others. As a result, this process is designed to meet individuals where they’re at in their unique place in life.

It’s broken into 3 steps.

1. Focus – This first step is dedicated to helping you uncover the challenges/issues in your community that you’d like to help solve.

2. Finding the Fit – Next, you’ll identify the types of charitable organizations in your area that are focused on the issues you addressed in the first step.

3. Making a Difference – Finally, we’ll work on proven strategies to help you make a “meaningful” impact (your definition – not mine) in the non-profit you’ve selected.