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You are listening to the Hidden Lightness on America out loud talk radio.
I'm your host Jimmy Hinton.
You remember the delivery driver in Tennessee, the elderly man who had a fundraiser.
There was a woman who named Brittany Smith who saw him coming up the steps and he was
caught on her ring camera.
She delivered Starbucks to the home via DoorDash and she felt really bad for him.
He was working into his 80s and couldn't afford retirement.
She started to go fund me and that go fund me is about to reach $1 million.
I'd say that's pretty healthy retirement for him and his wife so it's really cool and
it was a heartwarming story and it should be.
But there's another one in the news.
It's another driver, another delivery driver.
He's a dominoes driver and it's another state.
This is in the state of Idaho.
The gentleman was 70 years old and he shows up at a door and dominoes had called the customer
and said our delivery driver had just left and unfortunately we were out of soda.
That was part of the order.
They had ordered a couple of two-liter bottles.
The store was out.
The customer had already paid and now the driver was gone and so they were just alerting
the customer saying you're probably not going to get your soda.
It turns out that the delivery driver stopped and paid for soda with his own money on the
way to deliver to the customer.
The customer, Brian Wilson, was actually really touched by this.
You see he had ordered a diet coke to go with his family's meal.
Then he got the voicemail from dominoes and said that they didn't have any diet
coke left.
So the driver shows up and Wilson was absolutely shocked to see two liters of diet coke with
the pizza.
He was like, well, I thought that they were out of soda must have been some kind of mix-up.
So in the viral video, because of course Mr. Wilson uploaded the video to TikTok, but
you can hear Dan the delivery driver say that he stopped at the store on his own to pick
up the soda.
Paid for it with his own money and he was going to have none of it.
Can't show up to a customer without soda, especially if the customer paid for it.
Well, who's going to pay for it?
The delivery driver.
So with his own money, he bought soda.
Now it's not that huge of a deal.
If we're talking about monetary value, you're talking what, a couple bucks, a little bit
of time that it took for him to stop at the store, but it's the fact that he did a really
kind gesture and that's what blew away Mr. Wilson.
So Brian Wilson was blown away in his own words.
He was blown away.
It shocked him.
Here's a quote.
He said, we're honestly blown away.
That level of care and kindness is rare these days.
That's what he wrote on, you guessed it, a GoFundMe page.
Now I'm going to take a little bit of issue with that.
Not the fact that he started to go fund me.
I think that's really cool.
I think it's noble.
I'm all for it.
When you have somebody in their 70s who's still working hard, and by the way, this was
his second job, you have somebody working in their 70s, and they're clearly working
hard.
They have a good work ethic.
He went out of his way to make sure that the customer had the soda that the store ran
out of.
I'm all for rewarding that behavior, 100%, I'm 100% behind that.
I love that there's a GoFundMe.
It's already raised tens of thousands of dollars.
I think that's incredible.
I think it's great.
I'm not one of these funny duds.
It's like, wow, what they get rewarded for doing their job?
What about other people?
What about other people that do kind things, and they don't get GoFundMe's?
There's always going to be that naysayer that they take issue with this.
We ignore those voices.
I think it's a great thing.
I'm all for it.
I love that stories like this touch the hearts of Americans, and that Americans step up to
the plate.
That's the bigger story.
But this idea that this level of care and kindness is a rare thing, I disagree with that.
Now, I'm not here to criticize Brian Wilson.
Don't mishear me.
I'm not here to split hairs.
I'm not here to pick on the homeowner for doing something kind.
I think it's fantastic.
I think it did the right thing.
The fact that he started to goFundMe, really cool, great idea.
But this idea that it's a rare thing.
That level of care and kindness is rare these days.
I disagree with that.
I'm not disagreeing to rain on anybody's party.
I'm disagreeing because I see so many stories, time and time and time again day in and
day out of people going above and beyond.
Now I just shared a story the other day with somebody.
