Taking Advantage of the Good Samaritan

We've all heard the saying, "No good deed goes unpunished."  It sounds true but it's not. Most good deeds, if not rewarded, have positive consequences or at least don't hurt the good deed doer. An unfortunate trend in charity is toward making sure the person in need "deserves" the help. We don't want to cast our pearls before swine, Jesus said.

But Jesus wasn't talking about doing charitable acts when he said that. He meant, if someone didn't want to hear you preach at them, you should shut up and move along. Don't waste your breath in other words.  We often get the meaning of that Scripture all wrong.

When Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan, the lesson was not, "Do a background check before you help people." The Good Samaritan didn't sneak back to the inn and peek through the window to see if the whole thing was a con and the innkeeper and the "injured" man were high-fiving and splitting up his money. Jesus did not tell the disciples to go back and make sure the injured man wasn't faking. 

Christ's lesson was that all men are your neighbors and we are under orders to love our neighbors and to treat them as we would be treated ourselves. I know that He says we should be as "wise as serpents and gentle as doves".  BUT (and this is a very big "but") that does not give us permission to be cynical about doing acts of kindness. Nowhere does God say, "Thou shalt not be taken advantage of," or "Thou shalt not do a kindness for someone who doesn't deserve it." We are to treat others the way we would wish to be treated, for who knows but that we may one day entertain angels unawares.

Jesus fed the 5000. He just fed them. He did not send the disciples out with application forms to determine which of the 5000 might not be worthy to receive food assistance. They were hungry. Jesus fed them - the deserving alongside the undeserving. No questions asked. When he cured the demoniac or healed the cripple, Jesus did not do an "intake" interview to determine whether or not their illnesses and injuries were "deserved" or not. He simply healed.  In like manner, we are counseled to, if asked to carry a burden for a mile, to carry it two.

Does that make us suckers. Hardly. We are soldiers in God's Army and the war we wage is against selfishness, greed, hatred and cruelty. We wage that war by example. We heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and provide shelter for the homeless. 

We cannot know the effect of our mercy and kindness on a person, even though the effect may not be immediate. We may never know the downstream effect of our Christian charity. We don't have to. God knows what it will be. That's why he places us in the way of acts of kindness which need doing. God plans the strategy. He gives the orders and it is He who is responsible for the results of the efforts of His soldiers. When Scripture tells us to obey, that's what it's talking about.

© 2017 by Tom

The Kirby Effect

The inimitable Kirby Vacuum Cleaner was designed either for or by a man.  It's steel,  heavy and you can do everything with it from vacuuming to spray painting your house. It has a power drive switch that applies graduated force to the wheels as you vacuum.  It's an ingenious feature that makes vacuuming faster and improves maneuverability over the old non-powered version.

I am not allowed to use the power drive switch!

The women in the house forbid it.  They claim the vacuum doesn't work as well when the switch is engaged.  They tell me it's not really a power drive, but some sort of parking brake to keep the vacuum from rolling if you park it on a hill when the motor is turned off.

I call this the Kirby Effect.  A useful feature of something is rejected because it doesn't "feel" right.  In the mind of the womenfolk in my house, if the vacuum doesn't feel like it's hugging the floor, it must not be working. They can push it too fast and make it skitter on the carpet, which reinforces the opinion that it doesn't work as well.  If you have the power drive on, you still have to push at the regular speed or it doesn't pick up as well - hence the skittering.

But it doesn't "feel" right, so the users reject the feature.

Researchers in the 60's came up with a "no suds" laundry detergent that was virtually pollution free. Users rejected it even though objective tests showed it worked as well as or better than the sudsy kind.  But users, particularly women felt like it didn't because it didn't make suds.  They rejected the feature in favor of less effective sudsy formulas because they felt like you have to have suds to clean clothes.  Simply adding inert fillers to the formula created suds and made the product acceptable and sold the users on the product.


To avoid the Kirby Effect as I conceive it, in order to sell anything expensive, whether it be a product or idea, it must meet the following criteria:

1.  It must appear to be of value or to own it must confer prestige.
2.  It must appear to work somewhat as the user (not necessarily the buyer) expects it to.
3.  It must not require any extra work on the part of the buyer to use the object or idea that is for sale. 
4.  Paying for the idea or object must not cause visible discomfort.

