See our coverage on CBS

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Background on UniversalGiving®

UniversalGiving®  is an award-winning nonprofit allowing people to donate and volunteer with top-performing, vetted organizations all over the world. 100% goes directly to the cause. All partner organizations are vetted with our proprietary Quality Model™. UniversalGiving has been featured on the homepage of Bloomberg, Oprah.com, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. UniversalGiving® has been featured in more than 15 books, including Arianna Huffington’s book, Thrive and Laura Arrillaga-Anderson’s book Giving 2.0. We have also been acknowledged five times on Great Nonprofits’ annual Top Nonprofits lists and are highlighted in Huffington Post's list of best volunteering matching websites. We continue to gain momentum, with dozens of articles in the Christian Science Monitor and monthly contributions on Forbes. To date, we have matched more than 20,000 volunteers and $31 million dollars’ worth of volunteer hours.

UniversalGiving® Corporate helps manage global Corporate Social Responsibility for companies, including the strategy, operations, NGO Vetting and Disbursements. Our goal is to help companies scale their Philanthropy and Volunteer programs, both locally and all over the world. We customize our services for clients, emphasizing high levels of innovation and client service. Key clients include Cisco, Gap, BHP, and RSF Social Finance.

UniversalGiving® Wealth Giving Services

LIFESTYLE & FAMILY ADVISING

UniversalGiving® guides you to incorporate giving as part of your lifestyle. We provide 1-1 advising; group family counseling; webinars; and group sessions on the following topics:

• Coming into new wealth
• Family sessions as a group and/or individually. We navigate wealth and its dynamics in your family; and how wealth impacts your external world.
• Getting your children involved in giving and volunteering, with your family and individually
• Guiding your children so they become ethical, wise stewards of your funds:
  • To take initiative in life
  • Find their calling
  • Use finances wisely
  • Become philanthropic givers in youth
  • Give back to their community by volunteering 

SPIRITUAL POVERTY™

Wealth comes with complex dynamics. Even though someone has monetary wealth, they may face Spiritual Poverty™. Spiritual Poverty™ is where someone feels low, depressed, unstable and unhappy. On the UniversalGiving® website, we engage members in volunteering. Volunteering helps solve Spiritual Poverty™ by healing through giving back. Please note that Spiritual Poverty™ can affect us all, not only people of wealth.

We believe volunteering helps solve Spiritual Poverty™. We encourage you to find volunteer opportunities on UniversalGiving® platform and get involved and give back. Volunteering can heal Spiritual Poverty™. We want you to feel positive happy and fulfilled. We love you and look forward to seeing you!

Please see our volunteer opportunities at our home office located in San Francisco.

Volunteer Project - Development/Funder Mailout

Volunteer Project - Social Media

Volunteer Project - Spread the Love with HotCocoa 

Volunteer Project - UniversalGiving® Research

Volunteer Project - UniversalGiving® Fundraising Event

GIVING STRUCTURES

We will advise you on the best giving structure: Direct giving, foundation, donor-advised funds

• Set up agency agreements
• Set up donor advised funds
• Advice on Spiritual Poverty™

STRATEGIC GIVING

We will listen to and assess your vision and goals, helping you determine the best strategy to scale your giving efforts. This can be as a high-level individual giver; as the head of a foundation; or as the leader of your family foundation or giving efforts. 

• Strategy for your foundation or individual giving plans
• Vetting any current nonprofits with whom you work
• Identifying and sourcing the right non-profit[s] for your giving strategy, both domestic and internationally
• Vetting services for NGOs and non-profits that align with your giving vision
• Complete international vetting services, including equivalency determination and expenditure responsibility
• Corporate strategy and corporate foundation strategy. If you are a founder, how does your company reflect its brand through giving? Vetting and disbursement services are provided domestically and internationally 
• Strategies for Foundations, Family Foundations, Corporate Foundations to support your brand and philanthropic goals
• Education on imperative NGO vetting and IRS Laws

DONOR CHANNELS

We will help connect and introduce you to communities of like-minded high net-worth donors.

