Bank Hands Out Money to Pay it Forward

Guest Post by Nipun Mehta Nipun Mehta is a great friend of Tonic and we are pleased that he shares content about all things good from his CharityFocus Blog. You will occasionally see Nipun's contributions here, as well as those of his readers and writers, and all he asks is that you help "pay it forward" as you will see people do in these posts.

Several weeks ago, David Overlin was given a $10 bill. He was one of few thousand people in Southern Wisconsin asked by his bank to pay the money forward!

Yes, that's right. At each of its 20 branches, Sumitt Credit Union gave 100 people $10 to give away, if they were willing to declare their pay-it-forward intention on video. The top idea received a $500 prize too.

And they even got a proposal (that was funded) from a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, with this adorable video:

I love this style of micro-philanthropy, particularly with the on-site video declarations. It's low-overhead and high-buzz and I'm sure it was worth the $20K of their PR bugdet. It would be great to see more philanthropy head in this direction, where $20K is purely for the sake of creating a culture of giving, and to connect these experiments through a meta-platform like HelpOthers.org. Our monthly $100 contest on HelpOthers is a start in that direction. :)