We were talking about passports and I forget how this came up.
But somehow this idea of passports and when you renew and don't renew and all that kind
of stuff that came up and it reminded me of a story back in 2019 I had to update my
passport.
I had just been in Haiti and had zero problem.
But when I returned a couple months later I was going to Ecuador and Ecuador had just
recently changed their policy that if your passport was going to expire within six months
of your trip you had to have it renewed.
They wouldn't let you, they wouldn't allow you to come into the country.
Alright, fine, no problem.
I've renewed my passport plenty of times before.
So you mail it in, you have to mail your old passport in and to make a long story short
it ended up taking a couple of months and I did this with plenty of time before the trip.
Plenty of time.
Typically it takes I don't know a couple of weeks, three weeks at the most.
But for some reason the government was working extra slow.
I know this is a shocker, this comes as a shocker to most of you.
I know that.
The government's known for being expedient, right?
They're very quick at what they do.
They're very efficient at what they do.
Of course I'm being sarcastic.
You never know what you're going to get with the government.
So this was a time where my old passport got lost or tied up or something.
And I was trying to track it and they were like, well, your passport's in Connecticut.
And this is, I'm talking days before the trip, like a couple days before the trip.
And I was like, alright, I'll drive to Connecticut.
I used to do that a lot when I drove truck, I would flip the trip and you know, that up
and back you're talking maybe, I don't know, depending on where it's at in Connecticut,
you're talking maybe 15, 16 hours.
Not a big deal.
I will do that.
I will personally drive there to get the passport.
Well, we can't do that.
We can't just give you the new passport.
So I, alright, then give me my old one back.
And the nearest place was Philadelphia if you wanted to do an expedited passport, but
you had to have your old passport in hand.
So I was like, no matter which way I turn, it's a problem.
Alright, so they kept messing me around and they were like, it's coming.
It's shown that your new passport is done.
I'm like, then why is it not sent?
If it's done, just put the dumb thing in the mail.
Then they had a tracking number for it.
They're like, well, we do have a mailing tracking number.
So I looked it up.
That tracking number dated back like a week.
And it showed that there had been a tracking order that had been generated, but it never
actually left the facility.
So I'm like, you got to be kidding.
A week.
For seven days, this thing's been sitting here.
And you guys didn't think to drop it in the mail.
So anyway, this kind of went back and forth, back and forth.
Finally, the day before I was to leave on this trip, it showed that it made it like
30 miles north to the next USPS facility.
And I'm like, I'm scrambling and I'm like, come on, come on, come on, come on.
So I go to my post office and I'm like, look, I need this passport.
I'm literally leaving in the morning for Ecuador with my family.
And I was leading a group from church.
I had to have it.
And they're like, well, we can contact your route driver and see if she can kind of maybe
just deliver it early.
And I'm like, well, that's assuming that it comes down from the hub that it's at.
So long story short, they won't give me her number, which is fine.
I'm perfect.
Like, I'm not saying that people should demand that we get the personal cell phone number
of our mail carriers.
So I get it.
I'm cool with that.
But I'm at the mercy of now my mail carrier.
Long behold, the next morning, it's like eight o'clock in the morning.
She shows up at my house in the mail truck and she hands me my new passport.
I'm like, how did you pull this off?
She's like, well, I had to drive up to where it was to guarantee that we had it.
I had to drive 30 miles, 60 miles round trip.
She drove up there personally, got my passport, hand delivered it to me.
And as soon as that passport was in my hand, we took off for the airport.
And I made the trip.
And I tell the story to tell you that I see these kinds of things every single day in my
own life when I talk to other people over and over and over again.
And it's not well to do people.
It's not people that are just they have extra time and they have extra money and they just
do the stuff because they can.
It's ordinary people like you and I, it's hardworking Americans.
It's people in their 70s who are who are still delivering pizzas to try to make ends meet.
Those are the ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things every single day.
So I don't think this is that rare of a thing.
