Earthly Angels – Pamela Hawley, CEO of UniversalGiving

 

About Pamela Hawley

Pamela Hawley is the founder and CEO of UniversalGiving™ (www.UniversalGiving.org), an award-winning nonprofit helping people to donate and volunteer with top performing, vetted organizations all over the world. 100% goes direct to the cause! All organizations are vetted with a proprietary Quality Model™. UniversalGiving Corporate helps manage global CSR for companies, including the strategy, operations and NGO Vetting. Key clients include Cisco, Gap, BHP Billiton, Fluor, RSF Social Finance and Symantec.

Pamela is a winner of the Jefferson Award (the Nobel Prize in Community Service), and has been invited to three Social Innovation events at the White House. UniversalGiving has been featured on the homepage of BusinessWeek, Oprah.com, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Pamela was a finalist for Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award and is an Expert Blogger for Fast Company and CSRWire. She also writes Living and Giving, a daily blog with the mission of “Inspiring Leaders to Live with Excellence and Love.”

Pamela’s community service began at the age of 12. She has volunteered in microfinance in remote villages of India; crisis relief work in the 2000 El Salvador earthquake; sustainable farming in Guatemala; with the victims of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia; and indigenous community preservation in Ecuador. She has a Political Science degree cum laude from Duke University and a Masters in International Communication at the Annenberg School of Communications, USC. Pamela is also an actress, improviser, dancer and singer with over 100 performances in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. You can see her performances at pamelahawley.com.

Most important to Pamela is that she adores her family. Her parents Wally and Alex have been married for more than 50 years. She loves being an aunt to Will, Connor, and Lindsey.

 

Interview Transcript:

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Pamela Hawley. She is the founder of the organization universal giving. Pamela, welcome to the show.

Pamela
Thank you, Alan, thank you for having me.

Alan
So family, let’s start on your background and your you know how you got to this point in your life. Where did this all begin?

Pamela
You know, very much goes back to family for me. I’m very close with my family. My parents have been married for more than 50 years, and we’re just very close. And we have been on a family vacation in Mexico, and we around a traditional marketplace and sombreros, and lots of things to buy and the smell of tortillas and just a really lovely time. And my father and I happen to walk around the marketplace and came upon a call to sack. And in that culture sack we saw all these begging, starving children that were just unwashed some of the maimed. And I just remember being absolutely caught off guard Alan, and the word unacceptable. And it just came across my mind. And from that point on, it really was a life of service. From then on, I started volunteering in many different ways. And what year did this begin? When I was 12 years old.

Alan
12 years old. So well, you started at a very early age. Yes. So, so fast forwarding, then you went through finish your school, went to college education? And then did you right out of school to say I want to do this full time? Or was this a process that evolved in your life?

Pamela
No, it definitely wasn’t that easy, Alan. And I think for a lot of people who are searching in life right now for meaning and for purpose. It does take a search. I think that for me, ever since that time and 12 in Mexico, I started volunteering in East Palo Alto. So I started getting that volunteering thread throughout my entire life, I worked serving meals, working on AFDC payments, which were the welfare payments at the time, worked on translating Spanish, I then went and worked helping animals that didn’t have rights, and then also worked in helping with counseling and helping with G EDS and high school tutoring. So there were many, many different ways I’m saying I’m very causeless on the volunteer friend, I look at it My family has been so loving, which is the greatest wealth that you can have is love from your family and friends, that I wanted to spread that wealth to other people no matter what they faced in their own life. But when I graduated from Duke, I faced a pretty strong midlife crisis. It really wasn’t so easy. Alan, most of my friends were on a track, they were going to become doctors and lawyers and MBAs. And there was no track for me. And social entrepreneurship was not really a real clear industry pathway. And so my dad and I joke that we both went through our midlife crisis at the same time, I was 25. And he was 55. And to be quite honest, I had to leave for jobs. And for years, it was a very uncomfortable time, before I found my calling as a social entrepreneur.

