<THE FOOL PORTFOLIO>
Invest in Giving
The Fool's second annual SOS drive
by David Gardner ([email protected])
We're asking each of you, members of the Foolish worldwide community, to look into your heart and over your bank or brokerage statement. We hope every Fool will come forward and contribute anything from $1 to $10,000 to the oldest, most successful online group-giving effort in Internet history. The end of our drive is December 31st.
ALEXANDRIA, VA (Nov. 19, 1998) -- Today, in this space, we take a break from our regular efforts in order to encourage you to work with us to broaden The Motley Fool community's efforts in a different direction: giving.
New Fools may not know that last year we tried something risky and exciting. Out of the blue, The Motley Fool announced the Fool Charity Fund, the Internet's first ever group-giving campaign. It was a holiday charity drive designed, built, and executed directly from right here, at fool.com. We found a fine charity (you, our Foolish contributors, chose it), and together we raised over $120,000 in just six weeks. That money opened up numerous community kitchens around the U.S., a few of which we have since had the pleasure of visiting. (And it was amazing to think, during our visits, that we all contributed to building those.) If you're new, you can find out all about the success of the venture by clicking here. Our Foolish team effort also got a full page writeup in the esteemed Chronicle of Philanthropy. It was history in the making.
OK, so I expect you're not surprised to find out that we're BAAAA-AAAAAAACK! And Foolisher than ever.
The Motley Fool's mission involves helping you save money, helping you invest and grow money, and helping you give money away. Obviously, during the holiday season we will be focusing unusually large amounts of attention on the last of those. And after a fourth consecutive strong year for the stock market, we hope you will join the Foolish worldwide community this year as we all prepare to give something back -- once again through the help of our charity partners, Share Our Strength.
I want to tell you briefly about Share Our Strength (SOS). Founded by charity visionary Billy Shore (who'll be on The Motley Fool Radio Show this weekend), SOS is a nationwide non-profit espousing that each of us should take whatever we're best at and donate a little of it to others. In this case, making money through investing has been our personal strong suit, and we know that many of you have done so as well. Thus, in giving back some portion of our earnings, we are "sharing our strength."
SOS will provide our money to a host of food distribution programs all across America. A bit about that. Today 35.6 million Americans live below the poverty line, defined as $16,400 for a family of four. Forty percent of those living in poverty are children under the age of 18, who simply do not get enough to eat.
The Motley Fool is all about creating solutions to any problem of serious magnitude that we can find. Many of you know of our work in the financial world, whether it has been getting millions of people the HECK away from their managed mutual funds, or inducing companies to open up their earnings conference calls, or testifying before Congress on better ways that investors might be served by their government. (Plus, we've taken more shots at state lotteries than bad golfers take in a week at Augusta.) But our Foolish mission runs far deeper. We really are out to locate any big problem, and create and effect a solution to it; the power of the Internet provides us our primary means of achieving this. What better effort this holiday season than to help those who are starving through The Fool Charity Fund?
SOS has long demonstrated a record not just of feeding people fish, but of teaching them how to fish. The attractive thing about its support of Foodchain's community kitchens is that this program not only feeds people, it employs hungry people who then get job skills to work in the food services industry so that they never need to go hungry again. It is this total-solutions approach to hunger that makes SOS such an attractive partner. That, and the knowledge that 89.5 cents of every dollar that SOS takes in goes right to work (only 10 and 1/2 cents is spent on administrative costs), which is well above the national average for non-profits.
OK, now you know about SOS. Let me tell you tonight about what The Motley Fool is doing right now. First off, we're doing all of the work to organize and execute this gratis -- our first donation. Second, we're filling the kitty with $5000 right away, to kick things off. And third, we have a new initiative this year, called "Here's My Two Cents." For every new posting to The Motley Fool website message boards that goes up between now and December 31, we will donate two more cents to this Foolish cause. Thus, for posting good stuff on our message boards at www.fool.com, you will literally be feeding people! (I don't mean to be glib about that, but it's actually true.) That's why we call it the "Here's My Two Cents" plan. Feel free to clog up our boards with great posts, though do note of course that all such posts must be in usual accordance with our basic Fool's Rules (no spamming, no bad language, etc. -- you know the deal).