I really don't.
I think that we live in a nation where people are just incredibly generous.
They're generous with their time, they're generous with their money.
They go above and beyond constantly and that's why I have such little patients whenever
people trash Americans.
When they target young people and talk about how lazy they are.
When they target poor people, say they'll never amount to anything.
When they target wealthy people and say that they're rich and greedy, I don't like when
Americans trash Americans, we're all in this country together.
And the reality is that it doesn't matter if people are extremely rich or extremely
poor or anything in between, American people for the most part go above and beyond.
Now that's not to say that there aren't ignorant people out there, there are.
That's not to say that there aren't abusive people out there, there are.
That's not to say that there aren't selfish people and prideful people and evil people.
Oh, they exist, they're out there.
But the majority of the American people go above and beyond.
I've seen this over and over and over again.
And the reason I'm saying this is because it's so easy to fall into this temptation to
feel like most people are lazy to feel like most people don't care.
To feel like most people wouldn't lift a finger to help anybody else and they would rather
watch their neighbor rot and rye then pain then to actually step in and do something to
help them.
That is not there's a difference between feelings and reality.
And I would argue that reality shows us time and time again that most Americans, and
I'm not saying it's like 99% but I would say at least 60 to 75% of people.
They will go above and beyond if they understand, if they know that there's a need, if they
know that somebody else is suffering, I'd say that the majority of Americans would do
something that they do do something to help people in need.
And I love that about America.
I love that we're a great nation.
I love that we're a nation that's wealthy, that our economy's doing well.
Even though it doesn't feel that way sometimes, we have to look at the reality.
And people consistently and constantly go above and beyond.
So that's number one really cool.
Number two, it's really cool that the American people when they see people do kind things,
it moves them.
It moves their heart, it motivates them.
And I absolutely love that.
Over last year, I highlighted Ryan Trayhan's journey across America and how his goal was
to raise $1 million for St. Jude's research hospital.
And he ended up, I think there was $11 million or somewhere close to $12 million that
Ryan Trayhan ended up raising.
The American people went above and beyond, I mean people went nuts to help.
They were like busting down the door like, hey, how can we do more?
It was businesses.
It was individuals.
That was at a time when people were saying how bad the economy was and inflation was the
worst that it had ever been.
And he raised a record amount of money.
This is who we are as Americans.
And this is good news.
Well, we'll talk more about this story after the break.
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Dan the delivery guy.
He has been dubbed that way anyway.
He's a delivery man with dominoes who is just a few weeks away from retiring, but he's
in his 70s and he's been working his job with dominoes as a second job for 14 years
as a side hustle to raise a little bit more money to cover bills.
I don't know the state of his financial condition, but I imagine he probably needed this job to
try to stay for retirement and God bless him because he is retiring at the age of 70.
That's pretty cool, but Dan the delivery driver has gone viral.
There's a GoFundMe that has raised tens of thousands of dollars for him already.
It's only been up for a short time.
That was because he went above and beyond as he delivered pizzas to a homeowner.
Dominoes was out of diet coke.
That was what he ordered.
I guess the house owner, Brian Wilson, had ordered a couple diet sodas.
Well dominoes ran out and by the time the delivery man, Dan the delivery man walked out
the door.
They thought that he just forgot that they were out.
Well Brian Wilson had already paid for his order online.
So when Dan the delivery driver showed up at his house, the homeowner, Brian Wilson
was surprised to see that he had a couple of bottles of coke in his hand.
When asked about it, he said, oh I stopped at the store and I picked them up.
So Brian was really shocked about that.
He was in his words, he was blown away.
He said man, you didn't have to do that and then he felt really bad because he tipped
them but he was out of cash and he said, I wish I could tip you more.
This is all caught on video by the way.
He said, I wish I could tip you more and Dan said, oh don't worry about it.
He's like, you are a tip me enough and I'm happy to do it.