Progressives have learned how to pay attention to the Kirby Effect as it relates to political issues.  What they've learned is that, so long as it feels right, a sizable segment of the population will let you do almost anything you want and no amount of reasoning will substantially effect their perception about the issue once established, especially if a program you propose doesn't require any real effort on their part to move forward.

Kirby, like the progressives has a sales strategy.  Men tend to buy the Kirby for it's ruggedness and multiple use features and are more willing to shell out for expensive products if they can get it on payments. Women look at the price tag to determine quality, but care little about features beyond straightforward vacuuming and using the upholstery hose and attachment.  So Kirby first sells the husband. That's why their sales guys want to talk to the couple together. The fancy feature demo is for the guys. The women aren't much interested in painting the car with their vacuum.  Men like to know they could if they wanted to. For the ladies, the price tag sells the value and so long as the guys are willing to pay the bill, the ladies don't need a bargain.  The payment plan seems a cheap way for the guy to score "I care about you points" with the wife, so the sale is made.  After all, the car's got a couple of chips on the paint.

Simplistic and I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this, but stay with me.

Around here, I usually am in charge of switching from the beater bar to hose attachment. My neat freak wife doesn't like the extra steps it takes with the Kirby to hook up the upholstery hose even though it's more effective than the other hose attachment on her other vacuums.  She just wants to clean the upholstery.  Kirby does that well enough, so long as I change the attachment for her and she doesn't have to learn how.

Let's face it, nobody paints their car with a Kirby. No one ever uses half of the things a Kirby can do, but it's reliable so no one is really unhappy and the payments aren't too high as to be painful. Ergo, Kirby makes money.

To sell a political strategy, the most effective way is to utilize the Kirby strategy to make the sale. To avoid the Kirby effect whereby features are rejected because they don't pass the "feels right" test, first, you create a perceived need that invokes guilt. Then you come up with an expensive solution that makes everyone feel good that the problem will be solved by the expensive solution.  Promise that it will do lots and lots of things. Do enough of the things you promise to make people feel comfortable that you're handling it. Make the price tag feel easy to bear (soak the rich is one way).  Voila, everybody supports you and gives you the power in order to feel good that they are solving the perceived need.

Because the progressive agenda is being presented as a package, it is vulnerable.  Obama and the Democrats actually overplayed his hand with the public service demands he is making.  It violates the 3rd principle. The tax burden if it crashes the economy, it may violate rule 4.  If program elements like "cash for clunkers" don't work as promised, they may have a rule 2 violation.  If something major gets blown up by terrorists, rule 1 gets violated because they promised the world would love us and therefore we'd be more secure.  If that happens, the whole thing comes down like a house of cards.


I worked in human services.  It's amazing how many things people believe the government is "supposed" to handle. When someone tells a story of someone's trial or tribulation, "Isn't the government supposed to take care of that?" was one of the most common questions that followed. The other response I used to get was "What can we do?"

The two responses represent two disparate groups. 

• One believes that for every social need there should be a government program to take care of it. After all, they pay their taxes.
• It is almost as widely believed by the second group that we are personally responsible to help fix things like this.  They respond to the story as if it were a call to action.  These guys work with local nonprofits and donate to their church and other charities. They work soup kitchens and work bees, go on mission trips and volunteer at nursing homes.

The other group gets mad because the government is obviously NOT doing the job, so they do it themselves.  They are goal directed.  The problem needs to be solved, so they solve it.  Casting blame doesn't get the job done with this group.  There are hungry people to be fed, illness to be treated, children to be rescued.

Not everybody is like the first group, but enough are to potentially swing the vote toward progressive socialism. Conservative solutions have the disadvantage of not making you feel better, asking you to do things that may be hard, expecting you to solve problems for yourself and letting you pay for things out of your own pocket.  The only personal benefit the conservative agenda gives us is that we retain our liberty, but at the cost of some little discomforts.

So, the question becomes, "How much of your liberty are you willing to surrender for the promise that you'll feel good about losing it?"

I think Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, and Obama would make a great vacuum cleaner salesmen.

