News and Updates

I would like to inform you that Valerie Anderson is transitioning her focus from operations of Common Change to the country director of Common Change South Africa.

Valerie Anderson has strengthened and grown Common Change through her service, first out of Oakland and later from South Africa. Since her coming to work with us, many events have changed our entire globe, and she has always remained receptive to growth in the vision, responsibilities and interests of Common Change.

Her mark on our organization in evident in almost every area. Her unique ability to see solutions, think creatively, create something from nothing, and personally embody a vision that she worked to invite others to was not only invaluable, but inspiring.

Valerie is moving on, and April 15th, 2016 marked her last day in her formal roll with Common Change Ringmaster. Although she is formally leaving as Ringmaster, she is continuing to shape and share Common Change South Africa and I am sure you share my same enthusiasm about seeing the great things that come from that group of people caring for their country.

This next season is an exciting one as doors open for Valerie to tackle her next adventures with the same passion and dedication she gave to Common Change. Working alongside her has been an honor and a privilege. I can say without reservations that I have always been proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish together.

I wish her the best both professionally and personally. While I will miss the day-to-day interaction with her – she has been an indispensable part of our team – I know she will continue be a change-maker wherever she is and whatever “team” she is on.

Darin Petersen
founder & ceo

We are thrilled to see the Points of Light Civic Accelerator is launching it’s spring 2016 program with a challenge to accelerate tech adoption and financial inclusion for all. From user-generated and peer-to-peer technologies, equitable access to financial services and skill development, to models that influence savings and spending habits, the potential solutions are many. Learn more at bit.ly/digfininclusion. ‪#‎CIVICX‬ ‪#‎digfin‬

Do a quick search on the Internet for how to ask for help and you will find countless articles describing why it is so difficult to do so.  What if instead of requiring people to become better at asking for help, we became better at offering it? –

By pooling money together with those you know BEFORE needs are identified, you’re freed to look for opportunities to help. When money has specifically been set aside to help people, it becomes easier to do so. Even though you might be willing to help, it’s still difficult for people you know to reach out in their time of need. That’s why we’ve made it the norm for members to reach out first and offer assistance.

The following tips are offered as ways to know when/how to offer help:

• Pick up on cues —  don’t be afraid to ask questions.
• If at all possible, avoid phone conversations and emails and have your conversation in person and in private.
• Acknowledge your own limitation in seeing something correctly.
• Be straightforward. share a personal story, but do not micromanage or be manipulative.
• Say thank you when someone has shared something sensitive.  When someone has entrusted you with a sensitive situation, it is meant to be carried carefully.
• Share the story of Common Change and specifically your group.  Ask for permission to share the requests and let them know that there’s no guarantee but you would like to at least ask.

One of the most amazing aspects of group giving is that it changes the way we react to other peo­ples’ needs. Instead of ignoring or shying away from needs for lack of resources, we get to proactively look for and respond to the needs around us, because we know that we have resources to meet them. Here are a couple helpful hints on finding needs and meeting them well as a group:

1. Focus on people that someone in your group has a personal relationship with. We call this the principle “One Degree of Separation.”
2. Don’t be afraid to ask questions that feel uncomfortable. Often we shy away from questions about mon­ey, but remember that people are probably more afraid to ask you for help than you are to ask them if they need it, so if you don’t ask, you might never know.
3. When exploring a potential need, ask specific questions about the need. Meeting general needs that are large and vague can overwhelm the group and the process. When a person posts with very specific information about a specific opportunity, it helps the group to function better.

This #GivingTuesday, Common Change is taking the opportunity to remember a woman who boldly challenge the status quo of her day.  Rosa Parks writes “I had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn’t take it any more.” On the evening of Dec. 1, 1955, when bus driver James Blake ordered her to give up her seat to a white passenger and she refused. Blake chose not simply to evict her from the bus, as he had done in the past, but to have her arrested. Calling attention to the larger power in the system, Parks questioned the arresting officers, “Why do you push us around?” One officer answered back “I don’t know but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.”

Jeanne Theoharis writes the following in her article for the Washington Post.

Repeatedly in her writings, Parks underscored the difficulties in mobilizing in the years before her bus protest: “People blamed [the] NAACP for not winning cases when they did not support it and give strength enough.” She found it demoralizing, if understandable, that in the decade before the boycott “the masses seemed not to put forth too much effort to struggle against the status quo,” noting how those who challenged the racial order like she did were labeled “radicals, sore heads, agitators, trouble makers.” Indeed, Rosa Parks was red-baited and received death threats and hate mail for years in Montgomery and in Detroit for her movement work.

Though the righteousness of her actions may seem self-evident today, at the time, those who challenged segregation — like those who challenge racial injustice today — were often treated as unstable, unruly, and potentially dangerous by many white people and some black people. Her writings show how she struggled with feeling isolated and crazy, before and even during the boycott. In one piece of writing, she explained how she felt “completely alone and desolate as if I was descending in a black and bottomless chasm.”

Let’s continue the tradition of challenging the status quo.

Read, How history got the Rosa Parks story wrong