Help wanted: To build generosity infrastructure and accelerate a rebellion of the heart.
8 years ago next month, Good for Nothing (GFN) spluttered out into the universe. On a freezing Saturday morning in east London, about 40 folks trusted our twitter call out, turned up and spent a day gifting their creative ideas and energy to 3 grassroots London based projects trying to solve important shit.
Wonderful things were created in just a few hours, communication ideas, digital and product concepts and designs, funding models and more— moreover new relationships were formed, knowledge was shared, friendships were made, fun was had, community was seeded, new ways of working were experimented with, new potential and possibility emerged. Those initial projects are flourishing today.
It was a big experimental creative love-in and it rocked.
GFN started out as an experiment, inspired partly by the emerging hack culture and an interest in new ways of creating ideas and partly from an itch that was irritating us…
— Why was it that so much talent in our world was pointed exclusively at helping big business tell extraordinary hi definition stories to sell more stuff or dream up ingenious product innovations and business models for things we really don’t need — while incredible innovators and courageous activists on the ground, at the forefront of some of the gnarliest social and environmental challenges in our society were working with almost no resources, awareness or support. What was that imbalance all about?
And what might happen if we bring those networks together to collaborate and experiment and have a party while we’re at it?
We were first generation rave culture who grew up with Star Wars in the 1970’s, acid house and warehouse parties in the early 1990’s, had ended up paving our careers in brand marketing, commercial innovation, music, technology and creative communications — we were sensing uncomfortable planetary signals and social feedback, disturbances in the force, that things were starting to go a bit weird on our watch — we wanted open-ness, fun, experimentation, possibility and safe spaces to explore this stuff.
We hacked together a fairly crap manifesto film to try and land the spirit of what a GFN gig should feel like…
That first one day gig in London generated in ways beyond what any of us imagined possible, not just in output, but in relationships, energy, knowledge, learning community and fun and the Good for Nothing journey that it kickstarted became a rollercoaster.
A journalist described GFN as ‘Creative Collaboration meets Rave’ — we were off!
We went from a one day gig to weekender gigs, supporting all kinds of socially epic projects, as the community developed we got involved in crazier challenges — we helped launch a feature length documentary film exploring kids disconnection from nature…
We prototyped an app in 48 hrs to engage citizens in a real cancer science challenge that went on to actually accelerate cancer science..
We collaboratively built and launched a digital fundraising project to raise awareness of famine in East Africa which ended up raising quarter of a million quid.
The model was and still is simple, bring together diverse folks up for a creative collaboration challenge, add in grassroots innovators tackling gnarly social and environmental issues, set up to 3 time bound challenges (constraints breed creativity) , throw in a sound system , a good meal, a space to play, some proven tools and practices for helping groups of people work together quickly and productively and create the conditions for fine things to happen — no bullshit, no egos, no hierarchy, lots of love et voila.
GFN runs on generosity, trust and self organising principles, those taking part do so for nothing, there are those gifting the ingredients from physical space to drink and food, and a crew of us in the Mothership, using funds from our day jobs and support from our networks to underwrite the experiment — there are many ways to do Good for Nothing.
In 2012 we were awarded funding from NESTA’s Innovation in Giving fund, we wanted to see if the model could spread out of London, hatching 4 new cities, we developed an open source chapter model, digital toolkits and a simple community platform to make it easy to organise and activate GFN on the ground wherever you were.
A first overseas chapter popped up in Wellington New Zealand. How rad was that?!
Following that we took a group of brilliant misfits representing 20 cities away to Camp Nothing — a three day bootcamp training them up in everything we’d learned to start new GFN chapters in their home cities.
It was a bit like a terrorist training camp concept but for doing good shit in the world, activating pop-up cells of kindness and launching community love bombs into cities. Doing Good In Your Hood. The Goodjahoodeen.
At one stage there were 44 city chapters rolling in 9 countries. People in Stockholm did things we didn’t understand but we could feel the love…
We even got going in New York, which in the land of the dollar, getting folks doing stuff for nothing felt significant.
We launched GFN in a pub — a short format to experiment making GFN more accessible — which involved fast playful evening hacks in a pub backroom, with beer and DJ’s of course.
Thousands of ppl have gifted creative energy and developed ideas, tools and encouragement for hundreds of projects of social good.
We’ve also learned that the process itself is a huge learning and personal development experience for participants, in a really positive way.
Last year we even prototyped a GFN kids edition, one for the padawans …
Today there are thriving chapters, including London, Chester, Bath, Melbourne and Sydney…
And people continue to sign up everyday to get involved.
But the problem today is we can’t serve the demand.
Because despite all the possibility we’ve failed to sustain the movement properly.
Boy have we tried, keeping this experiment alive for the last 8 years. You see the nothing bit of GFN is the magic, when you take money out of the equation, amazing things happen, the power of the gift kicks in, of human kindness and fields of trust.
But the thing is GFN still needs an engine room to make this possible, and the engine room needs feeding, it takes time to nurture the community, to support chapter crews, to keep innovating the product and format offer, to crack the sustainable business model, to find partners, to build what we’re calling generosity infrastructure.
Because right now we are living in a monetary paradigm, where pretty much everything has been monetised which in turn means so much of everybodys time and energy is maxed out to just exist.
So in this context it’s necessary to think creatively and differently about how we create new ways to help people give more easily while understanding their life demands, meeting them where they’re at — if we want to increase gifting and creative kindness in our culture we need to build generosity infrastructure to help make that happen.
This infrastucture might include physical spaces, digital products, experiences, content, communication channels, networks of humans, communities and ingrediant partners.
