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January 26 th, 2006 – London, Ontario
Two very accomplished business men, Paul Etherington and Mike Boydell, came into the University of Western Ontario to share their experiences with a group of 8 university student athletes on Thursday. The main theme of the seminar was not what you would expect considering the vast knowledge of how to gain personal wealth that these two gentlemen possess. Instead the focus was on giving back.
Mr. Etherington, along with being an integral part of the family business, started up a major charity entitled “Motion Ball” – which has now contributed over $350,000 in just over 5 years to the Special Olympics. Mr. Boydell, in addition to starting the wildly popular “HotJobs” for Yahoo.com, is a major driving force behind a one of a kind initiative to match volunteers with the proper skills and abilities to charities seeking such an individual. This company is called Altruvest and is in a sense a charity that helps charities.
Three major concepts jumped out of the very productive and interactive two-hour seminar. Firstly, that simply giving a few dollars to your local charity is not nearly as effective as giving your time and skills to that same cause. Who really knows where that $100 that you give to your local Big Brother’s charity goes? If instead you were able to recruit 10 people to become big brothers through some connection that you have, which is more meaningful?
Going along with this, the second major thing to be discussed was the idea of leveraging contacts. Everyone has some kind of link to something that could help out a cause. Whether it is your own company, or another company that you are heavily involved with, use those contacts. In conjunction with this, it was also pointed out the benefits to participating in the not-for-profit sector. These can include connections to people that you would have otherwise not had, which can never hurt your for-profit business, and also the knowledge that you are indeed giving back.
The last point worth noting was the following message: Don’t wait! Everyone can make a difference, no matter how busy you are.
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