Investing in Hope, at $50 a Share

The money in the white envelopes bought one cancer patient a beautiful ham. It bought nine disabled children an afternoon of golf and giggles.

True, some money may have been squandered on an addict’s high. But it did buy an exhausted mother a massage.

In $50 increments, the money in the white envelopes spread hope. And it left some folks thinking they could make a difference in the world.

It started one Sunday when Linda McCoy, pastor of a free-spirited church here called The Garden, preached about kindness--or as she put it, sowing seeds of love. Then she held up 50 envelopes. An anonymous donor had filled each with a $50 bill.

Anyone could take one, no strings attached. All the donor asked was that the money be used for good.

“We can make this world a better place,” McCoy told her congregation. “What a wonderful adventure.”

Many who picked up the envelopes spent weeks pondering how best to spend the $50. Some wrote checks to established charities. But others were stirred to reach out directly to the needy. Teachers and plumbers, therapists and nurses found themselves driving the streets of Indianapolis, studying the worn faces they passed, looking for a need they could meet.

“I wanted to make a difference in someone’s life,” said Loretta Johnson, an insurance underwriter.

As it turned out, the envelopes made as much difference to the givers as to the takers. The middle-age, middle-class members of the congregation found themselves listening to strangers’ hard-luck stories with empathy this time instead of skepticism. The donor had trusted them to use the money wisely. They took that trust and passed it on.

“The older I get, the more cynical I’ve gotten. I see what goes on in the world, and I’m disgusted. But this project helped me see there’s still hope,” said Carol Meeks, a home economist who used the money to grow a huge garden that will provide fresh produce for the hungry.

“Sometimes, we’re too focused on what’s wrong with other people. This project encouraged you to see the good in them,” added Mary Jane Mesmer, a business consultant. She gave the money to an Amish family that a friend had met by chance in a hospital coffee shop. The family, from rural Indiana, had come to the city for their son’s kidney transplant and seemed bewildered and afraid. Mesmer thought they could use a stranger’s kindness.

Over and over throughout the project, such kindness proved contagious.

Many participants easily tripled or quadrupled the $50 as friends, touched by the donor’s generosity, opened their own wallets. Dee Caldwell, a real estate agent, raised $325 to take 40 low-income kids to play with the baby animals on her farm. Nurse Patty Fredenburgh raised so much money for her Special Olympics golf tournament that she’s buying the children team T-shirts.

The phenomenon of one good turn sparking another is rooted in our psychology.

When we see someone do a good deed--such as an anonymous donor filling 50 envelopes with cash--it elevates our view of human nature. That elevation can produce physical changes: The proverbial lump in the throat or tightness in the chest. It also triggers altruism. Once elevated, people often feel inspired to do their own good deeds, according to Jon Haidt, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia who has spent years studying this reaction.

Haidt calls The Garden’s project a “brilliant” way to leverage elevation by creating an ever-expanding chain of goodwill.

“This is one of the most effective uses of $2,500 that I’ve ever heard,” he said.

Not that elevation is always instant. Donna Hoffman, for instance, thought seriously about keeping the $50. A single mom who drives a school bus, cleans houses and is writing an inspirational novel about angels, Hoffman figured she deserved the cash.

She kept the envelope for several weeks. It didn’t feel right.

“I kept thinking, ‘You know what? I’m rich,’ ” Hoffman said. “I’m rich in my heart because I have an opportunity to do something with this money.” She gave it to a friend, Pam Burleson, who cares for a brain-damaged son.

“I was really, really touched,” Burleson said. So was Hoffman, who proudly reports that “the world now feels a little smaller, a little less frightening.”

Other members of the congregation also struggled with the $50--not because they were tempted to pocket the money, but because it was hard for them to get past the mind-set that philanthropy meant writing a check to a tax-exempt nonprofit group.

After consulting with their two sons, Nancy and Peter Howe gave the $50 (and a sizable contribution of their own) to a single mother whose only child is battling leukemia--and who has difficulty finding the cash to buy gas for her daily trips to visit him in the hospital.

“I still think writing a check to the American Cancer Society is a wonderful thing, but this ... had so much more meaning,” said Nancy Howe, a mental-health counselor. “We want to do more of it.”

Already, she has signed up her family to build Habitat for Humanity homes. And Howe recently gave her son’s old trumpet to a child who could not afford one, instead of selling it for several hundred dollars, as she had planned.