We don’t need more roads or industrial infrastructure we need infrastructure for human flourishing.
Investing in growing kindness and creative generosity in culture, bottom up and top down.
With GFN we’ve learnt to make it fun, simple and social for people to gift what they’re good at to those who really need it and we’ve learnt that doing Good for Nothing can also build community and connection in people’s lives through the giving experience itself.
This really matters, we’re living in a time when people are starting to actively seek these connections.
We’ve proved the model works and the demand is there, people want to do Good for Nothing.
At a time when much of the institutional world around us seems to be falling apart, where fear and cynicism are on the rise, Good for Nothing makes more and more sense — it’s real, it’s human, it works, it feels good and anyone can participate.
What is the value of people doing more good things in the world, supporting projects with regenerative potential on the ground in the places we live, creating new networks of change, offering skills, mentoring, knowledge, connections, encouragement, bringing creative energy and new ideas to issues we collectively face, normalising the habit of everyday acts of generosity?
We’re very close to cracking a sustainable model for Good for Nothing but we now more than ever really need new support and energy to enable that, to seize the opportunity that the crazy uncertain context in 2018 presents and to ramp up the movement. We’re 8 years in development but in many ways built for todays context.
One of the most interesting learnings through this journey, has been seeing the impact of the power of giving on the giver, the impact of being generous. Lots of folks come to GFN as they want to ‘give back’ or be a part of something meaningful, what they often discover, like me and my co-conspirators did, is that when we give what we’re good at, there is real transformational energy and potential, the impact is often more profound on the self, not just the reciever. More about that here, if you’re interested.
In 2017 we launched our first official brand partnership activation in the South West England with ethical indie cafe chain Boston Tea Party, (BTP) you may have heard of them, they were the first coffee chain in the UK to ban single use coffee cups entirely this year, in response to the plastic pollution crisis, a move of true courage, a brave brand, leading the way, working from the heart.
Together with BTP we prototyped and launched an expriment which got GFN chapters nesting within cafe spaces in the cities of Bath, Bristol and Exeter, and a new short evening format to make doing GFN accessible to more people. Quite simply the chapter has a physical home, BTP customers and community can participate and the new format raises awareness of loads more projects of social good in a city, catalysing more giving relationships between different communities. It’s a fun model, it makes gifting what you’re good at fun, fast and social and it connects community.
The experiment was a great success and the Bath city chapter in particular is absolutely flying right now.
We want to package up and launch this new evening format much more widely in 2019.
GFN London recently popped up at London Design Festival and we are in talks with a very exciting new venue brand about a London collaboration in 2019.
So what next ?
Well it seems like doing good things is becoming a thing, people are joining GFN everyday, new chapter requests are incoming, Hong Kong is the latest.
If you look around closely where you live, you’ll notice plenty of issues that need creativity, energy, attention and love right now — homelessness, poverty, vulnerable kids, isolated elderly, rise of mental health, lack of community space, education projects, housing, healthy/sustainable food, the waste we create, environmental issues/pollution — air, soil, water, it goes on and on. These are things people are beginning to care deeply about. Stuff that really matters.
We know from our growing community that folks want to give energy to stuff that matters to them, and who knew that you can build community and connection through that — generosity really is a super power.
There’s an awakening going on for sure, signals of a shift to a more heart led way of being in the world — a rebellion of the heart.
We’ve got new GFN product concepts brewing, including digital versions and the new evening format.
We’ve collected 8 years of learnings, developed proven tools and practices to get folks creating and collaborating together, amassed a wealth of knowledge around social change, social ventures and new forms of community driven change. We’ve prescence on the ground in many cities, a strong community of do-ers and creators, and in GFN a well respected brand for giving.
We’re immensly grateful to all the chapter crews, Good for Nothingers, projects, innovators, supporters, backers and more who’ve helped create what GFN is, without them there would be nothing.
But we can’t progress in the way and with the pace that the world is asking for without new support to get the movement cranking again.
So what are we asking ?
In the spirit of experimentation, we’re openly inviting interest from those who can see the potential in Good for Nothing and helping its next phase of development… we’re putting it out there, and seeing how the universe might respond..
So who’s this for?
You might be a courageous brand or business seeking a more purpose driven social mission or a new meaningful way of marketing what you do. How about helping spread creative generosity in the world, ramp up a movement of creative gifting in communities across the globe, power the next level of GFN and ride that wave with us.
You might be a philanthropist or foundation that is seeking to back innovative, disruptive, and proven ways of making social change happen. To help accelerate new forms of community and social businesses.
To accelerate the rise of participation culture and creative citizenship where people co-create the world they want to see, a beautiful alternative to rampant consumerism and the toxically ill economic system it props up which is destroying the conditions for all life to exist, us humans included ( this seems to be cutting through at last)
You might have made a ton of money and are looking to invest something in a legacy project, how about building a movement spreading generosity around the world instead of building a building?
You might be a tchnology business and can help us build the GFN digital product we want to develop
You might be willing to fund a GFN community activator for the next year to keep the engine running and the movement growing.
You maybe someone who likes the Good for Nothing idea and has some fresh ways of thinking that can help re-boot the rebellion, or crack the sustainable operating model challenge.
You may be none of these but you have an idea to help this next phase.
We would welcome new perspectives and all ideas for sure.
If any of this is interesting please do reach out for a deeper chat via the email below and please do share this with anyone you think might connect with this opportunity.
With much gratitude.
Peace and Out
Dan Burgess and the GFN Mothership crew
#DoGoodinYourHood
#GoodforNothing
#Giftivism