Alan
You eventually then landed in working with universal giving, can you give me a little background on universal giving, then what what exactly you spend time doing?

Pamela
Yes. So universal giving, we have a wonderful team, we’re a website that helps people donate money, and volunteer in more than 100 countries across the world. So you can give $25 to help build a well in Haiti. Or you can go volunteer to build a well in Haiti. Or you can go clean up a river in Tanzania. Or you can go give $100 to help clean up a river in Tanzania as an anniversary gift for your wife or a birthday gift for your son. So we’re all about giving and volunteering all across the world. We’re a marketplace that allows you to do that. And what’s really key about it is two main things that separate us from anyone else. One is we have this fantastic quality model that’s trademarked, where we vet all the organizations very much like a venture capitalist does, to make sure that the experience you’re giving to or you’re volunteering with is of the utmost quality and the best leaders across the world. And the second that is unique to universal giving is 100% of each donation goes directly to the cause that you donate to. So there’s no cut on the donation. We don’t do that. All of it’s free for you to give in to volunteer at Universal giving.

Alan
This amazing because even though there’s a lot of charities out there today, and the fact that you you vet out make sure that the money is going where you intended to go. Not an easy task.

Pamela
No, it’s not easy when I was abroad. And as my thread of volunteering continued throughout my life Allen, I went and volunteered in the earthquake crisis in El Salvador. I went and worked in microfinance on rural villages for our As outside of Bangalore, India, I went and worked with the victims of Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, helping them get technology and web training. And I saw just incredible nonprofits and amazing leaders on the ground there. And at the same time, I also saw incredible fraud.

Alan
Pamela, we need to take a quick break. And we’ll be right back at these messages. And I want to get more into the mission, the universal giving. We’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Pamela Hawley. Pamela is the founder of universal giving, whose mission is to help individuals place their charitable dollars into meaningful causes. Pamela, before the break, and we were talking about universal giving, and when when money goes in, you said that and you also help identify fraud that that’s going on? I don’t want to dwell too much on this. But I’d like to have maybe some expansion on on what are some of the things that you do to make sure in your due diligence that dollars are placed where they’re meant to go?

Pamela
Well, Alan, it’s a good point, because we don’t want our clients and people who are giving and volunteering to dwell on it much either. And that’s why we handle it behind the scenes. I think briefly, when I came back from a lot of my volunteer and development work across the world in more than 20 countries, what I saw was incredible leaders, and then also incredible fraud. So I came back with a six stage quality model that would vet finances, terrorist acts, project success. But we found as we’ve continued to evolve, Alan that that expanded into 24 different stages. So it’s something that can be customized for people coming to us wanting more or less in depth due diligence. But our point is to make sure that you can trust the project and not have to focus on this. So we take care of that for you.

Alan
You actually go on in the ground, meaning with the charity in the different locations and countries.

Pamela
You know, we do have a team of worldwide experts that we have on the ground, we’re not able to meet with every project. But we do often have meetings, a lot of times with the leaders in our office too. But often we will Skype with the leaders or have personal contact. But leadership is very important, as we know, in Silicon Valley, and with the whole venture capitalist community, they’ll say what’s a good idea? Okay, it passes muster, what’s good for the marketplace that passes muster. And the next thing they say is I want to meet the management team. We feel just as strongly about our nonprofit partners.

Alan
Who’s your who’s your target client? Is it a charitable foundation? Is it an individual, but who do you really seek to help place charitable dollars?

Pamela
Well, really, I think that’s what universal giving defies is that we can reach anyone. On the individual side, often we see that women aged 25 to 65, or educated are very, very strong givers. So we see that they’re very philanthropically minded. And they’re some of our top clients as individuals. But I would also say, a lot of students are wanting to give kids are giving as young as 10 years old, we had a 10 year old give on universal giving, they found out about us and devoted part of their school project to us. So it’s really age agnostic giving is these days, and it really can be anyone.