I'm just sayin'

© 2009 by Tom King

Who Gave You Permission to Help That Man?

Someone asked me something like that once. We were trying to find rides for seniors and people with disabilities who can't drive so they can get to the doctor, to the grocery store and to church. He was a development director for one of the largest charities in town. What he really wanted to know was whether we had the okay of the local good old boy network BEFORE we started looking into the problem.

"Who gave you permission to start a transportation initiative?" he asked.

The answer: Nobody did!

So, without permission, in 7 years we tripled the funding for rural transportation for seniors. We forced the rural transit provider to drop discriminative practices. We engaged private sector transportation providers to help get folks with disabilities get to and from jobs. We stopped predatory "coyote" drivers from exploiting the families of farm workers in small rural colonia's and helped the women get an affordable ride to town to buy groceries. We did so without raising taxes by so much as a nickel.

For our troubles, I got a nasty letter from the executive director of the local Council of Governments. The director of the state Transit Association called me "anti-transit".

I figure we must have done something right if we upset so many good old boys!

There has been a lot of rhetoric in recent years about an old African proverb. "It takes a village to raise a child."

Somehow, folks of a certain political persuasion have come to believe that Washington, DC is just the village to do that.

I'm not sure on what planet the federal government is considered a village, but it is surely not in this solar system. The proverb is dead on, though. I know from experience. I grew up in such a village.

Back when I was 12, If I had been seen throwing rocks at a street light in Keene, Texas by any one of the town's mothers or grandmothers, word would have reached my Mom before I could have made it home at a dead run. Mom would have met me on the porch, her arms crossed and tapping her foot in a way that boded no good for me.

There is no power on Earth for getting things done effectively and humanely like that of a small community. That's the village those old Africans were talking about. Local communities, united together to fix their own problems - that's what the proverb means. They aren't talking about vast unwieldy social programs.

Virtual Village began as a dream to help people working in small to mid-sized nonprofits in rural and small towns, local neighborhoods and communities. The idea was to help inexperienced, but passionate local leaders successfully network, write grants, create new programs and solve problems in their own communities.

They don't need a mandate from Washington. They don't need the okay of whatever good old boy political network runs things in their state. What they need is help figuring out how to do what needs doing.

We call it "doing good without permission".

You'd be surprised how many government bureaucrats we've aggravated so far.

As we built the website, however, the economy suddenly came crashing down around everyone's ears. Foundations cut their giving for new projects. Some closed entirely. The feds cut the deduction for philanthropic giving, seizing control of dollars that once flowed freely to charities and channeling them through government programs. Our small, local charities need help more than ever.

I was driving through the country yesterday and saw a crude sign in front of a tiny country church advertising a "Soup Kitchen". It wasn't sophisticated. It wasn't politically correct. Yet struggling rural seniors were getting a hot meal. The church started the soup kitchen because Meals on Wheels and food bank programs have been having getting food out into the rural areas and there were a lot of older people out here in the sticks that need a hot meal every day. So neighbors pitched in and are helping their grandmas and grandpas and struggling families that have been laid off, have lost jobs or businesses or who have had the family wage-earner die suddenly. By the time a government program could have been put together, isolated seniors could have been starving. They didn't because their neighbors acted quickly and solved a problem with the resources they have.

They'd like to keep it going permanently, but they don't know how.

The Food Stamp folks have long complained that church food pantries were cutting into their business. A couple of years ago they actually started a marketing campaign to bring people back to the Food Stamp program that were being fed by little church food pantries. Now, the Food Banks that supply those church based pantry programs are suddenly finding it harder and harder to get the food supplies they once did as the federal government tries to centralize all anti-hunger programs under government control.

Small to mid-sized charities also face stiff competition for increasingly limited Foundation grants. Big charities with fat development budgets and marketing resources dominate the competition for what grants and other funding remains out there. Local charities are having to do more, with less money and they're doing it with organizations that don't have the aggressive development resources they need to find funding to keep their doors open.

Virtual-Village is a vitally needed on-line tool that can help the hundreds of thousands of small church and community-based organizations that have sprung up to meet needs in our towns and neighborhoods that were not anticipated up in Washington's central planning.

