Give A Brick started life as a fundraising idea: A way to raise lots of money to build a community centre to improve life in one small community in South Wales.
How? Social media – Twitter, Facebook, blogging – and building relationships – talking to people, making them smile, sharing our passion and stories.
The thing is, social media is a bit like a snow ball. It takes quite a bit of shoving to get it up the hill and going but when you reach the top and let go, it grows and grows and becomes unstoppable.
So? Having got the snowball going, why stop it?
Why not instead use the power of social media, social good, to continue raising money to give to other groups in other communities around the world, to make more people smile?
That was the day Give A Brick became a charity.
So what do we do? We’re experimenting with a new way of doing charity. Instead of employing a sales force of fund-raisers and spending hard earned donations on flashy TV adverts, we rely wholly on the love and goodwill of individuals. (Our savy business friend tells me I should take a wage. The stuff on this page is the reason I don’t want to. I’d prefer to build my own business so it can support Give A Brick!)
We make our own home made videos and use the power of free YouTube to get them in front of lots of eye balls. Instead of costly adverts in the newspapers and magazines, we talk to our friends on Twitter and Facebook. We’re learning new techniques and experimenting with new ways of getting our message to the world. UStream is our latest thing. We had a trial run at the Give A Brick Cocktail Thing and hope to use it for even better good stuff during the weekend of our Give A Brick Fireworks Party.
What is our message?
Love.
For us specifically, the love of one God who sent his boy Jesus. But religion is a messy subject. History tells me that it has started and fuelled more wars that it has won. So I don’t like to talk religion and theology and beliefs. You start talking like that and people feel excluded.
Give A Brick is about empowering unconditional love across this whole wonderful world of us. Period.
We recognise that everyone is on a journey and where we’re at with Jesus might not be where you’re at. And we’re cool with that. We just want you to know that the stuff we’re doing? We’re doing it as a way to show Jesus to a world that, throughout history, has been shown a pretty poor imitation of Him.
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Our remit (the stuff that our paper work says we can support) is huge: children, young people, elderly people, people facing financial hardship.
It’s huge for a reason – it allows us to financially support just about any organisation that is about expressing love.
Our first major project is that community centre in South Wales but we’ve also given smaller grants.
We gave £10 for an impoverished blogger to start his own business. We gave £350 to a poor student who was about to fail his course because he couldn’t pay his fees. We’re about to give an Under 11 football team the money they desperately need to buy football kit. We’re also in negotiations with a new not-for-profit co-operative aimed at stamping out poverty.
So what do we do?
We use the web to raise money to pay for projects that help people feel loved. You can read more about that on Our Mission page.
Questions? Shoot. Tell me what is missing from this page. You’ll be helping me out 