Gates & Buffet Challenge Billionaires to Pledge 50% of their Net Worth

Karla sent me this fascinating article in Fortune about how billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet are urging their billionaire buddies to give significant amounts of their money to charities. The article details how they set up intimate, clandestine dinner gatherings with handfuls of the nation and the world’s wealthiest people — Oprah Winfrey, Eli and Edythe Broad, Ted Turner, David Rockefeller, Chuck Feeney, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, to name a few.

They are driving to get the super-rich, starting with the Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, to pledge — literally pledge — at least 50% of their net worth to charity during their lifetimes or at death.

Can you imagine what would happen if the super-rich gave away half of their net worth to the public sector? Can you imagine the incredible amount of opportunities that would create for education and health care reform, eradication of poverty, and clean energy solutions? We are talking about potentially adding $600 billion dollars in resources to the public sector — this scale of impact and this type of giving is unprecedented.

Check out the rest of the article as it was a fascinating read.  It prompted me to think about a post I wrote a while ago about Personal Philanthropy Plans — creating a culture of giving in our own personal lives no matter how big or small your income is. As evidenced by American generosity (particularly around the natural disasters our world has faced in the last year in Haiti and now the gulf), people want to make an impact. Now how can we systematize and build that into the fabric of our culture so that people give regularly? So that giving isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction, but a thoughtful proactive approach? With trailblazing role models like Gates and Buffet as advocates for the philanthropic sector, I think the millennial generation is headed in that very direction…

[Fortune article via @karlaliliana]

The Year 2009 in Pictures

Holiday Shopping Guide for People with a Conscience

Let’s face it, given the state of the economy, most of us are a little more strapped for cash this season. But that doesn’t mean you should skimp on your values. Here are some ideas for shopping this holiday season that will satisfy both your conscience and perhaps your pocketbook.

1. Buy handmade - Who doesn’t love receiving something that was made by a real person? What’s even better is buying something from a young entrepreneur. BUILD’s annual Holiday Sales Bazaars are a great place to find unique hand-crafted gifts that were made by teenage entrepreneurs at affordable prices. (Dec 5 in East Palo Alto and Dec 11 in Oakland)
2. Shop with your values in tact - Worldofgood.com is a marketplace where you can purchase unique gifts that also promote a myriad of social values, like eco-friendly production, economic empowerment in developing countries, and animal welfare.
3. Make it yourself – Awesome site Instructables.com has hundreds of user-uploaded how-to videos for how to make pretty much anything: chocolate truffles,  gift tags, flip book, note cards, and more.
4. Give money to the recipient’s favorite philanthropy – This is a no-brainer, and always a good choice as we find our lives getting more and more cluttered with presents we probably won’t use. If so here are some of my recommended nonprofits to give to: BUILD (duh), College Summit (duh #2), and San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus.
5. Or how about… Buy NOTHING? 

I have my qualms about our society’s hyper-consumerist nature, especially when the holidays roll around. But I realize that people will still go buckwild for today’s Black Friday retail debacle, to the point that tragedies like this here and here happen.

Hopefully this little guide will help ease some of those holiday shopping blues and will bring the meaning of humanity back to the holidays. Happy Thanksgiving!

efozzie 4.0

Thanksgiving… what a wonderful time of the year. This year i am taking 6 glorious days off and spending it with my family in Las Vegas.

And because I have so much time off from work and San Francisco, I’m working on a new efozzie site design and a blog overhaul. I’m attempting to convert from Blogger to WordPress. Let me know what you think.

If you miss the old site, you can still visit it here.

USC Homecoming 2007

Karla and I drove down to LA (and I drove back up with Amber) for USC’s annual display of decadence and abundance known as Homecoming. It was a great little weekend trip with lots of driving, imbibing (not together OF COURSE), and catching up with friends, and here are some fun pics from the weekend.

Check out more here.

Rap Director Training – Behind the Scenes

Little can be said about the secret rituals behind the training of a Rap Director… but I have some exclusive pictures from my two-week training back in June. If you remember, the training took me first to Baltimore, Maryland, then Virginia to Fredericksburg and then Williamsburg. I got to know nice other trainees extremely well (some would say too well), and more importantly, I got to know myself more.

I can easily attribute my recent success with BUILD’s Boot Camps to this training as it has made me a better facilitator.

Anyway, here are some choice pictures from the action-packed, tiring, and life-changing two weeks of training.

Ashlee and I at Morgan State University (showing off our lipgloss… yes it’s poppin!)

The Lovely Ladies of the “Tentative” Ten (we have yet to have a real team name)

We drove around a lot in these big vans… That’s Daphne, me and Joell in the back and Latoya and Mercedes in the middle.

Daphne being exposed, and Rogelio’s birthday surprise.

