Posted by Jesse Willms on Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Hi, this is Jack Stanton once again, filling in for my friend and co-worker Jesse Willms on his blog. He asked me to post an entry today about a discussion we had in his office last week. Over a year ago, Jesse decided to start helping out the Kiva Foundation as it works to fight poverty by offering microloans to budding entrepreneurs in third-world countries when banks are unwilling to. This can help create an emerging middle class in the third world. Jesse has been proud to support Kiva, but was disturbed by recent news articles that have put microfinancing in a bad light. He brought me into his office to discuss the situation and decide if we still wanted to support Kiva. Over the course of the next few hours, we went through all of the available information about the microfinancing controversy. What we discovered was that certain people not associated with Kiva were taking advantage of the microfinancing... more »
Posted by Jesse Willms on Wednesday, November 24, 2010
On my blogs I spend a lot of time trying to encourage people to find ways to give back to their community and help make the world a better place for everyone. I also spend a lot of space writing about worthwhile charities that I support including Samaritan’s Purse and the Breast Cancer Research Fund. Or, I talk about my volunteer work for The Mustard Seed or Habitat For Humanity.I do so in order to inspire others to follow my example. But, I often hear back from people that they simply don’t have enough free time or money to support nonprofit organizations even if they want to. I can understand that attitude. It did take me a fair amount of time to set up my volunteer work and many people are not in a financial situation where they can write checks just because it’s the right thing to do. That’s why I wanted to take some time today to point... more »
Posted by Jesse Willms on Wednesday, November 10, 2010
I just got back from doing my latest bit to try to give back to the community. As you know, I feel like we all have an obligation to our local and global communities. That’s why I’ve been doing my best to try to support organizations that work hard to help people in need in my Edmonton community. I mentioned last week that I have become involved in helping out The Mustard Seed food bank in Edmonton. You’ll remember that The Mustard Seed provides hot meals six nights a week to inner city people in need. It also offers them clean clothes, personal hygiene items, household items and work items in an attempt to provide them with a sense of purpose and dignity. The Mustard Seed was started by a local Baptist church, but today it is supported by most major local faiths. Anyway, last night my employees and I went down to The Mustard Seed to volunteer our time.... more »
Posted by Jesse Willms on Friday, October 1, 2010
Most of my time on this blog has been spent talking about ethical business practices, and why it’s important not to do anything shady that can mislead potential customers into buying your products or services. But, today I want to write about something different – about giving back to the community and supporting worthy charitable organizations. It’s long been an adage that philanthropy is part of being an ethical businessperson. You shouldn’t use your company to simply make money for yourself; you should also use your company to try to make the world a better place. I’ve spent a lot of time building up my company to make a fair amount of money but, lately I’ve spent even more time researching and supporting meaningful charitable institutions. While I didn’t come from an overly privileged family I had a much more fortunate situation than many in the developing world. And I think that’s the case for most of us who are... more »
