The Mistake I Made

When I Couldn’t Do Everything, I Did Nothing

There is a mistake I made for years that I didn’t recognize as a mistake at the time.
Through my work and travels, I’ve had the privilege of meeting people doing extraordinary things in their communities. Community leaders. Nonprofit founders. Young people. Public health professionals. Advocates. People who understood the challenges facing their communities because they lived them every day.

They weren’t waiting for someone to come in and save them. They had ideas. They had relationships. They had the passion and local knowledge to make those ideas work. What they often didn’t have was enough money to get started. And sometimes, the amount standing between an idea and action wasn’t hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was $5,000 or less. In fact, I never heard a number over $7,500.

I remember hearing those numbers and thinking to myself: “I wish I could just give them the money.” But I couldn’t. I didn’t have an extra $5,000 to give every time I encountered an idea I believed deserved a chance. So, more often than I’d like to admit, I did nothing. I wished them well. I hoped they would find the funding. I hoped someone with more resources would eventually discover what they were doing and decide to help. Then I moved on.

Looking back, that was the mistake I made. I created a choice that didn’t actually exist. Without realizing it, I had reduced philanthropy to two options:

• Solve the whole problem—or do nothing.
• If a project needed $5,000 and I couldn’t provide $5,000, then somehow I had convinced myself that I couldn’t really help.

I think a lot of us do this. We hear about a family that needs help and think, I can’t possibly cover everything they need. We see a nonprofit raising $50,000 and think, What difference is my $10 going to make? We watch enormous humanitarian crises unfold and feel powerless because the scale of the need is so much greater than anything we could personally address. So we hope someone else will. Someone wealthier. Someone with a foundation. Someone with influence. Someone with the resources to actually make a difference. Someone other than us.

That feeling can look like compassion—we care deeply about what is happening—but sometimes our sense of helplessness becomes an excuse for inaction. That’s what happened to me. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t care. The problem was that I had decided what I had to offer wasn’t enough. What If I Had Given What I Could?

Eventually, I started asking myself a different question. Instead of: “Why can’t I give them the $5,000?” I started asking: “Why did I ever think I had to find the entire $5,000 alone?” That question changed everything. Maybe I couldn’t give $5,000. But I could have given $5. I could have given $50. I could have shared their story with five people. I could have made an introduction. I could have asked someone in my network if they knew someone who could help. I could have volunteered my expertise. I could have simply said: “I believe in what you’re doing. Let me see who else might believe in it too.”

None of those actions would have solved the entire problem on their own. But they were not nothing and that’s the distinction I had missed. We have a tendency to measure the value of our contribution against the size of the problem. When the problem is enormous and our contribution is small, it can feel insignificant but perhaps we are using the wrong measurement.

Maybe my $5 was never supposed to become $5,000 by itself. Maybe it was supposed to meet your $5. And hers. And his. And theirs. Until eventually, what none of us could do individually became entirely possible collectively. We Were Never Supposed to Do It Alone.

That realization has fundamentally changed the way I think about philanthropy. We celebrate individual generosity—and we should. But I’m increasingly interested in what happens when we stop asking how much one person can give and start asking how many people we can invite to participate because there is tremendous power in participation.

One person may not be able to fund a $5,000 community project but 1,000 people giving $5 can. Ten people may not have the expertise a community organization needs but perhaps one of those ten knows the person who does. One social media post may not change the world, but it might reach the person who makes the introduction that changes something for one community.
That’s collective action. And importantly, money is only one part of it.

People bring relationships.
People bring ideas.
People bring expertise.
People bring stories.
People bring access.
People bring advocacy.
People bring other people.
Money can fund an idea.
A community can help that idea grow.

The Lesson Behind Seed Change Collective

This realization became one of the ideas that eventually helped shape Seed Change Collective.

I didn’t want to build an organization based on the assumption that meaningful philanthropy requires extraordinary wealth. I wanted to explore something different: What could happen if ordinary people stopped underestimating what they have to offer? What if we could bring small contributions together, place those resources behind locally led ideas, and then show people what their collective generosity helped make possible? What if someone who has only $1 to give could participate alongside someone who has $100? What if the person who can’t give anything financially today could still share a project with a friend? What if philanthropy became less about the size of an individual gift and more about our willingness to participate in something together? That is much closer to the future of giving I want to help build and it begins with correcting the mistake I made.

Just Plant Something

I still encounter problems I cannot solve. I still hear ideas that deserve resources I personally cannot provide. I still see needs around the world that are far bigger than anything one organization—or one person—could ever address. The difference is that I no longer believe my inability to do everything gives me permission to do nothing. Neither should you.

You don’t have to fund the whole project.
You don’t have to solve the whole problem.
You don’t have to change an entire community.
You don’t need thousands of dollars.
You don’t even need all the answers.
Do what you can with what you have.
Give something.
Share something.
Introduce someone.
Volunteer.
Advocate.
Invite another person to care with you.

Because maybe the small thing you have to offer was never supposed to solve the entire problem. Maybe it was simply supposed to be planted alongside what someone else could offer and maybe, together, we can grow something neither of us could have grown alone.

Just plant something. 🌱

— Antoine B. Richards
Founder & Executive Director, Seed Change Collective