Having way too much fun with cupcakes on Rogelio’s birthday

Cupcake madness!!!

Post-Fountain Jump

Fountain Jumping Part 2. I know it’s dark, but it’s worth the squint to see us.

Consumed by the Deathly Hallows & Work

I’ve been super busy the last few weeks because of:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Good Lord! I finished reading the last installment of the Harry Potter books, and was so impressed by the artistically written action-packed sequences. This book is pretty close to being my favorite Harry Potter book (next to the Prisoner of Azkaban). And with that I was kind of sad to read the last few pages.

2. BUILD Business Boot Camps
I facilitated two at my site and supported two others (in Oakland and East Palo Alto). Basically I’ve been in “Boot Camp mode” for over three weeks.

Man. I am tired.

Good Lord. Kids are tiring!

But I would not trade it for anything, and this year, I had no “Boot Camp Breakdowns.” If you remember from my posts from last year where I literally was sobbing on the drive home. This year’s Boot Camps were so successful and reminded me of why I am doing the work that I am doing. The students come back in about a week and a half, and I can’t wait!

Boston Trip

Did I mention that I went to Boston in May with four of my superstar students? Well here’s some proof:

New Idea: Speakers Bureau

Me: hey i have a new idea
Me: i want to create a speakers bureau
Me: or like a club
Karla: cool, with who
Me: nonprofits and education-related people are always looking for good people to facilitate workshops or give some sort of speech
Me: but we are always so reticent because we don’t know who to trust, we don’t know what they’ll say, etc, esp if we haven’t heard them before
Karla: ya, thats totally true
Me: professionals are so busy that they can only speak a couple times a year or so
Karla: so create one reliable vehicle for all
Me: but they WANT to be involved
Me: and want to give back
Karla: that’s very true
Me: but its hard for them to stay involved in a … regular fashion
Me: Enter speakers bureau… kind of like a broker between excellent speakers/workshop facilitators and the orgs that need them
Karla: nice
Karla: how would you do quality control?
Me: professionals sign up like a club to be part of this bureau. the bureau makes sure they are quality by having the orgs who have them speak do evals of them, and by doing workshops/conferences/trainings on the subject, and they have to do a minimum # of engagements per year (like maybe 2)
Karla: that’s neat
Karla: I like the idea
Me: and with the built up reputation, orgs can sign up to get their needs filled and know that the ppl are quality
Karla: but I feel like you need some kind of quality control up front too
Me: yea maybe some sort of interview
Me: or video presentation
Me: like they have to submit a video
Karla: that’s cool
Me: man i am too full of the good ideas
Me: and it can be this kind of special exclusive thing that ppl can get into
Me: but it does good work
Me: and then ppl can network
Karla: ya, totally
Karla: you and the good ideas
Karla: lol
Me: cuz as ppl grow older, its harder for them to practice their thing
Me: unless they do it for a living

Who wants to help me set this up?

I fell and then I got up and laughed

Setup: It’s the morning of one of the biggest events of the year for BUILD. This is a convo I had with Leslie about day 1 of Business Boot Camp…

Me (10:51:08 PM): this morning at 645 am
Me (10:51:11 PM): i slipped and fell
Me (10:51:20 PM): and completely hurt my right shoulder, elbow and wrist
Me (10:51:26 PM): its in a lot of pain
Me (10:51:32 PM): im tryin not to be a baby about it
Leslie (10:52:12 PM): oh no
Leslie (10:52:16 PM): slipped and fell during yoga?
Me (10:52:25 PM): um no. i was in the shower
Leslie (10:52:29 PM): oh no
Leslie (10:52:30 PM): dear
Me (10:52:31 PM): and i heard this BLARING loud music
Leslie (10:52:31 PM): how’d you do that
Leslie (10:52:33 PM): are you ok
Me (10:52:52 PM): … and realized it was my alarm clock attached to my stereo and it was playing at CLUB sound level
Me (10:53:01 PM): (my roommate woke up and im SURE my neighbors were pissed)
Me (10:53:11 PM): . so i put on a towel quickly, and ran to turn it off.
Me (10:53:22 PM): i slipped on the hard wood floor. my legs flew up into the air and landed on my right side. it was not cute
Me (10:53:40 PM): but all i could do was laugh.
Me (10:53:41 PM): and wince.
Me (10:53:43 PM): and then laugh again
Leslie (10:53:54 PM): awe now i’m laughing
Me (10:53:56 PM): and then wince as i was driving and trying to pick up my tea cup at the same time
Leslie (10:54:08 PM): are you saying you were naked on your kitchen floor today
Me (10:54:25 PM): if u are clever and read between the lines
Me (10:54:35 PM): which u seem to be
Leslie (10:54:51 PM):