Alan
And is there is a minimum amount that you’re working through or?

Pamela
$5. So you’d have to give a minimum of $5. And that just helps us when we’re processing things and fees for our nonprofits as well too.

Alan
So it’s easy to give.

Pamela
That’s absolutely right. We want to level that playing field that anyone who wants to give can it’s not that old postulate when I’m 50. And make it big, then I’ll give back people want to give now.

Alan
Donations tax deductible. Absolutely. So when when a person has a cause, for example, recently, there was a typhoon over in the Philippines devastated the city of Tacloban. An individual comes to you and says, Pamela, I got some dollars. I like to help out. How quickly are you ready to address getting money to the causes.

Pamela
We have an incredibly responsive crisis team. And that crisis team is going and sourcing and vetting the top crisis NGOs all across the world. So we already have a list of those top leaders. And the minute that crisis happens, we turn them on, you can go right to universal giving.org click on the banner and the banner features the latest crisis.

Alan
So Pamela, the if people are interested in getting involved with universal giving, do you also have a volunteer Your section or is it primarily just funding and donating the dollars to the causes?

Pamela
No, it’s both. It’s giving in the volunteering and volunteering is a very strong component on universal giving. People are volunteering in different countries in Africa, in Tanzania, in Uganda, Kenya, all over, as well as other places in South America and Central America. It’s really all over the world. And they’re doing amazing things such as serving in orphanages, helping clean up rivers, going and working in constructing wells and innovative lighting projects. There’s a really neat project to where people are bicycling for their electricity. Imagine Alan how if we would keep the lights on in our home, if we had that connection that we had to bicycle to keep the lights on. I love the fact that it makes us so much more conscious about how we use our resources.

Alan
Pamela, this is all wonderful stuff. It’s you know, I’m really touched with the way that you’re able to dress but the monetary and also people that want to give our sir, we need to take a quick break. And we’ll be right back after this message. I want to talk a little more on universal giving but also the values behind that.

Alan
Welcome back. I’m visiting here today with Pamela Hawley. She is the founder of universal giving an organization that strives to help individuals place their charitable dollars into the right organizations worldwide to help different causes and also not only his charitable dollars, but people that want to get out and serve help their fellow man pamphlet, how many organizations does charitable giving work with.

Pamela
The universal giving works with a lot of different organizations. And what we do is we have a basis of about 200 that are strongly vetted. Now we work with 1000s more, because we also have a second service Allen that goes into companies helping them with their corporate social responsibility programming. So we go into Cisco, and with floor company, and GAAP and BHP Billiton, and we help them with their CSR, their corporate social responsibility programs all over the world. Now that service, we work with 1000s NGOs all over the world. And actually companies charge we charge them. And they pay us for that. So we’re social entrepreneurship, we have one free service and one service where we charge with companies. So the companies we have 1000s, for our public site, we have about 200 organizations that we vet on a regular basis for our clients, you know.

Alan
And with that model, then people can be reassured since your overhead costs have been covered to the NGO, when they come to you and a 10 year old wants to give $5 to the cause. That’s why it all goes 100% Your donation boils down to that it all goes direct, I’m going to turn the page I want to talk about you, okay? What motivates you in life to do the things that you’re doing?

Pamela
I think very much goes back to family and that model that family has, my parents are just incredibly generous people. And they’re very grounded. And I grew up in that atmosphere, and wanted to give that atmosphere to other people. So coming up, you know, going back to what we talked about at the beginning, love is the greatest wealth we can have. And my parents gave me an absolute 100% perfect sense of love modeling in their lives, how to treat people, how to find something you love to do and go after that in life, how to be good people who are spiritually minded and caring about others. For me, that’s the same model that I want to follow. And it’s not just about universal giving, it has to be about your day to day, you know, I wrote an article called philanthropy at the dry cleaners, because Alan I was on my way rushing to work and dumped off my dry cleaning and hardly even said hello to them and rushed off to my job at 8:30am. To do philanthropy. Well, philanthropy is the love of people. And if you’re not loving people throughout the entire day, then you’ve missed your cause. Philanthropy isn’t nine to five. So my point is, is you should be able to have the time where we can to connect with a dry cleaner to smile at a homeless person to be kind and loving. And I find that’s a huge and exciting challenge in life that every moment we can be loving.

