A year ago I was surfing around the web one night and came across something called ChangingThePresent.org. I had a look over the website and thought - wow - now this is fresh and a big idea. The Amazon.com of the not-for-profit world. The Apple of the not-for-profit world. Being the human being that I am - as well as a marketing professional - I immediately fell hard for this organization. I spend most of my waking life working on behalf of the world's largest organizations to help them sell their products and services. I felt that ChangingThePresent was something StrawberryFrog and I could really make a difference for. Their mission is to inspire people to stop buying more stuff and instead buy friends and family much more valuable presents, such as a goat for poverty stricken families in Africa, a flock of chickens for a much needing family in Latin America, a year of education for Indian girls under 12 years old...and many many many more gifts that let you make the world a better place. Here are some of the other presents you can buy:
Rent A Market Stall for a woman
With a $100 loan, a Haitian woman can rent a market stall and increase her income two-fold. And you're providing a self-employment loan, not a gift. Your donation will build discipline, responsibility, and self-confidence as women create their own business. more
Save An Elephant
Your gift will fund one student researcher for one hour of data collection at The School for Field Studies Center for Wildlife Management Studies. more
Protect American Children
Building playgrounds is a step in the healing process and helps to establish normalcy for children who have lived through a disaster. Your donation will help give children a safe and happy environment where they can meet their friends and be children again. more
Provide Tools, materials for a class for Self Employed Women's Association
Your gift will provide material and teachers tools for a class. More than 90% of SEWA’s members are illiterate. Through SEWA, they receive training and learn how to use their skills to gain an income and organize for change in their communities. more
Plant A Garden
Your gift can provide seeds and tools for one woman. When you give a woman something as simple as the seeds and tools she needs to grow food, you are empowering her and her entire community to break free from the cycle of hunger and disease. more
Prevent FGM
Gift provides an alternative rite of passage for one Maasai girl who refuses to submit to FGM. $100 allows a girl to spend a month at V-Day Safe House for Girls in Narok, Kenya. In 2002, V-Day helped found Safe House to provide a safe haven for Maasai girls.
Moving stuff.
So I hooked up with the founder, Robert Tolmach. A very passionate and very humble man who reminds me of Ingmar Bergman with glasses. Tall, slim, piercing eyes...well read and soft spoken. He and the Frogs hit it off. In my series of lunch time chats, I have interviewed some of the more interesting people making a difference in the marketing and cultural world. Robert is certainly on of these people. Enjoy this interview.
Tell me about your life?
I was a lucky kid. I grew up right on the water in Miami, so, the ocean and the bay were a very real part of my childhood. I got to sail, snorkel, and scuba dive, but I also got a first-hand view of environmental degradation. Our natural shoreline was replaced with a concrete seawall; manatees no longer came up behind our home; reefs were cleaned out; and conch nearly disappeared.
It’s no surprise that I felt compelled to act. When I was really young, I envisioned some crazy schemes, such as filtering the bay through a box of cotton, and running the hose into the canal to dilute the pollution. I don’t recall how my parents talked me out of that one!
My first real project was in high school, when I recruited classmates to collect and recycle soda cans. Thousands and thousands of cans every week. Remember, they used to be steel. Ever try to crush one of those things? What a lot of work. We should have just thrown them in the truck! Still, the sight of that truck of cans heading down the road gave me a sense of how real impact can come from changing social systems, and not just our own behavior.
Your career?
My father’s a doctor, so as a kid, I assumed I would do the same; it seemed like such an immediate way to help people. But at age 15, I was volunteering in the clinical lab of the hospital, and learned a big lesson. You may see a door that says, “Department of Pathology. Keep Out.” If so, keep out! I didn’t, and thus ended my medical career in about a nanosecond.
I studied architecture at Rice and later headed the Texas office of Arquitectonica, where we created some colorful and exuberant buildings. It wasn’t enough; I didn’t want to wait to get hired; I wanted to make things happen. I started doing real estate development, where I could initiate projects, and ended up as senior real estate manager for Wolfensohn.
A few years ago, there was a confluence of my long-term intent to make a difference, the zeitgeist (there was a growing awareness of the challenges the world faces), and personal circumstances. A friend from school—a really amazing guy—died from cancer. I can’t begin to tell you how sad this was, but it was also a real kick in the butt. We all go through life thinking that we’ll do whatever tomorrow, but that could have been me, and it might be me next year. Time is short; if I wanted to do something meaningful, I’d better get on it.
