What would you do with $100? Now change that idea … What would you with $100 if you had to spend it on a stranger?
Each Christmas, Carrot does this. Each employee is given $100 to spread some holiday cheer!
This year, we captured some our stories It’s not a complete list. Some of the stories didn’t make it into our LivingLife chat, but we all contributed to others. Great work team! These are some pretty amazing, generous, and uplifting accounts.
“We have been looking for a church that we both get a lot out of for a while. We have attended Summit View in Vancouver the last month and a half and are blown away by the people, message, worship, and everything they do for the community.
Last week at church they did a special offering for a few of the charities they support and we donated our $100 to that. We learned that $75 can provide enough resources for a foreign minister to survive for 1 month. So we put our money towards that. – Alex
“A person I once worked with lost her job a little while ago and has 4 young kids. I anonymously mailed her the money in a Christmas card today. I’m very sure she can use it and if felt good to drop it in the mail!” – We’ll keep this one anonymous
“Ok so phase 1 of our $100 giving – we are going caroling tonight to some folks from our church and we stopped and bought each person a poinsettia for the kids to give them.
Phase 2 – we left our waitress a $50 tip at lunch today.
We wrapped up phase 3 last night – Ben really wanted to give the rest to a homeless lady last night. We were planning to buy someone dinner but he felt like that was where it should go instead. She was so surprised and very grateful. Love this motivation for us all to do a little more each year. Thanks Trevor – and Carrot for helping us all do better.” – Jen
“Meg and I decided that this year we wanted to match our $100 from Carrot, and donate to homeless in the area. So we are putting together some backpacks for the homeless. We got a bunch of supplies and we’re going to be handing out to the homeless on X-Mas eve.. Socks, blankets, some food items that area easy to pack and travel with, bookbag, personal care products, kleenex, chapstick and some other things.. We’ll take some pictures of us handing it all out.. hats and stuff too.
Set our this morning to hand out our bags to the homeless. what a truly amazing experience. To do something that seems so simple to me, and how much it mattered to the people we were helping was inspiring. 10 bags, 10 lives made better on Christmas. Each bag contained:
-Peanut butter crackers
-Beef jerky
-Hats and gloves
-A fleece blanket
-2 pair of socks
-2 bottles of water
-Chapstick and hand lotion
-Band-Aids, aspirin
-Deoderent, comb, toothbrush, and toothpaste
-Cough drops
-Plastic utensils
-Clementines
-$10 gift certificate to McDonald’sTo see some of the smiles and hear some of the stories was both heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. We tried to engage in conversation with the person we gave a bag to.. we didn’t just want to hand them a bag and move on, we really wanted them to feel like someone cared and just to have a friendly 5-10 minute convo with someone. It was really amazing.
Thank you Carrot and Trevor for giving us the challenge.” – Pete
“I was at Safeway getting some holiday baking ingredients and behind me in line was a young mom with two young kids who had a pretty large cart full of groceries. I just kept that $100 bucks in my wallet waiting for the “right time”. So i told the cashier to use the $100 dollars until it was gone on the people in line.” – Levi
“With the $100 we were given, I took a page out of @Levi’s book and paid for all the people behind me at Fred Meyer on Christmas Eve. In the moment, I had wayyyy too many layers on and could feel that my face closely resembled a tomato, so I kinda bolted out of the store, but it felt really cool to be able to bless some people.” – Danni
“For my $100 from Carrot, I combined it with matching it from my personal and REI. I went around town paying for people’s stuff. I personally would pray and just ask God to help me chose with my heart, not my emotions. It was a great experience, a few memorable moments for sure.” – Adrian
“2017 was a tough year. Our family experienced more deaths and illnesses than anyone should experience in a short time. One of those was my girl’s buddy. It was their idea to help out pets in need. So, first, we donated to our vet, who donates to a different organization than the humane society. Then, our next stop was to our local humane society. They get donations all of the time but were very grateful and happy that we were there. Our vet didn’t know what to say, he was speechless… he must not get direct donations too often.
We also made a match and spent an evening shopping for Toys for Tots. We couldn’t leave out children whom’s Christmas morning might have been a little bit more fun.” – Brendan
“We matched and donated our Carrot cash to the county food bank. While we did not have a chance to personally get out in our community with our health issues over the holiday, this was a simple way to get some literal carrots into our community.” – Chris
“What to do with $100?
I’m not a local here, so no familiarity with organizations or anything. I asked around and nothing really struck me. Then I tapped my VFW buddies.
They turned me on to Vic. He is a Veteran and father of six kiddos. No idea whether the wife/mother is in the picture.
Several months back they’d tried doing a benefit ride for him with nominal success. Apparently, after returning stateside, he battled with a significant leg wound (work induced?) which ultimately resulted in amputation.
Now this story came to my attention several weeks ago (when I got the money) and I’ve been trying like heck to get it to this guy.
After talking with Marty, who told me to talk to Bill, who told me he’d connect me with his sister (didn’t happen)… I was going to go down to the VFW Post this weekend when I finally got a response.
I finally put the money in an envelope, gave it to Johnna who will give it to Bill tomorrow that will pass it on to Victor and his family.
There is one family out there right now that will be able to buy some groceries, pay a utility bill, or whatever. They have a rainbow in their cloud and I am selfish because I’m stupid thankful y’all gave me a chance to help make that happen. Thank you.” – Janel
“What I did w/ my $100 smackaroos.
Well… first off we continued our tradition of the last 3 years of doing “Flowers for Other Grandmas”. I took a bunch of Instagrams of the day but didn’t save them. shoot! But all 3 kids went w/ me and we delivered about 40 bouquets of flowers to the gals at the old folks home. We got lots of hugs and one grandma chased us around and got 2 rounds of hugs… then chased me across the parking lot in her walker w/ her dog to tell me my rear light was out and how much she and the other gals appreciated and were blessed by us being there. that was awesome!
Then for the $100… I taught my kids about being generous and giving. I kinda pressured myself a bit this year and didn’t do amazing things like you all did (@pete you took it over the top man!) but I had the kids find people doing things that day that were exceptional and give them big tips and tell them thank you and Merry Christmas.
We gave the pizza delivery gal a $40 tip… she delivered pizza at 6:30 on Christmas eve in a beat up car and that $40 made her night. she almost cried.
A trio of people were at Fred Meyer playing violins (Christmas music) inside the store and it added such an amazing ambiance to the store I loved it and the kids did too. So McKinely went up and gave them a $20 and told them thank you for playing such great music. And we did the same a few other places. it was fun seeing the kids do that. when I gave her $20 to give to them she said… “Dad, this is a $20… are you sure you want me to give this to them?” and we talked about how much joy they were brining to people and it was well worth the $20.” – Trevor
We really wanted to give the money to a family who is undergoing a couple of medical emergencies this year. – Andre
I know that I can speak for everyone at Carrot when I say that we are all so grateful for having the opportunity to be part of a team that is striving to help the lives of others. Whether it’s via an online platform or in our local communities.
Thanks, Trevor and Team!
What would you do with an extra $100? Hit us up in the comments section, we’d love to hear some amazing stories!