Givology’s 10th year gala speech

On November 8th, we held Givology’s 10th year celebration gala in Chelsea, NYC. Here’s the speech that I wrote for the event.

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Thank you all so much for coming out tonight to celebrate 10 years of Givology. Truly, the students scholarships, library and computer lab renovations, teacher training, empowerment programs, among many more education projects that we’ve done over the last 10 years wouldn’t be possible with YOU our supporters and our volunteers. In particular, a special thank you to the NYC chapter and Meghan for all the hard work that went into this event.

As a program of events, Jenn and I will share with you some of our reflections before introducing Ruth Jeng, Founder of the Peach Foundation — in fact Givology’s first partner from back in 2008 — as our keynote speaker and guest of honor. After the presentation, we also have a slide deck to show you what happened to the initial cohort of Peach Foundation scholarship students who we supported.

When we started Givology 10 years ago, our vision was to create an online giving community that would support high-impact grassroots education projects around the world. We wanted to create a movement where small dollars and small hours of volunteering can aggregate into a powerful force of change. We believed that no matter if you were a big donor or small donor, everyone deserves transparency and honesty in how funds are being used. We also believed that time is just as valuable as money – that everyone has something to give, and in that process of giving back, the self discovery and compassion that emerges inspires others to act and give.

In looking back on the last 10 years, while we are proud that we have created a community of 50 partnerships in 30 countries, 20 chapters and over 200 volunteers, and mostly importantly, helped thousands of students through school projects and direct scholarships, we set ourselves higher goals for the next 10 years to come. We are driven because we feel the urgency of the need to act today in an increasingly less compassionate and more polarized world.

There are so many stories from our Givology network but I will share just one – in fact, a letter written from a Peach student Huang Wen Xue who we have supported through Givology. She writes:

“The challenges that we face in life will undoubtedly stick with us, but it shouldn’t be something that brings us down. I am the second girl, positive and full of sunshine. The challenges that I have faced has shaped me into who I am today.

I used to get sick a lot when I was young, and my parents had to use up a lot of money because of me. I even stayed at the hospital for two months, and even though I was only five at the time, I couldn’t help thinking that my parents could have just left me on the streets. But they didn’t, and for that I am very grateful. Soon after I recovered and went home to continue my education, my parents had to help my brother build a house as he was going to get married soon. But my brother got into an accident. His death put a lot of stress on my family, and as a result, my grandmother passed away too. At the time, the burial of two people cost a lot of money, so from then on, my family was in a lot of debt.

For a farmer’s household like ours, sons are very important, and due to my parent’s traditional ways of thinking, my younger brother was born. The financial burden grew heavier and heavier. My parents worked hard, and we worked hard on our studies. Our grandparents also helped. My sister is in high school now and I am currently in year 9. All that my parents can do is to continue to work hard. While our situation is much better today, the financial burden might get heavier in the future. But I shouldn’t think about quitting school. I endured all those hardships and survived, I will not give up.

The challenges of growing up might not be something that you want to experience, but it is actually not as scary as it seems, because only in times of difficulty can we better ourselves.”

The core belief of Givology is that every child deserves a quality education – that if we convince thousands of people to give $1 or 1 hour that we can can create a movement of change.The mission is very personal to all of us. My parents immigrated to the United States in hopes of giving me a better education and a better opportunity in life. They made a lot of sacrifices so that I could have the capacity to dream and do what I wanted to do, even when it meant that that they had to do a lot of things that they didn’t want to do.

Education is also very personal to you – think of a teacher who transformed the way you think, the networks that you have created through your schools, and the comfort of knowing that because of your good education, even if your job doesn’t work out, you have the capability to find another one with confidence. Imagine not having this.

More so today than ever, the work of Givology volunteers and our partner organizations becomes even more important. You may be sad or angry when you turn on the news these days. You may feel like no one cares. You may feel like nothing matters. But I am telling you that it does. We are a small organization but in you being here today, in you volunteering and donating here today, in you sharing our message and our organization mission, we will fight for students like Huang Wen Xue one at a time. A movement starts one step at a time. One student at time.

