Category Archives: Philanthropy

A telling article in today’s NYT about the impact of tax breaks and charitable giving. After President Bush’s tax cuts, the highest earners – those with incomes > $200k – gave less to charity than before. Low-income donors “managed to part with a whopping 26 percent of their incomes, while high earners gave 3.4 percent.” This may mean trouble for President Bush’s tax cuts for the highest earners; after all, “maybe they’re not as compassionate as he’d hoped.”

Link: If the I.R.S. Gets Less, Does Charity Get More? – New York Times.

In my involvement with the BizWorld Foundation California Advisory Board, I met today with the Suzanne DiBianca, the executive director of the Salesforce.com Foundation at the Salesforce.com offices. My friend Marc Benioff is the CEO of Salesforce and has made the Foundation integral in the company – I’m a big fan of his vision of integrated philanthropy in businesses.

Along with the director of BizWorld, a Salesforce employee, a couple Salesforce interns, and a fellow board member, we kicked off the planning for the summer BizWorld S-Academy – a multi-day event for high school students in the Bay Area to learn about business and sales & marketing with the salesforce.com application as the tool of choice.

We are looking for two high school age girls in the San Francisco area to be on a youth advisory board for this event. Please email me if you know some girls who could be interested in this community service project.

After giving some thought to the issue, I have realized that the four core values of the Ben Casnocha of today (I’m sure they’ll change as I get older) are:

1. Excellence – For things and people I care about, I will give nothing less than 100% effort. I want to strive for excellence in every aspect of my life and hold a higher standard than most of my peers. I will never get on the treadmill of mediocrity.

2. Health – I will feed my body, feed my mind, and feed by soul. Staying in good health (physically and otherwise) is a commitment I will uphold. If I feel like my physical or mental health is ever being compromised, I will seek help. Happiness is founded on good health.

3. Humor – This is a weird one. Most people wouldn’t think of “humor” as a core value. But it is for me. In our finite amount of time on this planet, the chemicals released during a laugh are among the most pleasurable. Committing myself to finding humor in the mundane and infusing humor into my work and life is a priority.

4. Knowledge – I believe the hero’s journey is premised on the spirited pursuit of knowledge. I want to acquire knowledge – not through filling my head with facts – but through passionate interactions with people and the reading of books. A close corollary to this is the constant asking of questions (think Socrates).

Lofty values like “integrity,” “generosity,” and “friendship” crossed my mind but I didn’t feel like they are core. What are your CORE values?

As the stress level starts to increase for me this spring (along with busyness) I am determined to make a renewed effort at implementing the philosophies outlined in The Power of Full Engagement and its Corporate Athlete Training System. For those who haven’t read the book:

Objective: Perform in the storm. Build the necessary capacity to sustain high performance in the face of increasing demand.

Central Conclusion: Energy is the fundamental currency of high performance. Capacity is a function of one’s ability to expend and recover energy; every thought, feeling, and action has an energy consequence; energy is the most important individual and organizational resource.

• Full engagement relies on skillful management of four interrelated dimensions of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
• To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.
• Lifelong Energy Objective: To burn as brightly as possible for as long as possible in the service of what really matters.
• Full engagement requires periodic strategic recovery (disengagement).
• Sustained high performance is best served by assuming the mentality of a sprinter, not a marathoner.
• Most of us are under trained physically and spiritually and over trained mentally and emotionally.

I am going to start with reflecting on values – a value in action is a virtue. What values do I strive to embody regardless of external pressures? Some common values are listed below. After reflecting on this, I will post my thoughts and the next step.

Authenticity Balance Commitment Compassion Concern for others Courage Creativity Empathy Excellence Fairness Faith Family Freedom Friendship Generosity Genuineness Happiness Harmony Health Honesty Humor Integrity Kindness Knowledge Loyalty Openness Perseverance Respect for others Responsibility Security Serenity Service to others

I’ve added a new TypePad category – Philanthropy – and I will be re-categorizing older posts on this topic into this category, so apologies for any re-publishing of old posts.

This week I had an opportunity to meet with two board members from the Hanna Boys Center an organization working with at-risk youth by helping them realize their potential that may be stymied by the environment they grow up in. If logistics work I will be speaking to the boys at some point. Below is a picture of me (far left) and a few of the boys and other board members and supporters.

If someone asked you what charitable causes you were passionate about, what would you say? Get involved and reach out.