Major gifts to charity

A group of billionaires from around ghe world gathered in New York to discuss charitable giving. Investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates challenged the group to give away at least 50% of their wealth. Mr. Buffet has promised to give to charity 99% of his assets either during his life time or at the time of his death. You can read more about this extraordinary challenge at CNBC.

Mr. Buffett has often stated that children shouldn't get billions just for winning the birth lottery. I would suggest that children should also not be destined to a life of poverty by losing the birth lottery. Gifts given to Kinship help children coming from disadvantaged circumstances to have a better chance of realizing their God given potential. Your gift to Kinship will provide hope and encouragement to kids in need of additional adult support and guidance. To make a gift online simply visit GiveMN.org.

Twin Cities volunteers rock

Once again the Twin Cities reported the highest rate of volunteerism of all urban areas in the US, as surveyed by the Corporation of National and Community Service. We had a 37% rate of people volunteering, with an average of 44 volunteer hours/year per Capita.

As a nation in 2009, 63.4 million of us volunteered to help their communities.
This is an additional 1.6 million volunteers compared to 2008, making 2009 the largest single-year increase in the number of volunteers since 2003. Volunteers also provided 8.1 billion hours of service in 2009, which has an estimated dollar value of $169 billion.

A pretty impressive rate of volunteerism during this difficult economic downturn.

Let's see if we can get even more of us to volunteer in 2010. One of the great benefits of volunteering is that through giving we in turn are blessed!