IYLA Speech

I was invited to speak at the 2017 IYLA Conference at the United Nations on the topic of “Moral and Innovative Leadership for Sustainable Development: Vision · Service · Entrepreneurship”. The conference organizers recorded the video here. It was a fun experience to speak in the General Assembly room and to meet a lot of the other conference attendees.

Below is the speech that I gave: 

Hello everyone – it’s truly a delight to be here today with all of you. To introduce myself, my name is Joyce Meng and I am the CEO / Co-Founder of Givology (www.givology.org), an online giving marketplace for education that connects donors to grassroots education projects and student scholarships around the world. Since our founding nine years ago, we’ve grown our network to over 50 grassroots partnerships in 30 different countries, with 18 chapters globally, 70k registered donors, over 3k students helped, and hundreds of volunteers involved.

When we launched Givology, we had three major objectives. First, we wanted to democratize philanthropy in which small donors could achieve the same level of transparency and personal engagement as large donors. While it may be easier to manage one one-million dollar donation, we believe a movement starts with one million one dollar donations. Second, we wanted to create a community of innovative grassroots organizations, judged on their outcomes and impact. And third, we wanted to push the limits of how far a volunteer-driven model can scale.

Givology itself is 100% volunteer run. With all our work coordinated online, we don’t pay for office space or salaries. On our team, we have artists, entrepreneurs, and translators all the way to software engineers, consultants, and bankers. And of course, lots of passionate students!

I want to share with all of you today three observations from running Givology. Many of you are leaders or will become leaders of various organizations – whether government, nonprofit, for-profit – as you think about the organization you create, hopefully these will help you.

(1) Extrinsic incentives aren’t sufficient

A meta-analysis by Tim Judge, et al including 92 quantitative studies with data on over 15k individuals found that the association between salary and job satisfaction is very weak, roughly about 2%. Similarly Gallup’s research found that there was negligible difference between employee engagement and pay level. Rather, what improves engagement is a clearly defined and meaningful purpose within an organization , a pathway for individuals to make their own choices towards this goal, feedback and support so that progress can be achieved, and social recognition of their contribution. Studies have shown that intrinsic motivation is a much stronger predictor of job performance than extrinsic motivation – in fact 3x as much. If organizations spent less time designing financial rewards and more time on creating opportunities for their people to develop new skills and experiences, the productivity impact can be massive. At Givology we don’t pay people anything but ask for them to give us their time, skills, and passion. In seeing the difference that they make to our students and schools as well as the legacy they leave on our organization, our volunteers are motivated to work really hard.

(2) In building a team, finding aptitude to learn and grit is much more valuable than ticking all the skills boxes

In a world of automation in which resumes are filtered based on ‘keywords’ – organizations increasingly hire for employees that they don’t have to train. ManpowerGroup reports that 52% of U.S. employers surveyed have difficulty filling positions because of talent shortages, of which 35% cite lack of experience. In our opinion, this ‘skills shortage’ is illusory. At Givology, we are very comfortable giving team members the chance to learn and grow into very large roles — much bigger than they initially thought possible — with mentorship, training, and support. Limited experience today doesn’t matter to us. In working with hundreds of volunteers, we have data that shows capability to learn and a personality of persistence is significantly more important.

(3) Leadership is not about the leader

Society loves stories about heroes and founders. Culturally, in the United States, we have a very individual-focused society. But leadership isn’t about the individual conquering everything and succeeding on his or her own determination, but rather, service, empowering others, and creating an institution much greater than yourself. Even though I started Givology now nearly a decade ago, I define my success in my conviction that if I leave the organization tomorrow, our work will continue to grow and develop in the hands of my team. It’s not about you or me – it’s about what we create.

To conclude, I want to encourage all of you to think about your impact and how small actions of giving taken daily and cultivated into a habit can create a movement of change. Our philosophy is that if we have hundreds of people contribute 1 hour per week or $1 per week, well that’s how a movement gets started.