Now� what can you do? Well, first off, you can contribute. We don't care about the amount -- that's for each of us to decide. What we do care about is that each Fool might make the effort to give, at some point in the next six weeks. Even if it's just a single dollar.
In fact, we're making it as easy as possible to give, via our new Contribute Now page which lists the many ways you can give (mail, fax, telephone, and direct charges online, the ultimate in convenience). And for all holiday gift orders put in at our online store (www.foolmart.com), we offer the convenience of just tacking on a bit extra right there on your order. And of course, all over our site for the next six weeks you'll see links back to these things. You won't be able to miss "Contribute Now."
A special note: Giving stock is the most Foolish way to give of all, because you don't have to pay any capital gains tax on shareholdings given to charity. So if you're sitting on appreciated stock, you should absolutely consider doing what I did last year: give it! You can give more this way, in fact, because you don't ever have to pay Uncle Sam. Details on exactly how to give this way are right here.
We also have a message board open for discussion about the Fund, about giving in general, tax help for those giving to charities, and general Fool rah-rah discussion for those who are fired up about this effort. Let me make it crystal-clear that I'd love to hear about any questions, suggestions, or comments you have about this new initiative: The new message board resides in the Fool Cafe folder. You can access the message board directly just by clicking here.
And now it's time to close.
As we assert in You Have More Than You Think, money is really just synonymous with opportunity. Money is the opportunity to retire early, to buy a house, to put a child through college. And when you give money away, you're giving that opportunity to someone else. There is no nobler use of the stuff. Please help us help each other do just that, and let all your friends know about the effort!
FOOL ON!
-- David Gardner, November 19, 1998
HOW TO GIVE:
Just click directly into our "Contribute Now" page. We have tried to make the donation process terribly simple.
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Today's FoolWatch: all the latest in Fooldom.
Day Month Year History Annualized FOOL -1.81% 19.60% 91.33% 542.11% 54.26% S&P: +0.71% 4.91% 18.77% 151.44% 23.98% NASDAQ: +1.17% 8.37% 22.25% 166.56% 25.67% Rec'd # Security In At Now Change 8/5/94 1420 AmOnline 1.82 83.75 4506.16% 9/9/97 580 Amazon.com 19.11 153.25 701.90% 5/17/95 1960 Iomega Cor 1.28 8.13 534.56% 10/1/96 84 LucentTech 23.81 87.44 267.26% 8/12/96 130 AT&T 39.58 62.94 59.02% 4/30/97 -1170*Trump* 8.47 4.56 46.13% 2/20/98 200 Exxon 64.09 70.00 9.22% 2/20/98 215 DuPont 59.83 60.69 1.43% 2/20/98 270 Int'l Pape 47.69 45.25 -5.12% 8/13/96 250 3Com Corp. 46.86 39.38 -15.98% 8/24/95 130 KLA-Tencor 44.71 36.38 -18.65% 7/2/98 235 Starbucks 55.91 43.94 -21.41% 1/8/98 425 3Dfx 25.67 14.38 -44.00% 6/26/97 325 Innovex 27.71 14.94 -46.09% Rec'd # Security In At Value Change 8/5/94 1420 AmOnline 2581.87 118925.00$116343.13 9/9/97 580 Amazon.com 11084.24 88885.00 $77800.76 5/17/95 1960 Iomega Cor 2509.60 15925.00 $13415.40 10/1/96 84 LucentTech 1999.88 7344.75 $5344.87 4/30/97 -1170*Trump* -9908.50 -5338.13 $4570.38 8/12/96 130 AT&T 5145.11 8181.88 $3036.77 2/20/98 200 Exxon 12818.00 14000.00 $1182.00 2/20/98 215 DuPont 12864.25 13047.81 $183.56 2/20/98 270 Int'l Pape 12876.75 12217.50 -$659.25 8/24/95 130 KLA-Tencor 5812.49 4728.75 -$1083.74 8/13/96 250 3Com Corp. 11715.99 9843.75 -$1872.24 7/2/98 235 Starbucks 13138.63 10325.31 -$2813.31 6/26/97 325 Innovex 9005.62 4854.69 -$4150.93 1/8/98 425 3Dfx 10908.63 6109.38 -$4799.25 CASH $12005.75 TOTAL $321056.44</THE FOOL PORTFOLIO>
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