Web Editor Wendi Watts reviews the book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton. Review highlights how book can be used to start a corporate giving or charity program or by employees individually.
While most books about business tell you how to make more money for yourself or your business, or to develop skills that will make you a better employee, manager, or employer, Bill Clinton’s newest book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World
While Giving includes many examples of individuals who have given extraordinary gifts of money, skills, and time, many of the programs mentioned in the book are organized efforts that often are the brainchild of a business leader. The book divides giving into several categories: money, time, things, skills, reconciliation and new beginnings, gifts that keep on giving, good ideas, and organizing markets. Sometimes those divisions seem a bit contrived as Clinton tries to make the broad sweep of programs he wants to talk about fit into those categories – from donating your hair to Lock of Love to creating new products and services to combat global warming. But by being so inclusive, he has managed to offer so many possible ways to give that any person or organization can find something to do.
What Giving is. If you are looking for a book to spark conversation and get yourself and others thinking and talking about what you can do individually or collectively to make the world a better place while also improving your company, this would be an excellent book to get that discussion going. Although it’s one of the shortest chapters, the last chapter in the book “How Much Should You Give and Why?” could be particularly useful in examining the reasons behind whether you or your organization should give money, time, and talent. Answering that question first could be the most helpful way of identifying what you want to do.
What Giving is not. If you are looking for a how-to book on setting up a charitable giving program or to create and incorporate earth-friendly policies in your workplace, you need to keep looking. While Giving presents you with a wealth of ideas for ways to get involved, you aren’t going to find any nuts and bolts information about how to get a program started.
Beyond the book. Although Giving doesn’t have a strong “how-to” focus, the index and the related website at http://giving.clintonfoundation.org/ has links to all of the organizations mentioned in the book. The list covers 11 pages at the end of the book. If you use the book to begin the conversation on whether and what to give, this large list of resources can help you find the information you need to take the next step.
In the spirit of giving, I will offer Mr. Clinton a gift of advice based on my skills as a writer and editor. In the future, pay more attention to transitional phrases. The most distracting and jarring thing about reading the book was whipsaw changes of subject from one paragraph to the next with no warning that you’re about to shift direction. I often had to go back and reread sections because I would realize a sentence or two into a paragraph that he was now talking about a completely different program or person and he hadn’t smoothed the transition from one to the next.
I give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Wendi Watts is the Web content specialist at M. Lee Smith Publishers and editor of HR Hero Line. Before moving to the online world at HRHero.com, Wendi worked as an editor for the state Employment Law Letters. She has worked as an editorial assistant for the IT Division at Middle Tennessee State University, was the school and community liaison for Rutherford County Schools in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was a journalist at two Middle Tennessee newspapers.