Follow Your Passions

“The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.”
- Charles Dudley Warner

By actively giving, you’ll figure out where your “giving strengths” lie.

As Mark Sanford puts it, “Giving is an art.  That requires practice.” If you don’t feel you have money to give, you can give of your experience, your skills, your time, or other resources you may have.  Experiment with getting involved in different kinds of giving, with different kinds of organization involved in your efforts.  Maybe you’ll go volunteer on a Habitat for Humanity project and find out you excel at bashing your thumb with a hammer but not much else when it comes to home construction.  That’s okay, the next day you can go teach high school kids how to manage their money when they get older.  The day after that, you can read to children at your local public library.  Eventually, you’ll find something that matches your skills and interests with a place you can do the most good with them.

I don’t like to think of people as “tools” or “resources”, but consider the old adage about chopping down a tree with a sledge hammer.  You might get it done, but you’d have a much easier time of it and be able to chop a lot more trees down if you used an axe or a saw.  By finding something you’re a great fit for, where you can thrive and be passionate and use your strengths to accomplish big feats, you’re maximizing your giving potential.