We're here to help the people who create and run local charities. We're here to show them how to reduce travel costs, to access information they need to do their jobs and to help build collaborative networks using 21st century telecommunications and Internet based tools. These wonderful people solve a myriad of problems that exist in our home towns that nobody in Washington has ever thought of, much less designed a "program" for.

These are tough times.

Please go to this link ( http://virtual-village.org ) and visit the site. Small charities can't afford expensive development officers, much less afford an extensive development and fund-raising program. Yet, Foundations and government funding sources increasingly require more and more networking, interagency cooperation and program coordination before they'll give money to local charities. This is an expensive and time consuming task, something most nonprofits can't afford. Virtual Village can help by bringing the collaborative networking process down onto our own desktops.

You can help the little nonprofits and faith-based ministries survive in this era of crumbling economies. Contribute now. We need your time, your talent and your money. Any one or all three!

We need just $25,000 to finish adding all the new tools the site needs to be fully functioning. A commercial for a used car dealer can cost more than that to make.

Just go to the Virtual Village homepage and click on the 'donate' button. Help us finish building the website and adding the tools our friends will need to survive the coming lean years.

The community you help may be your own!

I've given 6 weeks pay so far. Can you give lunch money? It's easy. Follow the easy to use Paypal "Donate" link on the home page. Just a couple of minutes and you can strike a blow in support of all those little guys out there helping your communities.

• They aren't making government salaries.
• They don't have government health benefits.
• They spend on average less than 8% of their entire budgets on admin costs.
• Many go without pay altogether.
• Millions of volunteers work with them.
• Tens of millions are given a hand up.
• Tens of millions of lives are changed.
• We can help them do even better.

Join us, won't you.

We don't have to ask the government for permission to help the homeless, to shelter a battered wife and her kids, to feed an elderly person or to help someone who's fallen on hard times to get back on his feet.

Why should we have to ask someone in Washington whether the widow next door deserves to have a couple of neighbors mow her grass or paint her porch for her?

Why should our neighbor have to file stacks of humiliating paperwork when all he needs is a couple of bags of groceries and a ride to work for a few weeks till he gets on his feet?

Help Virtual Village help our community do-gooders to, well, to do good!

Thanks for your support,

Tom King

The Obama Administration Grabs for Power Over Charities

The Devil is in the details, especially when it's a Democrat Budget Proposal.

President Obama's new budget plan has a sneaky little scheme buried in it to cut tax deductions for charitable giving by the so-called wealthiest 1%. The plan will help the government increase the taxes collected by the IRS from all those evil greedy rich people by discouraging them from giving to charity.

You know who they are - the people who make over $250,000 and do most of the hiring and creating of new business. The loss of funding to charities, Obama's staff says will be offset by increases in funding by the government.

Huh?

Okay, let me get this straight.

The government is going to provide a tax DISincentive for couples making more than $250K. Obama thinks that will raise some $179.8 billion in the next 10 years while at the same time reducing nonprofit charitable funding over the next decade by $179.8 billion.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag says Mr. Obama takes care of the losses by giving charities government money to make up PART of the difference. So, then, the government is going to TAKE part of the money that now goes to charities and do what with it? We are asked to trust the government to do the right thing with this money.

What could be wrong with that?

Just this:

1. Instead of the money going directly to the charity which uses it all for expenses to run programs and the charities, the money will go through Washington, be given to a vast unwieldy bureaucracy, where, if the charity spends hundreds of man hours writing a complicated and restriction filled grant in competition with thousands of other nonprofits and maybe a few faith-based ministries, this bureaucracy might actually give some of all that money back to the charity. Of course the amount of this "give back" will be less than what the charities lost because the government has all those administrative costs to support the vast unwieldy bureaucracy that may or may not give them some of their money back.

2. The government WILL add restrictions to the funding and ban certain types of nonprofits from receiving government funds. THIS WILL ELIMINATE ENTIRELY, CERTAIN UNAPPROVED TYPES OF CHARITIES.

3. Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin says "Contained in the recovery act, there's $100 million to support nonprofits and charities as we get through this period of economic difficulty," he said. If that's an annual figure, then that's a ten year total of 1 billion dollar. So, they're taking 179.8 billion dollars from the charities and giving them back 1 billion dollars. According to my calculations that's a 99.388% administrative fee the government's charging there!!!!

Only in the Fantasy Land that is Washington could the Obama administration say that they would take almost 180 billion from the philanthropy community and see no drop in giving and then have the further cheek to suggest that their tiny one billion dollar "economic recovery fund for charities" will actually help charities.

Okay, the government plans to "take over" many of the functions of nonprofits and churches in America, so they won't be needed. Anybody think the government is going to be able to do what nonprofits do and deliver the same level of service. I've seen what government run programs cost. I worked at a residential treatment center for kids. We were paid $59 a day for caring for a severely disturbed kid. This included treatment, 24 hour staff, food, shelter, recreation and virtually everything the kid needed. They paid us 90% of our actual costs and we had to raise the remaining 10%.

Want to guess how much it cost the government to provide the same service"

$180 per day! That's 3 times what the nonprofit sector cost to do the same job.

Does anyone think that's a good idea???

Everyone who works for, with or is a member of a nonprofit, faith-based ministry, church, civic or community group, foundation or charitable organization or who is a person of means who donates to any charity should contact their congressman and both senators TODAY and tell them to pitch out this clause from Obama's budget.

It's bad for charity. It's a grab for more power over charities by the government. It's going to close thousands of small local charities who depend on the largesse of the philanthropy community to meet unique local needs.

Don't let this go by. It costs you some stamps or a phone call or, if you can use the computer, nothing but a bit of electricity. SEND AN E-MAIL FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Some Democrats and a whole bunch of Republicans have caught the administration doing a bit of political engineering here. BUT A LOT OF THEM HAVEN'T. Make sure your delegation is howling very loudly about this in the halls of Congress!

STOP THE GOVERNMENT FROM ROBBING FROM CHARITIES!!!!

Tom

Not a Part of Our Mission!

.
A troubling trend has developed among churches in the past few years. The first I heard of it was when a representative of the congregation that ran the intergenerational day care center where my wife worked decided that little children and seniors were "no longer a part of our mission". They said it with a straight face and no shame!

In this area several church day care centers have been shut down because church boards reviewed their mission statements and decided that little children were no longer a part of their mission - or at least taking care of them for more than an hour on Sundays was no longer a part of their mission.

Everything is about funding these days. It's no accident that many nonprofits and churches are shifting their missions to more lucrative projects. Children and seniors are too expensive because in today's litigious society, they are too expensive to insure. Church and nonprofit boards add up the cost of programs for little ones and the elderly (not cheap by any means), plus the outrageous insurance costs and the potential cost of Rodney D. Young or Roberts & Roberts suing your congregation right out of their nice new sanctuary and family life center and they come to the conclusion that a shift of mission priorities is in order.

It's a shame, but fear of lawsuits and an unwillingness to risk financial losses is reducing services for our most vulnerable citizens - the ones the Bible specifically mentioned that Christians should take care of first and above all!

I we all interpret our duty as Christians and choose our missions in life accordingly.

Scripture mentions "men's hearts failing them for fear" at the end of time. I see that happening. Ironically enough, our hearts are failing us, not for fear of demons or tyrants, huns or barbarians, but for fear of lawyers.

But no one ever said the devil wasn't subtle. Know what all that fear that means?

Guess who's coming back, Planet Earth......

Just one man's fervent hope,

Tom King

Empathy

-
In character, we all walk about
Makeup, perfume, hair in place
The spotlight shining just so,
And we hope someone will be able
To look past the paint
And see inside
Where the lonely little boy or girl
Huddles in the darkness
Weeping and frightened

And sometimes someone does
And sometimes no one does
But always God does
Though he doesn't always tell us so
He doesn't always stroke the child's head
And comfort.
He doesn't always speak to let us know
When He's watching
For sometimes His hands
Remain in his pockets
Sometimes His voice
Remains silent for reasons we do not know.

And then sometimes. some of us
Remove the makeup, let down our hair
And sometimes we reach out with hands
And voices that belong to God
To stroke and comfort other huddled children
And find the child within ourselves
Stroked and comforted in return.

