Introducing Where’s Your Heart? Foundation
Where’s Your Heart? Foundation is a US non-profit organization founded with the mission to improve people’s lives through altruistic living.
Big words, but what does that mean?
You know that feeling you get when you do something good (something altruistic)? We believe that feeling is important. It turns a bad day into a good one, or at least makes a tough day a little easier. We’ve all felt it, right?
Well, a problem is that the feeling is fleeting. No, not the right word. It’s not the feeling that’s fleeting, but the experience. There are a bunch of reasons this happens:
- Charities don’t focus on the experience of their donors, they rightfully focus on their charitable missions;
- That feeling is pretty hard to measure, and so the benefits we get from that feeling are even further “out-there”
The thinking goes… since the good feeling is really hard to measure, and the “real” purpose is to raise money for the charitable cause, the good feeling is used to get people to donate, but no effort is put in place to maintain that feeling.
A good analogy is to compare this to braking a car. The act of braking the car generates heat, but the “real purpose” is to stop the car. In the past, the heat dissipated. Only recently car manufacturers have realized the importance of being energy efficient and started to recapture that heat. Charities have not yet realized the importance of maintaining that feeling and have let it dissipate.
Where’s Your Heart? will change that.
The Good Feeling is Important
So, what will WYH? do? We’re going to focus on events to create that feeling, and use social/technology innovation to magnify it and then share it. For example, in Cleanse for Your Cause cleansers can pick their own cause to support making the event more personal, and therefore more meaningful. This meaning magnifies the good feelings they generate. Once generated, we’re going to use social media to nurture and share those good feelings. In short…
Where’s Your Heart? will create, nurture, and share that feeling™
Why?
Well, to improve people’s lives (weren’t you paying attention in paragraph 1?!?). In fact, we believe it will do more. A lot more.
Why now?
We believe there is an interesting confluence of social media, charitable awareness, and a valuing of the “group experience”. Consider Where’s Your Heart? our contribution to this new culture. A culture that is turning away from the 9-5 materialistic lifestyle, and looking for something more. A culture where we can break down global borders and come together around something bigger. Pick your favorite disaster. Katrina. Haiti. Asia’s tsunami. People rallied, and for a moment we were connected around coming together. And we felt better for it. We’re learning to have a different impact on the world around us, and Where’s Your Heart? is going to be a part of that change.