MRIs reveal that making a donation activates the brain’s reward center–giving you a boost of dopamine. When you help others, the primitve part of your brain lights up to experience pleasure.

So, if you’re looking for something to do with a few saved pennies, consider giving them away.

And, if you don’t have any pennies handy, consider joining us tomorrow for our last Final Friday Fundraising call of 2008 and donating $10, $25, or $40 to help us finance the dreams of entrepreneurs in the developing countries of the world through Kiva.org.

No spare change? No worries, we’d still love to have you join us on the call.

Most of the entrepreneurs you meet start up their businesses after having thought about them a very long time. It would be rare to find a business owner who just woke up this morning and decided, yes I think I’ll go for it today and make that first million!

However, regardless of the amount of time you waited to get started on your business, when you jump in without having any kind of strategy for meeting your goals and no business plan for how to get there, you might as well have just taken the big leap immediately after getting out of bed.

Without an (more…)

Caught an interesting item in The Economist earlier this week. It was a story about Barack Obama called Explaining the Riddle.

I had no idea Obama was something of a “comeback kid”. His life was very different eight years ago. He’d lost a congressional primary in Chicago, and both his political and personal bank accounts were empty. He couldn’t get a floor pass and had to watch the proceedings from a big screen in a car park. And the rental car company had even rejected his credit card. Haven’t we all experienced our own version of these… shall we just say “down times”?

But just look at (more…)

On August 1, President Clinton arrived in a small rural district outside of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, called Debre Ziet, where a large crowd of people greeted him at Godino Health Center, a rural center that serves 45,000 people.

He and his team announced a new program that will help 50 health centers across Ethiopia bringing HIV/AIDS and malaria testing, care, and treatment to more than one million people.

These efforts will include a focus on helping to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS from a mother to her baby, giving more children the chance to live free of the disease.

President Clinton’s next stop: (more…)

In response to asking “what can we give” to help you with your business, we’re creating a regular “question of the month” post where I’ll answer your specific questions sent to this web site.

We’ll select the best question from those submitted each month (can be on any business or micro-fundraising related topic) and, if you benefit from the answer posted, we’re hoping you’ll send us your comments and consider making a micro-donation of $10, $25 or $40 on a future Final Friday Fundraising call. Think of it as the most cost-effective consulting you’ll ever purchase!

At SMARTSTART we’ve implemented philanthropy programs for donating services, support, and access to career and business success mentoring programs to new grads, new immigrants and entrepreneurs in the developing countries of the world.

Now I’d like to explore how we might expand further by doing something for the entrepreneurs who so generously support our work here at SMARTSTART|Giving.

What would be most meaningful for you?

Please send us your comments suggesting what would make the greatest difference to you (more…)

On our June fundraising call I was excited to report that, thanks to the generosity of our SMARTSTART|Giving followers, we have funded the hopes and dreams of 135 entrepreneurs with 32 micro-loans through Kiva.org. That’s more than 10x the number of loans made by the typical Kiva donor who, on average, makes 2.9 loans. And we’ve only needed 3 calls to do it!

What a show of faith. Thank you for making it all possible.

It started me thinking about what I could possibly give back to express my appreciation. Realizing many of you are pursuing your own entrepreneurial dreams while still working hard at a day job, I decided to offer (more…)

This month we’re featuring Debi Silber, the Mojo Coach, in our SMARTSTART|Giving 60-Second Spotlight. We are impressed with Debi’s commitment to helping moms regain a strong sense of self when life knocks them down. She provides free personal training and nutrition coaching to give them a fighting chance at restoring a positive outlook.

Debi sees the gift of “health and wellness” as a way she can contribute by giving back. Have a listen, get inspired and visit her web site at www.LifestyleFitnessInc.com.

Read an interesting piece by Bob Ostertag in The Huffington Post recently. He was commenting on how the Obama campaign had harnessed the power of the internet to provide a vehicle for accepting campaign donations requested in the $25-$50 range. (Not unlike the small requests we ask of our SMARTSTART|Giving supporters.)

Seems things are going so well, sources from Obama’s campaign think he could bring in $100M in June alone! This gives me hope Alex and I are really onto something!

To put this power of the internet into perspective, (more…)