Similar stories of epiphany have been buzzing through The Garden in the three months since McCoy handed out the white envelopes.

Church services at The Garden are often memorable, as McCoy spices her sermons with video clips from “The Simpsons” or pop songs performed live by the 12-piece Good Earth Band. The 800-member congregation prays in a dinner theater in a residential neighborhood in northwest Indianapolis. The Gardeners munch bagels as McCoy preaches--and rush to set up tables for the Beef & Board’s Sunday matinee after the last amen.

Even by The Garden’s standards, however, the “seeds of love” campaign was extraordinary. After distributing the envelopes, McCoy devoted her next four sermons to the subject of giving.

She showed clips from the movie “Pay It Forward,” in which a 12-year-old boy sets out to change the world by doing good deeds for three people and asking them each to show kindness to three others in turn. She also videotaped congregation members talking about how the project affected them.

“It’s been so interesting to see the little ways in which people are now more aware of the needs and hurts around them,” McCoy said.

Jim Schroeder had his awakening when he took a moment to notice a beaten-down beggar by the roadside. Schroeder, a real estate agent, had always turned his face from such scenes, reasoning that he did not want to give away money that would only be spent on drugs or booze. This time, though, he did not hesitate.

He rolled down his car window and handed the beggar the $50 bill. “Just try to use it wisely,” he said.

The man looked at the bill.

“Whoa!” he said. “That’ll get me a bus ticket home.”

“I drove away with a pretty wide grin on my face,” Schroeder said. “I’ll never know if he really used it for a bus ticket. But I realized that the spirit of giving is just to give--not necessarily to question how it’s going to be spent. It’s my duty to share.”

Since then, Schroeder has given often to panhandlers. “If you plant a seed,” he explained, “maybe it will grow.”

The interest in one-on-one giving that surged among The Garden’s congregation reflects a national trend.

Americans still donate billions to charities each year. But instead of writing checks for nonprofits to use as they please, more and more donors are dictating how the money must be spent--even if they’re giving only a little.

“There’s a questioning of charitable institutions,” said Phyllis Freedman, who advises nonprofit groups such as Easter Seals as an executive vice president with the Epsilon consulting firm. “People are more concerned about helping their neighbors. The boomer generation, especially, wants to be directly engaged.”

The Internet makes such direct philanthropy easy. One Web site, DonorsChoose, lists school projects that need funding, from art supplies to field trips. Another site, ModestNeeds, takes requests from families desperate for $300 to pay an overdue electric bill or $30 to buy a college textbook. Donors answer scores of these pleas each month. Sometimes they get a receipt to prove that their money is going to a worthy cause. Other times, they just take it on faith.

“It’s empowering to be able to lift someone’s spirits. It’s an incredible feeling,” said Barbara Gates, who spreads the gospel of good deeds through the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, which gives away booklets explaining how to make the world a better place.

Far from feeling shame at needing charity, recipients are often uplifted as well.

One member of the congregation recalled the day, decades ago, when she came home from work to find $100 tucked into her mailbox. At the time, she had been scraping to raise three kids on her own. The anonymous gift bought several weeks’ worth of groceries. And it buoyed her spirits to know that someone had noticed her need--and had taken the time to help.

“It’s always more blessed to give than to receive,” she said. “But when you need and someone gives, it’s really, really nice.”

The woman, who asked that her name not be used, paid that old kindness forward by slipping her white envelope under the door of another single mother.

As The Garden’s experiment in philanthropy draws to a close, the donor who launched it is thrilled.

A self-described “child of the Depression,” accustomed to scrimping, the donor said she found it hard to give away so much money all at once. It was especially tough to hand it to strangers--who, for all she knew, might blow it on a steak dinner.

Yet she filled all 50 envelopes, hoping the jolt of such an unusual gift would make folks look at the world a little differently. She made the donation anonymously to keep the focus away from her.

“It’s too easy to write a check to the American Red Cross at Christmas and feel self-righteous. It’s too easy to feel good about yourself without giving anything of yourself,” the donor said. “I wanted to make an effort to engage people, to show them that they could go out and do God’s work.”

The experiment succeeded beyond her dreams. Whether they were taking a lonely Alzheimer’s patient out to lunch or weeding the tomatoes they had grown to feed the hungry, members of The Garden became engaged.

They opened their hearts. So did the donor.

“I learned,” she said, “to trust.”