Enforced Giving

Before I start, I'd better warn you that this post is not going to sound very British. In fact, it's going to sound positively North American. Because I'm going to talk publicly about being successful in business and giving money to charity.

Sorry.

I'll get the first bit out of the way quickly. Our objectives for Open's first full financial year were simple. To survive and, hopefully, make a modest profit. Thankfully, we did both. Which meant that we were able to move on to one of the many promises we made to ourselves – that we'd give a big chunk of that money away at the end of the year.

True to form, we left the important matter of whom we should give to until the last minute. So we thought that the best thing to do would be to delegate the decision – the practical upshot of which was that every member of our team found themselves having to give £1,000 away within three days.

At the end of the process we met and everyone explained what they'd given and why. There were quite a few tears and Tim got the giggles so badly he had to hide under his jumper.

I'm going to post the details daily over the coming week or so. But before I do, it's worth noting that almost every decision was driven by a personal connection to the charity involved – yet very few gifts went to charities that people were already supporting. It seems that when we HAVE to give money away in a hurry, we look inside ourselves.

That's why next month, everyone has £100 to give to organisations that ask them...

James