Unless you have the resilience of a Jehovah's Witness door knocker, at some point you're going to want to know whether you're tilting at windmills or not.  It doesn't matter if you're marketing a product or trying to implement social change, at some point you have to be convinced that there's a real need for what you have to sell, or what you have to say.  Because it's that conviction that will help you deal with the inevitable rejection, and give you the strength to keep on at it.

So as mentioned in my previous post, I'm trying to help a friend navigate her way through social responsibility in New Zealand, and one of the first things I'm trying to get my head around, is why business in New Zealand isn't overly receptive to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) message.  The Tindall Foundation and a few others have had a pretty serious crack at getting corporate social responsibility onto the agenda and by their own admission haven't been able to get the traction they were hoping for.

All this in spite of the fact that philanthropy is one of the fastest growing sectors globally right now.

So do you think Kiwi businesses are less connected to their communities than their global counterparts?  Or is there some other barrier that's preventing this kind of engagement as part of normal business activities?

In 2007 I started working on an idea that I thought would change the world.  Make it into a better place and all that.  My unbridled enthusiasm was unfortunately not met in equal measure by the people I needed to help me, and after six months I begrudgingly put the project into the bottom drawer and went out and got a real job.

So when a new friend of mine started talking about her dreams and vision for a better world and an idea she thought might just be the key – I had a choice.  I could either deliver my pragmatic and slightly cynical view on things, or I could play the idealist and look at this as a second chance, an opportunity to recapture my own zeal.

I’ve chosen the latter, and for the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about the role digital, and specifically social media has in a world that desperately needs an increasingly greater commitment to social responsibility, both from its citizens and the business community.

In short, how do we educate people to be more generous?

I’m going to break down my thinking over a series of posts.  Comments very welcome.  Who knows, maybe we can change the world.