Tom King

Generations Together: Wrapping up...

The hardest part of grant-writing for me used to be the part where you tuck the whole thing in an envelope and stick it in the mail. After that, there was nothing else you could do except wait and I don't wait very well. Actually, that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was a week later when you were rereading the grant application to keep from chewing on the leg of your own desk and you realized you'd left something out or had made a mistake. Would they reject your grant because of this one error? Would 5 months of work go down the drain because you made a small error?

Well, now that I'm in the for-profit sector, I thought all that was behind me - that is until I encountered the dreaded Small Business Administration loan. Now, don't get me wrong, SBA is a GOOD thing. They guarantee the loan and you get lower interest rates as a result. Everybody says our loan is perfect for SBA. I just hope SBA agrees.

I guess I don't like "putting it all out there" for people to judge and accept or reject. It's why I never completed the great American novel I guess (though I have parts of several in bound vinyl notebooks buried in boxes in my closet). It may explain some of my difficulties navigating the philanthropy community!

One day I might drag one of my novels out and finish it and send it off to a publisher.

At least that's what I keep telling myself anyway.....

This is my second serious foray into the private sector. Our first Tom & Sheila owned business (also a day care center) did well for a few years and then closed. I chose the wrong place for it and didn't throw in the towel when I should have. Story of my life!

This time we developed a 192 page business plan, researched the financing, did the demographic and marketing research and generally obsessed over it. My partner in the venture is a dear friend and an experienced business woman. I am desparate not to let her down.

Meanwhile...

Generations Together has closed. In the midst of our capital campaign we suddenly found ourselves forced to compete with a 9 billion dollar disaster relief effort in the wake of hurricane's Rita and Katrina which severely drained philanthropic resources locally and nationally. Unable to raise money quickly enough, GT was forced to cease operations when the property owner sold the site to a developer. They bull-dozed everything we'd done.

I felt bad about it. We raised a lot of money and wound up losing it all. But everyone's donations were not wasted. Intergenerational day care will continue. We kept it alive for almost 3 years longer than it would have if we hadn't tried. Dozens of little old people didn't have to go to nursing homes because we were there a few years more. And finally, we have found another way to do intergenerational day care!

So what, if anything did we learn?

Lesson 1: What we learned is that sometimes it's easier to show people that a thing can be done and is worth doing than it is to talk them into helping you do it!

Lesson 2: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him forever. (in other words, we had to learn to fish and what pond to fish in)!

With the help of an imaginative local entrepeneur, some Small Business Adminstration financing (we hope), a providential day care center coming on the market and a lot of planning and hard work, we have managed to resurrect intergenerational day care in Smith County. When God closes a door, He opens a window! Watch these pages for announcement of the opening of the new Generations Project Christian Intergenerational Day Care Center.

Till then, in the words of Douglas Addams,

"So long and thanks for all the fish!"

Closing the Doors

Dear friends and supporters:

I wanted to share with you what happened yesterday at 5:30 pm – 30 minutes before we closed our doors at Generations Together's preschool campus.

Our doorbell rang and I found standing at the door, a tall pleasant looking gentleman who introduced himself as Pastor Rudy Bond. We sat down in my office as the last minutes of the day and our hopes for keeping GT open ticked away.

We talked about many things. He listened to me describe out 2 ½ year struggle to find a home and find funding. We talked about ministries and doing the right thing because its right, not because its easy.

He encouraged me not to lose hope and added that God does things in his own way and for his own reasons. We shared experiences in working with ministries and organizations and people and I found a kindred spirit in Bishop Bond. He was a great comfort to me and as the clock struck six, Pastor Bond led several of us in a prayer for courage and guidance. As he left, he gave me his cell phone number and told me to call him when he got back on Monday or Tuesday and things had settled.

I really didn’t realize what had happened nor had it register what he’d been saying to me until this morning as I was sitting in church. I think I may have had a visitation from the very angel I’d been praying for all week and typically, I didn't recognize it. Last night I was miserable and in despair.