So it just was this really cool encounter and so Brian the homeowner, he started a fundraiser.
I'm going to read this on GoFundMe just to hear what he said.
But he posted the video to TikTok, it instantly went viral.
I think it's had well over a million views and counting and people just loved it.
And I think it's really cool.
I think it's incredible.
Here's what he wrote on GoFundMe.
He said last night something simple turned into something really special and we can't
stop thinking about it.
On a busy Friday night, we ordered dinner from Domino's along with a diet coke.
While we were waiting, we got a voicemail from our delivery driver, Dan, letting us know
that they were out of diet coke.
But he'd gladly bring something else if we let him know what we wanted.
We tried calling the store back but he'd already left for delivery.
No big deal.
We figured we'd just take whatever substitution came with the order.
But when Dan arrived, he surprised us.
He apologized again for the inconvenience and then told us he had stopped at the store
himself to pick up diet coke for us.
On a busy Friday night, during deliveries, completely out of his own time and effort,
we were honestly blown away.
That level of care and kindness is rare these days.
We wanted to tip him more but didn't have cash on hand.
We told him we'd call the store to leave a glowing review and come back with a cash tip.
That's when Dan shared something that made this moment even more meaningful.
He's been working at Domino's as a second job for 14 years.
And he's retiring in just a few weeks.
So here's what we're hoping to do.
TikTok loved Dan's story and suggested we come together to give him the send off he
deserves.
If a small act of kindness can make such an impact on us, imagine what a community of
people can do for him.
Let's show Dan that his kindness didn't go unnoticed.
Let's help him step into retirement feeling appreciated, supported and celebrated.
Every little bit helps.
And even if you can't donate, sharing this story means just as much.
That's really cool.
But I said before the break, the one thing that I actually disagree with is that acts
like this are not common.
I think they're incredibly common.
I think that most Americans go above and beyond regardless of age and social, economic
status, race, it doesn't matter.
People in America are generous.
And that my friends is the hidden lightness.
It's that we all have the hidden lightness inside of us, all of us do.
There's absolutely zero excuse why we all can't use our hidden lightness to bless other
people as many, many, many people do.
And I think that's really cool.
I think that's really special.
I think that's what makes America so great is that it's full of so many great people.
And that's one of the things that Rush Limbaugh used to talk about.
And he got a lot of criticism for that.
He talks about the exceptionalism of America.
And people would argue and no, America sucks, America's terrible.
That's looking all the crime.
Look at this.
Look at that.
Look at all these bad things that do happen.
But generally, overall, America is great, which truly, truly are blessed in this nation.
And the fact that we have millions upon millions upon millions of giving people, ordinary people,
it's special to me because I got to tell you, I fell into that trap for a short time.
Of believing that most people were lazy, most people didn't really want to volunteer at
church.
I was really struggling or our volunteer numbers were low for actually quite a few years.
We had super low turnout for a lot of things.
And so I blamed the people, not to their face, but in my mind, I was like, man, what
is it about society that makes people just unwilling to volunteer?
And I presumed that they just didn't care.
They just don't care.
They don't care that my wife and I, my family, we're all grinding just day after day after
day.
And they see us.
They see us struggling.
They see us struggling to keep up.
And they just don't care.
See, that was what I had in my mind.
That was the idea that I had been fed this lie that people don't want to volunteer their
time, that people don't care.
I looked at the contributions and they were sad to say the least.
And then those ideas started going through my mind.
I was like, well, people just, they're not giving my wife and I are very like we pride
ourselves and being very generous.
We more than tied.
We have more than 10% that we automatically skim off of our budget as soon as our paychecks
land into the bank.
We have a document that automatically calculates more, it's more than 10% and we give it all
away.
100% of that gets given away.
We love to give, we work, I'm so blessed to have a wife who has a very giving heart.
She loves to give her family, her parents, very, very giving people.
My family, all of them, very giving, exceptional givers, literally 100% of all the people in
my family, and I've got a really big family, they're all givers, doesn't matter.