Look at the scale of the problems: a million children die of malaria each year; more than five million people go blind each year from avoidable and treatable causes; more than a billion people don’t even have safe drinking water. Clearly there must be something more important than making new buildings.
I spent a lot of time exploring this with a friend and attorney, Steven Spiegel, who is now the Chairman of ChangingThePresent,org. As an architect, I look at systems, and as an attorney, he considers corporate structures. We saw a need, and we saw a resource: at the same time our world faces such staggering challenges, Americans, alone, spend $250 billion (yes, with a B) a year buying presents for each other.
Frankly, most of us just don’t need another vase, key chain, or pen & pencil set. A few people have started making charitable donations in lieu of giving gifts, but how do you encourage that? How do you make it easy, rewarding, and compelling? And how do you make it a social norm?
We developed a website to do just that: to channel to nonprofits some of that $250 billion now spent each year on traditional presents. At ChangingThePresent.org, you can find thousands of charitable gifts that help make the world a better place. Each “gift” is actually a very specific, detailed donation opportunity that you can make in friend’s name. You can preserve an acre of the rainforest, provide a child with her first book; or fund an hour of cancer research. You can even help restore a blind person’s sight with cataract surgery. There are thousands of opportunities from hundreds of outstanding nonprofits.
Which cause do you really care about? Hunger, cancer, AIDS, education, women, children, the environment? Whatever you, your friends and family care about, we have inspiring ways to make a real impact.
You can create a Wish List of your favorite charitable gifts to let your friends and family know what you would welcome in lieu of more stuff. You can create charitable gift registries for big events, such as weddings and bar mitzvahs. You can even send a beautiful personalized printed greeting card, with a photo and description of the charitable gift you give, right from the site.
ChangingThePresent.org is a tool to facilitate charitable gift-giving, but it’s also a catalyst to promote a social norm: you don’t have to buy yet more unneeded stuff to show your love. Instead, you can do something meaningful in a friend’s name. Imagine the impact we could make as this new type of gift-giving catches on. We can save a lot of lives and make the world a better place.
What are you up to now?
ChangingThePresent.org - And then the future.
Any regrets?
Just one. I should have done this sooner.
Greatest Lessons?
Work with best. If you have a compelling concept, it’s amazing who wants to help. We’ve been astoundingly fortunate. Our Board is amazing. Our Board of Advisors includes over 125 of the most outstanding leaders in the nonprofit world. I’m also surrounded by an excellent professional team. And, of course, we are so grateful that Strawberry Frog took us on as our Agency of Record. You guys are amazing! The work you showed us last week has us downright giddy, and I don’t doubt that it will make a tremendous impact. Yep, work with the best!
What defines you?
There was a great quote from Bono: asked about his own activism, he said, “If you’re aware of the problems that exist in the world, and if you know you can do something about them, then you don’t have a choice.” That pretty much sums it up for me.
Who are your heroes in life?
I’ve had an exceptional opportunity to work with many of the leaders in this social sector over the last few years. Two who stand out, even in this stellar group, are Bill Drayton, the founder of Ashoka, and Jody Williams, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, in honor of her work for the International Campaign to End Landmines. Other heroes include Paul Farmer, Amory Lovins, and Esther Dyson, who shares our vision and has done so much to make it happen.
Spiritual home?
All those people working to make a difference. Now, that’s a community!
5yrs from now...?
There are so many tremendous problems. I hope to be working with you and all the folks at Strawberry Frog on more of them.
Stuff no one knows about?
I wore make-up once. Really. They powdered me up for a TV segment last year. I still didn’t look like JFK.
The future; where's it all heading?
Nirvana or apocalypse, you mean? I don’t think it’s that simple. There are some really great things and some really horrible things ahead of us. The balance depends on whether enough people make enough of an effort, doesn’t it?
What are the greatest challenges for the ad industry?
I gave a talk at the Aspen Institute on the impact of the digital revolution on advertising, but that isn’t the real challenge. That’s nothing.
The real challenge for the ad industry—and for all of us—is whether we’re going to create a more just and sustainable world. Given that ad people can sell just about anything, nobody is in a better position to influence where we’re going. So that’s the challenge. Will enough people in the ad industry use enough of their creativity and energy to sell the awareness, compassion and behavior that will create the world we want to live in?
I hope more people in the ad industry find something they believe in and commit themselves to making a difference.
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