When doing good is not good enough

There was this incidence, that often I share with some close friends,
where my mum was commenting that I donate too much to charities,
to the extent I didn't take good care of myself.
-- obviously it was only her imagination,
I was very comfortable how manage my personal finance.

But my mum did trigger some thoughts in my mind,
her remarks tho' not true, made me ask a question:
how do I donate more to charities and help more people out there.
The salary I earn is a finite figure, but the people who need helps out there
are almost infiite..

Of course, most people would comment,
just do whatever that is within our capacity.
-- this is a very clean answer.

But what if I would like to contribute more?

I didn't get to a satisfactory answer until I attended
T Harv Eker's Millionaire Mind Intensive in 2008.

Harv was illustrating in one of his session,
giving an example of how a sum of money could be better utilised
for the good of the society,
most importantly, in a sustainable manner.

He was asking, if you were to have a million dollars,
how much do you donate away and
how much do you use it for your own consumption?

The participants gave various answers
in term of different percentage that he/she would donate away,
some 10%, some 50% , some 90%..

Harv shocked the entire audience when he mentioned that he suggested
donate none of the million dollars!

He said, nobody touches the million dollars.
Instead of donating away, or using up the money for own consumption,
invest the money in a safe platform (e.g. an established business, foundation etc ),
which will yield a monthly cashflow.
From that monthly cashflow, one may decide the percentage,
one donate and use for own consumption.
That way, the money that we can donate will be infinite!!

The moment I heard that,
one of my biggest burden in life was released.

It's a very simple suggestion,
but often one can get stuck for many many years,
possibly till the end of life,
without pointers from gurus or teachers.

From then on, I had a new perspective on Cielo Sereno,
a non-profit organic education tour company that I set up early 2008.
There is basically no capital investment in this NPO,
but the effort that my partners and I volunteered,
could be converted to an anual cashflow, bulk of which,
we decided to donate to credible charities
and to fund on sustainable vegetarian projects e.g. Vegehub.Org launched recently.

Altho' the amount of surplus and
hence the donation (from Cielo Sereno) isn't a big sum,
but the amount of donation is way beyond the amount
I personally could afford, if I were to fork out from my salary.

Cielo Sereno is a realisation of theory of sustainable donation
I learnt at Harv's workshop
and it is a pride among my partners and myself :)


Sincerely,
Kee Yew
pureland2012-at-gmail.com

p/s: I have just come back from refresher course (3rd time) at Millionaire Mind Intensive, and gathered some new insights in helping chairities and the vegetarian community via my new project "The Veg School" =)

{Learning Holistic Wellness for Wisdom and Compassion}