WhatGives Mission

Shortly after Larry’s near disastrous decision to drop out of school, Larry and Scott L. began to think about how often people are just a hair away from having to make a decision that is financially driven but that will have potentially devastating consequences long after the decision is made.

We started to think about how we could help. How could we somehow connect the individuals, like Larry that were trying to advance their life by education, skills training, or employment but that had few financial resources at their disposal.

So we asked ourselves, “What do we really believe?”. And the answer was that we believed that education, skill training, and gainful employment are critically valuable not only to the individual but also to the community and society at large. This became our “why”.

Next we had to figure out “how” WhatGives could help to provide individuals with the means to get and stay educated, trained and employed. We decided that our “how” would be, first and foremost, through the connection of people in need with those people that believe in what we believe and are looking to help. We do this through our innovative WhatGives Trust Network, which uses personal intimacy in combination with analytics and data to assure that the funding is appropriately used by the individuals in need.

Third, WhatGives had to define “what” exactly we will do to achieve our “why” and “How”.  The “what” of WhatGives is focused on providing small sum financial assistance to those individuals that are a crisis away from negatively impacting their ability to obtain or maintain education or skills training or negatively impacting their ability to obtain or maintain gainful employment. Basically, we provide small financial gifts to individuals so that they can advance themselves through education, training, and employment.

When all was said and done, WhatGives had created what Simon Selek calls the “Golden Circle” that defines the why, how and what or our non-profit.

In summary, this is WhatGives: