finances on Volunteering

In More Give to Live, Dr. Douglas Lawson provides evidence that the urge toward generosity begins early in life. He describes a continuum that he calls the “Giving Path.” This path begins with parents...

On the fifteenth of each month, Alicia has thirty dollars withdrawn from her checking account to sponsor Belyse, a beautiful, brown-eyed girl from Kenya, who then gets school and a hot meal each day. ...

God has chosen us to help one another.

Compassion International’s story strikingly parallels that of World Vision. Compassion traces its roots to 1952 when a Swedish American traveling evangelist named Everett Swanson found his way to Kore...

I attended a gathering of givers where we took turns telling our stories. The words fun, joy, exciting, and wonderful kept surfacing. There were lots of smiles, laughter, and tears of joy. One older c...

Tracy Autler’s life changed in a very unexpected way on Thanksgiving Day, 1993. Tracy was a single mother, living in an apartment in a rough neighborhood, she was doing her best to raise a three-year ...

Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others.

Want to snatch a day from the manacles of boredom? Do overgenerous deeds, acts beyond reimbursement. Kindness without compensation. Do a deed for which you cannot be repaid.

While I was at a concert in college, I responded to a flyer requesting volunteers to sponsor a child overseas. For years I read the letters from this little girl in El Salvador. Ruth seemed happy to b...

Investor T. Boone Pickens talked about how good it feels to give. He said, “I was put here to make money so I could give it away.” I heard a nearly giddy Warren Buffet, then the second or third riches...

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving.

Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than receive.” “Well,” you say “that is a nice theory—but is it really true?” There is really only one way to find out: Give! Give generously and consistently, ...

I recently attended an event sponsored by Compassion International, the International Child Sponsorship Organization. The event was called “Stepping into My Shoes”. The purpose being to show children ...

The value of life is not in its duration, but in its donation. You are not important because of how long you live, you are important because of how effective you live.

An excellent way to test people’s values is to observe what we do when we don’t have to do anything, how we spend our leisure time, how we spend our extra money.

In a world of greed and consumerism, the church ought to be a community of generosity and selflessness. In a host empire that is committed to marginalizing the poor, resisting the place of women, caus...

Live and let live is not enough. Live and help live is not too much.

You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.

The words which all of us shall one Day hear sound not of theology but of life, not of churches and saints, but of the hungry and the poor, not of creeds and doctrines, but of shelter and clothing, no...

Those who give much without sacrifice are reckoned as having given little.

The place of charity, like that of God, is everywhere.

In Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don't Give Away More Money, the authors point out that if Americans who professed to be "strong" or "very strong" Christians tit...

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation."

Generosity is not strictly for those who have material abundance. Because Oseola McCarty recognized this truth, the world is a better place. Born in 1908 in rural Mississippi, she quit school after si...

Generosity is at its core a lifestyle, a lifestyle in which we share all that we have, are, and ever will become as a demonstration of God’s love and a response to God’s grace.

I’ve been going to professional baseball games and trying to get a souvenir baseball as far back as I can remember. A foul ball, a home run ball or even a batting practice ball—anything would do. I w...

While we are very generous in charitable giving, much of that money is either wasted or actually harms the people it is targeted to help.

In recent years, I (Smith) have been leading a study called the “Science of Generosity Initiative” at the University of Notre Dame, in which I (Davidson) have been deeply involved. In that study, we h...

Work supplies the physical, psychological, artistic, and religious needs of communities extending to the ends of the earth. Furthermore, through work, we create abundance out of which we help meet the...

We are meant to be part of the flow of abundance: to open our hands to receive what we need and share what we have with others. Jesus taught his followers to be radically generous when he said: “Sell ...