DailyJim: “Philanthropist with no money”

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Thursday, February 20th, 2025. And what I want to talk about today is a philanthropist with no money.

So today I was blessed with the opportunity to go to the funeral ceremony of a Professor Bethwell Alan Ogott, who passed away at about 95 years old and one of the most famous historians in Kenya who apparently wrote 43 books. At one point was the president of UNESCO, I believe, and was involved with so many different organizations and universities over his lifetime. Wrote, I think, almost a thousand-page history of the Luo people in Kenya.

And throughout, not just Kenya, but I think throughout East Africa. And was just a man that was highly celebrated. And so a friend of mine, Teddy, invited me to the funeral and said that I wouldn't want to miss it, especially the one that's coming up this weekend in the rural area. And so I went to the funeral and the children spoke, four children. And I had looked in the booklet beforehand and I saw one testimonial from one of the children that I really wanted to hear. His name was David Ogote Sr. And so he gave up and he was one of the last, I think he was the last child to speak.

And he told a story about addiction and. He said that it was the second time that he would be saying goodbye to his father after he said goodbye and lost his father. The second time he would lose his father after he lost him for 27 years of addiction.

And told just a heart-wrenching, honest, raw story about how he would go through and he was conning his family to get money so he could do alcohol. And then so many tricks he would con people in his family to pay for his schooling, but he never went to school and so many different things. And just how these people would repeatedly support him and support him and support him and support him.

And told a different story than the one that the obituary and the eulogies often talk about, which is the prestigious awards or external things, the public things that one has done. He told a story of a man who, despite having so much success and so much fame, never gave up on him.

And I was captivated throughout the whole speech.

And one thing that he said so he went he finally got through rehab and decided to dedicate his life to um talking about being a recovering alcoholic and and i think has built an organization around this trying to help other people get through alcoholism and what he would say you know it's constantly fighting the battle of relapsing or whatnot. But one thing he said is that, I think he said his father would see him as a philanthropist with no money.

Now, if you've been following my podcast or my work over the last 10, 12 years, that term resonated very strongly with me. And at one point, I think his father, he said that he needed rent money for the organization and his father said listen I'm retired I don't have the money and then as the rent got closer and closer I think his father invited him over and gave him a check and he was just so grateful for his father not only, never giving up on him but believing in him and supporting him and I can relate very strongly to that. Um, I have been very blessed and fortunate that my family, especially my mom, but especially my dad has supported me in, uh, in being a philanthropist with no money.

And there are many ways to support people in this way, but one of them is really just to give them money.

And so I want to pause for a second because that phrase reminded me of an essay by Mackenzie Scott, who is the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos. On her website, Yield Giving, she has an essay where she talks about the definition of philanthropist and how it has changed over the years, how philanthropy originally was the love of humanity, how it was donating money to good causes, donating generously to good causes, and things related to that. But at some point, it got associated with really rich people. And she wanted to question that definition and say that philanthropy is still the love of humanity. What is more generous in donation of money? Is someone who has a million dollars who gives $10,000 or someone who has $10,000 and gives $5,000?

Who's more generous in the donation or which act is more generous in donation.

And so what this speech helped me recognize as I work on this Leading Hearts Fund concept, is that we have a lot of people, we have people in society who have a lot of money and I think we have been expecting or hoping that they would turn into philanthropists. So you have the examples in the U.S. of the Rockefellers, of the Gettys, of the Carnegies, these ones who made money through other ways, I think often through what they call them, robber barons or whatnot, through steel industry, through railroads, things like this. And then the idea is, okay, once they got a lot of money, they'll have some awakening moment where they would now want to donate and give their money away in some form of philanthropy. And I think that's one way to go about it. That's one way to increase philanthropy in the world on a scale level is to either hope or try to help those who have a lot of money become more generous and give more. So it's part of, I think the giving pledge or something. I think it's a giving pledge that Warren Buffett started. And I think Mackenzie Scott signed onto it and Bill Gates as well. And other billionaires have signed onto this idea of giving away a certain percentage of their wealth.

And so that's one idea. One idea is to, one way is to find people who have risen in financial power and then hope that they become more generous in giving, hope they become more loving in that way. But another way that we could try is to find the people who are already very generous in giving.

And we give a lot to them.

What if instead of waiting to see who rises to the top, often by not so much being generous and giving, but being really good at sales, which frankly means probably receiving more than they give if they want to make profit.

And what if we found the people who just give and give and give and give and give? These people often don't have a lot of money because they give it all away. What if we found these people and we gave them a lot of money? What if we put them at the high levels? How could that scale love and generosity in the world if we found the people who are already very generous and we became very generous towards them? Instead of hoping that the ones who, frankly, weren't known for their generosity rise to the top and we hope that they become generous, rise to the top financially, let's say it that way. So this is one of the main ideas behind leading hearts fund what if we find the people who are already very loving very generous who don't have that financial power and we give them the financial power so that they can scale that love so they can scale that generosity, and what impact would it have on us for us to give generously to the people who give generously to us and to others.

Because there is not just a benefit in receiving help and receiving support and receiving love. There's a benefit in giving it.

So this is my appeal to you listening, to think that there might be a different way to scale love, to scale generosity, to scale cooperation, unity, conflict resolution, whatever you want to call it. Find the people who are already really good at this stuff and then boost them up. Instead of hoping the people who have already reached kind of a economic or social top will change their ways. Now we can still hope for that, but let's also try this. What if we also tried finding the individuals who were really good at these things, who will give you their time, their money, their attention, their, couch to sleep on, just so generous, and maybe have the skills to be able to scale it up. And then give them much more financial power, much more social power, aka fame and notoriety, and try to lift them up and say, go.

What can you do if you had a bigger platform financially and socially?

So that's the idea behind Leading Arts Fund. Honestly, what I have on the website now is I want, I believe I am quite generous in giving. Now it's up to you to believe if I am or not. I spent the last 10, 12 years working on this hard to get really good at loving other people, to get really good at caring about people and trying to resolve their problems because I see them as my problems as well. So I'd be grateful if you thought, if you trusted me and you were excited to see if I could lead in that way. And if it's not me, then maybe there are a couple other people on the website that I personally would, that I personally want to fund, that you would also consider funding. Or maybe there's somebody else in your life that you see as very generous and very loving. And you think, man, what would this person do if they had more financial power? What would this person do if they had more social power? Or how much more love could they bring to this world? And just give it to them. You don't have to require that they fill out grants, proposals, or monitoring, evaluation. Give it to them, trust them, and say, I believe in you. Go off and do this. Let's see what happens.

So when we give generously, we are not nitpicking on the details and asking for detailed reports and lots of reasons and validations for why we're doing this and that. We just, we give because we want to give and because we believe and we trust. So if there are people in your life who are, that you believe, whether that's David Ogotr Sr., whether that's me, whether it's my friend Pavel, whether it's maybe a guy named Jake Clark who runs Safe Warrior, whoever in your life you think is giving so much love and is so generous in giving to others, try to be more generous in giving to them and see what happens. That's the idea. That's the experiment. And I hope you join me on this journey. If you have any questions, please reach out. We'd love to talk to you about this. All right. Talk to you all next week. Bye.