• Obtain new insights, gain philanthropic training, and collaborate with people of wealth. We will connect you with the appropriate domestic and international groups
• Connect you to other high net-worth donor groups: We have relationships with more than 15 donor groups with specific criteria which can provide community and learning 
• Find the right community with your peers and for your children
• Obtain educational training or certificates, as an individual or as a family
• Provide statistics in giving and volunteering 
• Form strategic partnerships and collaborations, allowing you to leverage and/or expand your work

Luxury Troubles™

We have all faced challenges in our lives. Yet for some of us, they are more serious. In developing nations, they are very serious. People do not have enough to eat, do not have jobs, do not have shelter. Those are real troubles in life. 

In developed countries, sometimes our troubles are not as serious. It’s when an iPhone doesn’t work. The camera upload of photos malfunctions when you’ve tried four times. Maybe it’s the driver that is much too slow (but if you drove your speed, you’d likely only save 3 minutes). It’s the coworker who makes a sarcastic comment or the staff person who may be unkind. While we don’t wish for these circumstances, they are not life and death. These are Luxury Troubles™ from a developed nation, developed living.  

Luxury Troubles™ are inconvenient. But they are not really troubles. We have nearly 90 million going to bed hungry tonight. That’s a real trouble, real life-threatening issues. 

We seem to focus on Luxury Troubles™ in the United States and other developed nations. We complain about the smallest issue. It seems we focus on little items that annoy us. 

Instead, we can focus on all we do have. We can focus on being grateful. Instead of focusing on petty grievances… they can be replaced with a singleminded devotion to thinking better thoughts, living better actions. We can Think and Live better, purer, unselfish lives. Perhaps then many of these Luxury Troubles™ are going to fade from our experience.  Then we can take a step to serve others who really need help— people who are facing extreme poverty or death.

Let’s commit to focus on the positives, and to let go of our Luxury Troubles™. Then, once we’ve begun to clear up and refocus our lives on the good, we can outreach and help others.  But it’s a different type of help: It’s a renewed, positive, energizing mindset. It maximizes good and positive health for not only others — but also for ourselves.  

We need to help people in poverty. We have to start with ourselves: Face our own Luxury Troubles™. Commit to being positive. Commit to helping others in more serious need. Then, come join UniversalGiving® to Donate and Volunteer with us, in our San Francisco office, or all over the world.  Give Your 100%! 

Press for UniversalGiving®

UniversalGiving®’s press includes:

• CBS
• FOX Business Network
• BusinessWeek
• Fast Company
• CSRwire
• WomenEntrepreneur.com
• Oprah.com
• NBC News
• Christian Science Monitor
• New York Times
• Financial Times
• CNNMoney.com
• Change.org
• SEE Change Magazine
• The Good Trade
• Triple Pundit 

Honors for UniversalGiving®

UniversalGiving® is a Webby Award Honoree.  UniversalGiving® and our CEO, Pamela Hawley, have been honored with a Jefferson Award for Public Service, as well as been selected as a finalist in Ernst & Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award.  In 2010, Pamela was invited to the White House’s Next Generation Leadership and Social Innovation event.  She has also been chosen as a member of the Colburn S. Wilbur Fellowship Program, through the Institute on Global Ethics. 

Connect with us

To keep up with UniversalGiving®’s latest news, sign up for UniversalGiving® newsletters, or connect with us via social media.

UniversalGiving

·       Follow us on Twitter: @UniversalGiving

·       Like us on Facebook.

·       Read our blog: PhilanthroPost

Pamela Hawley

·       Follow Pamela on Twitter: @pamelahawley

·       Friend her on Facebook.

·       Read our CEO’s blog: Living and Giving

Join the conversation and learn more about giving and volunteering worldwide.