We have people who are very wealthy and we have people who are doing okay, but I wouldn't
consider them wealthy.
We have everything in between in our family, all 100% of them are giving.
That's just been my experience, in my own personal circle, in my own life, and so I was buying
this idea that people just, they're not generous.
People don't want to give, they don't care at church, I don't know what it is, why are
people so stingy, they don't want to give their time, they don't want to give their money
that I know they have, I see some of the cars that they drive, excuse me, and then it
hit me, and really it was recently, it was actually on this show that I had a really
big aha moment, and I started learning about microgiving, in fact I did a show on that,
that there's a trend in the United States of America, and people are absolutely flocking
to microgiving.
Instead of volunteering for six months at a time, they'll volunteer for a project.
Put me on a project, and I'll see the project to completion, and then don't ask me to volunteer
again, I'll volunteer when I have time, or when I can.
Code microgiving, with the way that people give, see we're very, very dedicated with consistency.
When we give literally every single week, and on mode school, I write a check.
We write a check, that goes in the contribution plate.
We have monthly donations that we do for different organizations and ministries.
We write a check, put an expensive stamp on an envelope, and we put it in the mail.
We're old school.
And I'm just so hardwired for that consistency, and so I view, or used to, used to view that
inconsistency as, well people are just blowing their money on other things, and they just
don't care, they're not givers, they're not giving it to God, right, that's the assumption.
But they're not learned about microgiving, and that this is our culture, this defines
America in 2026.
People are microgivers, and so they might give $50 to church one week, and the next week,
they're filling somebody's gas tank at the gas pumps.
And the next week, they're dropping a $50 tip to a waitress, who looks like she or he
is struggling, waiter waitress.
Now, this is microgiving, and so instead of that consistency that we've been so accustomed
to, it's still consistent, but it's consistently done in these little microbursts.
And that's why GoFundMe and other crowdsource platforms are wildly popular.
Listen to these numbers, this is going to blow your mind.
I started looking at these numbers, and I'm absolutely floored.
You're ready for this?
GoFundMe, that's just one platform.
There are a lot of other crowdsourcing platforms.
GoFundMe is obviously one of the most popular.
GoFundMe hosts over 100,000 new campaigns every single month, averaging over 3,000 new
campaigns daily.
The platform has facilitated over 40 billion dollars in total donations over 15 years,
averaging 50 million dollars raised every single week.
It handles roughly two donations per second, with an average donation amount of $77.
Is that not incredible?
Is that you cannot look at Americans say, yeah, these, these acts are, they're a few
and far between.
It's really rare when, when somebody gives, when somebody's generous of their time, of
their money, it's really, it's really rare.
Folks, this is one platform, one singular platform, 100,000 new campaigns, new ones.
That's not the ones that carry over.
1,000 new campaigns, 100,000 every single month, 3,000 new campaigns every single day, 7 days
a week, 52 weeks out of a year, every single day, 3,000 new campaigns land on the platform.
80 billion total dollars in donations over 15 years, 50 million dollars raised every
single week.
Two donations per second, every second.
There are two new donations, averaging $77 for across all donations.
Every single time you get two of those dings per second, that's $77 coming into the platform.
Don't tell me that people aren't generous.
Don't tell me that this is a rarity.
And this folks is what drives America.
This is the engine that drives compassion and kindness and prosperity and wealth sharing.
You remember President Obama?
Yeah, I have to redistribute the wealth.
Translation, I'm a socialist and we're going to twist your arm and we're going to
rob from the rich and give to the poor.
How does that work out?
For any nation, I mean, look at Cuba, look at Venezuela.
How does that work for countries like that?
It will collapse a nation every single time, 100% of the time, guaranteed.
But you know what really works?
Giving people freedom to be themselves, to give, to give when they want, how they want,
as much as they want, you give them total freedom.
And that's what these platforms are.
