Welcome back to The Sunstone Way.
It’s hard to believe, but Thanksgiving is just a week away. What are you looking forward to most – the turkey, the pumpkin pie, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the time with family?
What about the days after Thanksgiving? For most of the month, we’ve been inundated with ads for Black Friday sales. Then there’s Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.
After all that emphasis on buy, buy, buy, it’s almost a relief to get to Giving Tuesday.
In The Beginning
Thanksgiving is a couple of centuries old in the United States, and variations have been celebrated in other countries over the years. Black Friday used to have a negative connotation – factory owners decried how many workers called in sick the day after Thanksgiving to have a four-day weekend. It entered the vernacular as a positive in the late 1980s as the name for the day when retailers made it into the black with the biggest shopping day of the year.
Cyber Monday came next in 2005, when online shopping took off. Small Business Saturday launched in 2010 as a sales gimmick of the American Express credit card, to be quickly adopted by towns and business associations to support owners of small businesses.
Those days are mostly U.S.-specific. In 2012, a group launched Giving Tuesday as a global effort – the United Nations Foundation was one of the founding partners. Designed partially as an antidote to the rampant commercialization of the holiday season, Giving Tuesday rapidly grew to become a global philanthropic force. In 2023, money was donated to nonprofits in 95 different countries.
Donation totals have grown each year, driven at least partially by matching grant programs from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and PayPal. By 2020, Giving Tuesday raised $2.47 billion in the United States alone, according to the givingtuesday.org website.
Why Give?
Selflessly giving to others is part of human nature, and can be seen back to the beginning of history. It receives more attention this time of year – giving thanks, giving gifts – but thankfully takes place year-round.
Reasons people give are many, according to the people who study these things. A simple desire to help those less fortunate tops the list. Following moral, ethical and religious principles is a close second. Some give to receive recognition while others give back to organizations and causes that have helped them in the past.
But primarily, people give because it feels good.
It feels good to be able to make a positive difference. If feels good to help others. It feels good to share good fortune.
Community Fund
I know that giving is part of the Sunstone Way. The giving heart of our founder, John Shen, is one reason I came to Sunstone in the first place.
He and his wife Stella Zhang were grateful for their success as entrepreneurs, and passionate about giving back. So they formed the Sunstone Community Fund as a way to help those who are just starting down the path of owning their own business.
The SCF is a donor-advised fund, which means gifts are tax-deductible. That money goes back out to nonprofit organizations like the Long Beach Accelerator and educational institutions including USC, UCI and the entire California State University system.
It is spent providing expertise, training and incentives in the form of prizes at pitch contests to founders of startup businesses. It helps real people pursue their dreams.
Come Join Us
I want to give you something – the opportunity to feel good about yourself. A donation to the Sunstone Community Fund will make a difference by helping someone turn an innovative idea into reality, which will help improve our economy, which will help make our community a better place.
It’s easy. Just go to sunstonecommunity.org/donate.
It has been shown that giving will make you feel good. And it will make you a part of The Sunstone Way.
Remember, always be a Sunstone!
John Keisler
CEO & Managing Partner
Sunstone Management, Inc.
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©Sunstone Management, Inc. 2024