Strategic Generosity: The Skill That Changes Trajectories

All this week, $25 from every preorder of my new book, Audacity, will be donated to the NLHA Scholarship Program - which provides college education grants to kids living in affordable housing.

Why?
Because someone once said yes to my family before we had earned it.
We were homeless, living in a tent. We certainly didn’t have the deposit money. We had no rental history. No obvious reason for a landlord to risk housing us.

But she did.
She took a risk on us.
And it changed the trajectory of my life and my three siblings' lives.

Today, I’m CEO of a company that helps house more than 96,000 families.
That experience led me to a concept I call 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲.
It’s giving someone what can change the trajectory of their life.

In my TEDx talk, I describe it as the difference between a 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐮𝐩.
That apartment didn’t just give us a roof.
It stabilized us. It became home. And it gave four kids a different life.

Strategic generosity is about 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 you give and 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 you give it.
A meal is generosity. A lease signed for a family with no rental history?
That's strategic generosity.

Because the impact can keep paying forward for decades after the person who gave it has forgotten they ever did it.

I have three tests for strategic generosity:
◾️Does it change someone's trajectory or just change their day?
It’s the key introduction. The first money in. The thing that makes a different future possible.
◾️Does it cost the giver something real?
Is there risk involved? Is someone putting their reputation, resources, or trust on the line?
Free generosity is easy to forget. Risked generosity is impossible to forget.
◾️Is it designed to be repeated by the person who received it?
Strategic generosity isn’t a transfer. It creates a ripple.

That’s the story I tell in Audacity, which launches this October.
And for the next week, every preorder means $25 goes to an education hand-up moment.

𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲…
𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞’𝐬.

Who said yes to you before you had earned it? I'd love to hear the story!