There's not one single person pressuring people to give.
Nobody's gilting people into giving.
Nobody's telling them they're forced to give.
Nobody's telling them we're going to tax you.
We're going to garnish your wages until a certain percentage is pumped into the plate
called GoFundMe.
Nobody is forcing people to do this.
This is all 100% free will.
You give people freedom and people will give.
That's pretty, pretty incredible.
Actually, very incredible.
I want to look at the number of people who give on the platform.
You're ready for this?
42 million donations made in one year.
42 million.
And most of those are individual people.
So roughly, some people are repeat givers.
But generally, you could say there were probably at least 30 million unique donors,
people who donated in one year.
That's incredible.
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Dan, the delivery man, the dominoes driver
who had a go-fund me started for him.
He's 70 years old.
He'll be retiring in just a few weeks.
And Mr. Wilson, Brian Wilson, the homeowner,
was really touched by the encounter that took place.
When Dan, the delivery driver went above and beyond,
he bought a diet coke when he found out the store was out.
He asked, Brian, if he wanted to substitute something,
but for some reason, the communication
didn't really get through or whatever.
And they were just expecting to get a substitute.
Some kind of a drink as a substitute.
However, when Dan showed up, he had a diet coke.
He had stopped at a store on the way,
bought it with his own money,
and he did so with a smile.
That really touched, Brian.
He was moved by that.
He said it was completely blown away.
He started a go-fund me for Dan,
and he first he shared the video on TikTok,
and he said, it wasn't even his idea.
It was that the TikTokers, the followers on TikTok,
they wanted him to start a go-fund me.
I didn't even highlight that.
You know, that just kind of jumped out at me,
and I forgot to highlight that.
It's not just the generosity of the American people.
It's not just the generosity of Brian Wilson,
who started the go-fund me,
but it's that people wanted him to start it.
Like they were begging him, please start a go-fund me.
We want to contribute.
And that's why I say it's not a rare thing for people to give.
For people to go above and beyond and people to give.
This is who we are.
It's the very DNA and the fabric of America
and the American makeup.
It's who we are.
And again, that's part of why I get really frustrated
when people talk down to people, groups of people.
That's why Hillary Clinton got so much backlash
when she was like, ah, the deployables.
You know, all these people who voted for Trump,
this was during the first term.
Yeah, they're deployables.
Half of America are deployables.
And now, now the narrative is coming from the Democrats.
The anybody who voted for Trump, they're gonna be cut off.
They're Nazis, they're terrible humans,
they're white supremacists, they're racist,
they're homophobic, they're, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.
You know, on and on and on, they go.
John Fetterman, it's not that he's defending people.
He's just saying, no, look, that's not true.
I, I know a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump
and I don't agree with everything he does.
A lot of these people don't even like him.
But he's like, these are good people.
They're good people and we have the freedom,
or at least we should have the freedom in this nation
to vote for whoever we want to vote for.
And it's nobody's business who we vote for.
Right, people wanna press other people
and who did you vote for?
None of your business.
How about that?
That's the answer, none of your business.
Why did you vote for Orange Man?
Here's a good answer, none of your business.
It's nobody's business.
When you have free elections, it's nobody's business.
Who you vote for or why you voted for that person.
So anyway, I love that we live in a free nation
and when the people are free, people freely give.
So I wanna erase this narrative.
I really wanna get this out of people's minds
that most Americans are bad.
America's corrupt.
America's unsafe.
America's terrible.
America's the worst.
Americans are lazy.
Americans are on and on and on and on.
It goes, these narratives are out there
and their reality is I'm such a numbers guy.
The numbers don't lie.
So right before the break, I was sharing some of these numbers.
All right, just on GoFundMe.
That's only one crowdsourcing platform.
GoFundMe hosts 100,000 new campaigns every single month.
It averages 3,000 new campaigns every single day.
It's facilitated over $40 billion in total donations
over 15 years.
