Net + Business = Humanity?
The News Room, Op/Ed, NetBuisness 101“It is not where you come from, or where you are going in life that matters, it is who you help along the way.”
That’s from the home page of The Arial Home Intitiative, a non-profit organization established in 1997 by Tom Pirelli.
Everyone knows of the philanthropic activities of The Gates Foundation and Warren Buffet, but dot com successes that don’t quite reach that rarefied air of the billionaire club have also yielded charitable activities that need to be recognized for their creativity and dedication to whatever niche the founders have been drawn to.
Mr. Pirelli made his fortune in the late 1990’s when he sold his $80-million-a-year medical software company, Enterprise Systems. The rest of the details of his story can be found in this article on CNNMoney.com.
The most important detail of this story might be this one:
Pirelli knows the marketing power of round numbers such as one million homes in ten years. He has one more. “I’m investing about $1 million a year to get this project launched,” he says. “That should attract a lot of attention.”
Most of the important facts about what Mr. Pirelli is trying to do are summed up right there…one million homes in ten years…and $1 million a year of his own money invested.
I know of course this is just one small example of what are probably, hopefully, many dot com moguls (are you listening John Chow?) giving back in ways other than just writing a check.
As I come across more stories like this one I’ll post about them here because I believe any energy spent publicizing these “social entrepreneurs” is what I can give, for now. It may not be much, but it’s a start!
Are you in?
Sphere: Related Contenttcs @ August 3, 2007
Just wanted to agree. Great post and call to action. Definitely need more humanitarian efforts online.
This isn’t my site, but I always find some good inspiration there:
http://mitm.wordpress.com/
Best wishes,
Jeff
I love to read inspirational stories like this one… puts life in perspective in an instant… we all get bogged down in daily grind so much as to lose the overall picture… thanks for the story.. its a good reminder!!
your site is so professional and filled with pleasant to read articles Tom… care to give a hand on making my poor little blog a bit better?
tc and kit
This is a great post! Good to see others giving back…
Pearl…me giving you a hand on your blog is like me helping our president run the US government…wait - bad example…well you get the idea, if you ever have the time to help me with this little bloggy I’d love a guest post or something from you
haha you are too funny!! I’d be honored to write for this blog, but then I’m tempted to say thats like writing for Hemingway - and thats scares me