Today I have renewed hope. There’s no sense to it by any standard known to the sensible world, but I do have hope…

We were worried about whether or not we’d be able to get all our things out of the Cornerstone property in time. Their treasure had threatened to padlock the place on the first. Everybody’s sick. I have the flu. Paula our bookkeeper is recovering from surgery and may have pneumonia. Sherry, our child care director's father died Saturday. I didn’t think we could do it. No one from the owner group would return my calls. Dianna Wilkerson, however, called them up and by some miracle, they extended our time to get our things out by a week. So Tuesday we’ll start shutting everything down, but till then everyone can rest and recoup. That was a blessing I didn’t think we’d get. (It also buys us a little more time – but I’m not going to think about that right now…).

Till then, we’ll do a shutdown and reorganization plan. We might just be able to keep the program going for a while if we can find space somewhere. If we can figure out a way to run with a positive cash flow, we can start paying off our creditors at least. Our nursery is shutting down over the next few weeks. It’s very hard to find infant care, so everyone’s struggling and OSLC is letting our babies stay long enough to find them new day care. God bless them for that.

We might have to become Generation Alone, but that may be what we have to do for now.

Friday, I received a call from a gentleman who offered to give us $5000. I drove up to his place to get it and couldn’t find them. The company has a huge yellow sign right beside the North Loop. I’ve seen it dozens of times, but for some reason I kept driving past it without seeing it. I called them twice and passed by the place about 6 times. By the time I got there, this lovely gentleman had decided to add another $1000 to the check. Maybe God was stalling me – I don’t know. It was one of the stranger things that has happened to me this week and that's saying something.

The money, while not enough to make an offer to Cornerstone, will help us reorganize the adult program and maybe keep that going a bit longer and pay some bills we absolutely have to pay.

I have to tell you, our parents have been so supportive. I’m supposed to call about half of them this weekend if we’re able to stay open. Teachers too! Of course, we can’t (barring something really HUGE), but most have said they’ll be back if we reopen. All of my teachers will come back in a heartbeat if we call them and tell them we’re reopening.

The telling thing to me was when I went into their rooms at the end of the day on Friday. Every room was neat and clean as though it would be open again next week. I’ve seen organizations shut down and time and again I see bitter and angry staff just trash the place, carry off the equipment and basically loot the organization. There has not been a hint of that. Every one of them has been encouraging and really lifted me up when I was down. I stand in awe of them. Instead of being angry at losing their jobs, they were worrying about me. Instead of trying to get every nickel they could out of us, they came to work like it was a regular week, knowing we probably wouldn’t be able to pay them any time soon.

God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform. I’ll keep you posted as we discover what wonders he has for us next.

Thank you all for your prayers and for your constant support.

Tom King
www.generationstogether.com
www.charitygolftournament.net
www.twayneking.blogspot.com

Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the
person doing it. - Chinese proverb

A George Bailey Moment

It is Christmas and I'm having my George Bailey at the bridge moment. As most of you that read regularly know, I'm director of an intergenerational day care center called Generations Together . It's a wonderful place. We have the best teachers we've ever had, our children and seniors are happy and well-cared for. We've been asked to be a part of a new barrier-free housing initiative. A new transit initiative we were part of has kicked off and is going great guns. We just received a major pledge toward our building campaign and have hope of another large contribution in January. We have a group of investors forming to purchase the building for us that we need to move into. 

We were going to triple our child care space, quadruple our infant care space and more than double our senior program space. But we've run out of time. There will be a meeting on Saturday to decide our fate. We may very well be forced to close our doors. It will mean that many of our seniors will no longer be able to live at home, but be forced to go to nursing homes. It means that Tyler's most respected nursery program will close (we have people call us to reserve a spot when they are just thinking about becoming pregnant). It means our extensive advocacy work for seniors, people with disabilities and low income families will end. It means 20 teachers will be put out of work at Christmas. It means the 80 families on our waiting list for placement in our nursing program will not have a place to put their babies. I ask for your prayers right now that the owners of our building will give us just 60 more days to get our investor group together and to purchase the building. As someone wise told me yesterday, "....GOD is in the deal.... No one knows why it took so long to get to this place with this exact set of people involved, but it did and it’s all part of the plan." Thank you all for your support and for your prayers and good wishes.

Looking for a Christmas miracle! 

Tom