It averages 50 million dollars raised every single week
right here in America, 50 million every single week.
It handles two donations per second
with an average donation amount of $77.
In one year, over 42 million individual donations were made.
I mean, this is incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
So here's a recent article.
This was updated in just in December.
This is on CBS News.
GoFundMe fundraisers to pay for basic living expenses
surged in 2025.
Now, I'm going to start by saying this is a tale of two stories.
One is that people are incredibly generous.
You're going to see that as these facts unfold.
Number two, it can be argued one of one of a couple ways.
Either one that things are so unaffordable now
that inflation has gotten so bad
that people are now flocking to GoFundMe
just to pay basic bills.
All right, you could say that or the other side of that coin,
which is probably what I would lean towards,
is that people have a heightened awareness
of the struggles that other people are going through.
That people have compassion.
People have more compassion in 2025 and 2026
than they have in the years prior.
That compassion is increasing.
That would be the argument that I make.
Not that times aren't tough.
They certainly are for a lot of people.
But these people aren't starting to go fund mes for themselves.
It's other people, right?
We read about it all the time.
I've done how many shows now.
It's not individuals starting it for themselves.
It's other people seeing them live in poverty
or they're just kind of struggling to make it through life.
And they're like, I want to help that person.
Something inside of me.
You heard it from Brian, right?
Brian Wilson.
I couldn't stop thinking about this guy
who showed up on my porch with the Diet Coke.
I couldn't quit thinking about it.
That tells me that this is on the hearts
and the minds of the American people.
They see somebody struggling.
They see somebody trying to make ends meet.
It resonates with them.
And they're like, I got to do something about that.
I got to help.
I think that's special.
All right, so I want to read a little bit of this article
who's just really fascinating to me.
Go fund me said that the words work, home, food, bill,
and care were among the top keywords
in fundraisers campaigns this year.
Monthly bills.
Where the second fastest growing category
behind appeals for support for nonprofit groups.
Public focus on affordability has flared.
With a recent CBS news poll showing that inflation
and the economy rank is America's top national concerns.
In the US, fundraisers to raise money for necessities
like rent, groceries, housing, and fuel
surged 17% in 2025 according to GoFundMe.
Company CEO Tim Catogan said the platform
has seen a steady increase in such campaigns in recent years.
For example, we saw people say they were behind
on the month's rent and we're looking for friends
and family to help them get through the next month or two.
Catogan told CBS news.
This shows us that life is getting more expensive
and folks are struggling with that
so they're reaching out to friends and family
to see if they can help them through.
All right, so people are being honest about that.
I like that about people.
They're struggling, they tell somebody,
they confide in somebody that they know and love and trust.
Hey, I'm struggling to make ends meet.
I wish there was a way that I could get help.
That friend, in turn, again, either one of two things,
they either talk to their friends
and their friends start to go fund me
or that friend talks to other friends and they're like,
hey, I have this friend who's really struggling
and that person starts to go fund me.
Now, there are some who start themselves,
but typically it's other people who start it for people.
But you look at the numbers and the numbers are absolutely,
they're mind blowing.
42 million donations made in one year.
Every second, two people are donating.
100,000 new campaigns every single month.
Those numbers are staggering.
That points to a picture for me.
That maybe I'm interpreting this completely wrong,
that's a possibility.
But when I look at this, I can't help but to think
that people are incredibly generous
and the people want to help their struggling neighbor.
And if this is not a biblical example
of exactly what Jesus talked about,
you know, he talks about this in so many different ways.
He gives the parable of the good Samaritan.
You know, this guy falls into the hands of robbers,
he's beaten, he's left for dead, he's robbed,
he's laying on the start of the road
and the priest and the Levite, the religious leaders,
they walk around the dude.
In fact, they go to the opposite side of the road.
But then you have this Samaritan who the Jews hate,
they don't get along with.
It's like the least likely candidate, he stops.
He dresses the wounds.