Alan
So family, you see things in your life that few people do because of how you’ve chosen to define your pathway. When you reflect back on the different causes and projects you work with what’s given you the greatest impact or No more feeling of emotion.

Pamela
You know, I think there’s a couple of nonprofits that have really struck me a lot at Universal giving. And one is kids for kids International. They are incredibly enthusiastic work very, very hard support kids all over the world. The second is to Raja Academy, they are a an academy for African girls, girls who would not have any chance for education, they get uniforms and books and training, and most importantly, self esteem and empowerment. Deborah Santana is a person who is very strong and has supported them and amazing philanthropist and leader in our world. And so we look for organizations like that, that have strong leaders and strong impact across the world. And those are the organizations that we promote. And so those are the organizations that just give me just tremendous humble pride, if you will, of seeing that they’re enthusiastic, they’re giving you the world, and they appreciate how universal giving promotes them, because it’s not just giving and volunteering, we’ll also market them, promote them out on social media, we want everyone to know about them. So those are the things that give me a lot of joy with our nonprofit partners.

Alan
So Pamela is is you reflect back in life and and we bring in the term leadership, how would you define leadership to for what you do?

Pamela
Leadership has an incredibly sincere capacity to listen to others, and to respond with a sense of love and direction. And that love and direction have to go hand in hand. Some might also say love and truth. There’s an amazing quote that I love living by, I’m have to remember the author. But basically, it said that love without truth is hypocrisy. And truth without love, is being mean. So the point is, is that love and truth is that you’ve got to really be loving and truthful in leadership, being honest, but kind, being compassionate, but directive. And that’s where we feel most loved. We don’t feel loved and leadership by just saying yes to everything. We want direction. That’s true for parenting. It’s true for leadership. It’s true for marriages, anything that way. We want both of that love and truth guiding us every moment. Have you found balance in your life? Well, first of all, priorities are number one, having quiet time, for me personally, with God or some type of spiritual background I recommend for people is very, very important to me. That is something I can’t go out with any day. My mom was a tremendous model. I remember growing up, she and still to this day, has that quiet time in the morning without fail. And it is something that is that I strive to do as well. She guides our family, she protects it, she leaves it with her prayers, I feel that our family feels that and I try and model that for my life and for others impacted by my life as well. Second would then be family. You know, a lot of the nonprofit causes in the world, Alan, are created because of the dearth of family, the breakdown of family, or the absence of family. And the best thing we can do to give back to the world is to create strong, giving family members who know they’re loved and have a purpose in life, then you can go to your cause. But even when you go to your cause, like I do with universal giving, even then you’ve got to have balance. And for me, I take long walks I walk to and work every day, I don’t go to a gym, on my way to walking, I pray over my gratitudes I make phone calls to appreciate people or business calls me another thing I think you need is very, very important. We absolutely have to have a sense of levity in life. You must be laughing or doing something fun and for me, Alan, that’s improv. So I perform improv in LA and San Francisco keeps me on my toes. It’s great partnership work, you’ve got to have joy. I always ask this question when people are laughing. Can they be thinking anything negative or stressful? No. So laughter has to be one of the greatest must have joys in life.

Alan
I’m visiting here today with Pamela Hawley and she’s the founder of universal giving. Pamela we need to take a quick break and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back and visit here today with Pamela Hawley. She is the founder of universal giving an organization that assist other charitable causes throughout the world both in Giving dollars and time to to fulfill their missions. Pamela, we had we talked her you touched a little bit in the prior segment about the youth today. How how can universal giving assist the youth and giving them a greater hope for the challenges that they see out in this world today?

