Re-Thinking Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday
I retired just recently from the charity I co-founded, RIP Medical Debt. It was a satisfying decision, considering that RIP had by mid-2020 barreled past its initial goal of abolishing $1,000,000,000 (yes, Billion!) in unpaid and unpayable medical debt.
Which subject brings me, not necessarily illogically, to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. Let me provide the context.
Black Friday is a supreme Holiday Shopping day for credit card depletion. It has a dark parent. On September 24, 151 years ago, two greedy financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk caused a market collapse and widespread bankruptcy — Black Friday. Not to miss out on a good phrase, retailers reinvented Black Friday in this century as a mechanism to turn their bank accounts from (in the) red to (in the) black. An odd homage, to be sure, but it worked.
Cyber Monday, also known as Blue Monday, was manufactured (programmed?) by marketeers to move shopping online to pursue us at work. Another substantial bump in sales! Another triumph for the extractive economy.
Which is possibly why society had to invent an antidote in Giving Tuesday, aka #GivingTuesday for us #hacktivists.
This is the concerted attempt by charities to entice from us the small change still left in our pockets, but for the purposes of some reparative good. It is hugely successful. According to Philanthropy News Digest, some $511 Million was raised online in the U.S. Across 60 countries the take totaled $1.9 Billion last year.
Even given the obvious benefits to both merchant and charity, there is growing belief that something is wrong with this picture. Critics see millions (billions?) of people going into debt on Friday and Monday. They see all too few charitable dollars in comparison going to people whose debts and misfortunes cause them to rely on the care of others.
Let’s Rethink This
There is a rising call to address the problem of debt and to come up with healthy, creative alternatives to the business-as-usual that creates the need for charities. Its critics are committed to rethinking societal issues with the express intention of coming up with impactful, if unusual, contrary solutions.
Given the state of our economy, our society, and our obviously broken healthcare system there is no question that we need to rethink everything.
To see if this quest resonates with others, a team dedicated to positive societal change are using the three days following Thanksgiving to lift the veil on our collaborative work. That website will officially appear on January 1, 2021. Its “preview” is below:
To serve as a referent example, I volunteered my own experience of re-thinking the work I had performed in the collections industry and the charity that came out of it. RIP’s amazing and ongoing work is a direct beneficiary of my doing a literal U-Turn in my thought and direction.
RIP according to our website “was started by two former bill collectors.” I was one of those two. My long-time friend and business associate, Craig Antico was the other. The inspiration was Occupy Wall Street and its questioning of the economic carnage of debt produced by an extractive economy. In particular, medical debt. Awakened to that problem, we reengineered our thinking to use our industry experience for good.
Simply put, I walked into Occupy Wall Street as a Debt Collector. I walked out of Occupy Wall Street as a Debt Forgiver. Craig and I were both changed forever — as was the debt buying and medical debt industry we enticed into working with us.
Our efforts from January of 2014 until now have manifested a highly successful 501(c)(3) that has raised enough in donations to buy and abolish over $2.8 billion in unpayable medical debt. A million-plus individuals and families have had this burden removed. These were laurels I could rest on. I chose not to do so.
Where do I go from here?
Now an Octogenarian and retired (my talents well replaced by RIP’S dynamic Executive Director, Allison Sesso), I began to puzzle through the phenomenal growth and impact of this organization.
Certainly, I am not the only person to do a “one-eighty” in thinking, and likely not the only one to have seen his/her creation produce a social impact far beyond imagining. There are other “Impact Magicians” out there. I feel compelled to locate them, bring their work into society’s awareness.
Through conversations with like-minded others a team came together. The consensus was clear: it is time to provide a platform for these people.
Let’s Rethink This (LRT) is in development to provide these visionaries a worldwide audience and, if needed, the tools and resources required to accelerate and amplify the realization of their dreams.
What if there were a way to index impact, and then reward it? What if everyone were invited to the party to contribute as well as to learn? What if LRT were to become a global center for systemic change? What if is turning into “Why not?”