He throws them on his own animal, brings them to an end,
pays for them for several nights.
And then he says, I'm gonna be passing back through
if the guy is still here, if he needs more nights,
please put him up and I'll pay the difference.
Whatever extra is owed, I'll pay it.
And Jesus says, which of these three
was the neighbor to the man who fell
into the hands of the robbers?
Well, of course, it's a rhetorical question.
The answer is the Samaritan.
And Jesus says, go and do likewise.
All right, so I look at America and I'm like,
man, we're a nation full of good Samaritans.
And people want to argue all the time,
they're like, oh, America, it's not a Christian nation.
Don't say that people get offended
as like they cover their ears.
And for some reason that really offends people
and makes them make someone to shut down.
They're like, no, don't say that.
America's not a Christian nation.
Well, we sure act like Christians.
I mean, millions and millions and millions of people
living exactly like a Christian,
the way that Jesus told us to live.
The brother of Jesus, James,
pure and undefiled religion is this,
to care for the orphans and the widows
in their distress and to keep oneself
unstained from the world.
You want pure and undefiled religion?
Start caring for the people who are poor.
Start these go-fund me's.
You find somebody struggling.
You don't have to do it yourself.
And I think that's where a lot of us go wrong
because the way I go, there's no way I can help.
I'm strapped, I'm stretched thin.
I just, I only have five bucks that I could spare.
If that, you're missing the point.
If that's your attitude, you're completely missing the point.
The point is, give what you can,
network with other people
and pass that spirit of giving on to other people.
When you do that, God will take care of the rest.
And we see it time and time again,
replicated millions of times,
literally millions of times, over and over and over.
Again, the go-fund me's,
can you imagine if I did a story on just go-fund me campaigns?
If I started doing a deep search and I'm like,
yeah, just give me, give me all the donations
for the month of, the month of April.
I'd have 100,000 to pick from just in the month of April.
100,000 go-fund me campaigns that I could pick from.
In a month, there's no way I could possibly ever
cover all those stories.
And that's part of why I do so many of these
where they have stories about go-fund me's
because they're so common,
because people are this giving.
And I tell these stories to inspire other people to be giving.
That's the American way and that's the Christian way.
As both an American and a Christian,
a Christian first, by the way.
As a Christian, I can't help,
but to try to inspire other people to be giving.
Whatever that looks like for you,
there is no right way to give.
There's no right or wrong way to give.
Only we need to be givers.
All right, we've got to be giving people
and the majority of people are microgiving.
Again, it's not a model that I particularly love.
For myself.
But the fact that other people are microgiving,
I love that.
I think it's fantastic.
I think it's great.
I think it's wonderful.
So there are so many different ways to give
and it's so many different capacities.
And speaking of giving, I'm going to close by saying this.
I'm going to give this a reminder
probably over and over and over.
I am for the month of April.
I'm taking every single penny from royalties from my book,
tiding your time, treasure and talent.
I'm taking every single penny
and I'm going to give all of that away, 100% of that.
Whoever people tell me to donate that to,
I'm going to donate 100% of that.
So I encourage you to order the book.
I think you'll find it really helpful.
It's a super easy read.
It's a super quick read.
And it'll help you get your budgeting and order
and learn a little bit more about investing.
It's kind of the basics of understanding
the principles of investing.
But I love, love, love to give.
And that's my way of giving back.
And I'm happy to do it.
I absolutely thrilled to be able to have
that opportunity to give.
You can find more out about my show
and get all the latest podcasts
if you go to the many navigation bar in America,
out loud.News under our shows or a schedule.
You'll be in the know.
There is a hidden lightness
that shines inside of all of us.
When there's so much darkness
that envelopes the world,
remember that it doesn't take much light
to expose that darkness
and to ultimately inspire other people.
Join me in being a light.

Inspirational | America Out Loud News

Inspirational | America Out Loud News

Inspirational | America Out Loud News