Pamela
You know, it is a tremendously challenging time. But let’s first start with a positive because I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen such a group of people, I’d say 90% of them are just bent on doing meaningful work right out of the gate of college. And we’ve never seen that before. And to me, it is so exciting. Now, I also feel for them because they’re putting so much pressure on themselves to make sure that what they’re doing is meaningful. So what I would say is, you really got to jump in. And even though there’s 25% unemployment rate, in all these daunting figures, there is a place for you, you’re on this earth for a reason, there’s a place for you. There is not a sense of wandering or hopelessness, people have to realize they say to me, Oh, your life looks so perfect. This was easy for you. Remember, I went through my midlife crisis at 25, leaving four jobs in four years, it wasn’t easy. I was out of work for a year, I even Alan got fired as a waitress because my hand shook. I just wanted to serve, it didn’t work. But the point is, I put myself out there. And you’ve got to keep trying again. And again, to find what’s right for you. One thing that can give a lot of young people hope is to take on an internship. And universal giving has a phenomenal program that way people come in, they spend three months or six months with us. And we give them incredible professional experience working in our nonprofit business unit marketing, corporate social responsibility, development and fundraising operations executive assistant, and they can apply right on the homepage of our site underneath jobs at the bottom. Now, internships give you incredible professional experience, we literally will have people pitching radio stations for us for coverage, or pitching marketing partnership, or outreach in NGOs in Tanzania to get them registered on universal giving. So you get real life experience, you can put that on your resume, and we’ll give you recommendations. So when it’s tough out there, and when people are feeling hopeless, find a way to give, could be in an internship could be volunteering, but find some way to give even if it’s part time and get started.

Alan
I understand that you are very involved in corporate social responsibility. And can you tell us more about what that is? CSR?

Pamela
Yes, Corporate Social Responsibility is a tremendous ability for corporations to give back not only in their local communities, but all across the world. For example, one of our greatest clients, Cisco, they have operations in more than 40 countries across the world. They have incredible programs and giving and volunteering that work on education and technology. We also have gap as a as a client, floor saber, so many wonderful groups out there who are doing great work. And what we do for our clients, is we help them come up with the program and planning to do a global volunteer strategy, or to figure out how do I help all my employees give all across the world? How do I come up with a giving strategy that has some similarities, but then some uniqueness, if it’s in India, if it’s in Brazil, if it’s in Mexico, so we come up with a plan that’s scalable, and has some elements that are the same, but then other ones that can be customized for each local region, the customs and the mores in that area? And then what we do is we help them scale into 40 different countries, who’s running the programs? What are the communications plans? How can they pick the right volunteer opportunities? How can they amass their employees to give in to volunteer, and then we vet the NGOs. This is one of our prime services, Allen, that companies pay us to vet NGOs with our 24 Stage quality model. And every month, we probably come up with a new stage based on our innovation, or what clients are telling us. And so we’re making sure that our companies are protected. They can go out there, their employees can give them volunteer with freedom. And the companies what this helps them with is their positive brand. It helps with their employee staying with the company. So employee retention because the employees feel good about their company. It also helps with client attraction, because clients say, Oh, this is a good steward in our community. And it also helps you with that local license to operate. If you’re a company on the ground, going in and doing digging into the earth or setting up warehouses or factories. Very important. You have strong local relationships and we can help there.

Alan
Am I How does an individual contact universal giving to get involved?

Pamela
I would direct you right to our website. It’s universal giving dot o RG and it’s thank you for our vision of creating a world where giving and volunteering are a natural part of everyday life.

Alan
And visiting here today with Pamela Holly. She is the founder of universal giving family thanks for being on today. So thank you Alan

 

 

We hope you enjoyed this interview; “Earthly Angels – Pamela Hawley, CEO of UniversalGiving”.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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