Nonprofit Sees No Greater Gift Than Ending Poverty

The next time you need to buy a gift, a new local nonprofit is asking you to consider being a little unconventional with your purchase.

Rather than buying clothing, electronics or a plain old gift card, the men behind the nonprofit No Greater Gift are hoping shoppers will give a gift with the goal of addressing extreme global poverty.

Brad Wachter, 41, and Mike Dudiak, 37, launched the website NoGreaterGift.org on July 15 with the objective of addressing the five major poverty issues: hunger, shelter, education, health and justice.

“Rather than buying a traditional gift you can come here and click,” Wachter said, adding that shoppers can learn more about the various charities and then make a donation.

For example, shoppers on the website can click on the various categories, such as hunger, and then choose how they want the donation to be used. The shopper can click to learn more about the nonprofit that will receive the donation and then they choose the amount to donate. Donations start at $10 and go up to $100.

Planning for the site began in October, but the impetus for it was a church program both of the men participated in.

Wachter and Dudiak met at a small group in their church, which challenged them to look at the exponential impact they could have and to make a difference by doing something big. Through their involvement Wachter and Dudiak began to see that they could have a larger impact in addressing poverty around the world.

“We were aligned,” Dudiak said.

Both have full-time jobs, Dudiak is a chief financial officer and Wachter owns his own recruiting company. Neither has experience in nonprofits, but their business acumen has helped them in the planning and implementation of the website.

“I liked the idea of the concept and the challenge,” Wachter said. "Many people say they don’t have time, but that excuse is too easy."

From an emotional standpoint, Dudiak said he liked the idea of being able to touch people in a meaningful way.

“What if I could change one person in a meaningful way to be less materialistic,” Dudiak said, adding that he wondered what the world would look like if No Greater Gift could change one person’s life. “Sustainable solutions are the only way to eradicate poverty.”

The men researched nonprofits using Charity Navigator and searched particularly for smaller charities with lower overhead that had good ideas and might be able to do more with the donations. 

They chose charities with four-star ratings that would allow No Greater Gift to have reach in many areas around the world. They said that the nonprofit is helping the world one gift at a time, and “giving the gift of giving.”

Because the nonprofit is so new, Wachter and Dudiak are just trying to spread the word about No Greater Gift. They are planning to do more marketing around the holidays and hope people see the benefits of giving a nontraditional gift.

Along with raising awareness of the nonprofit, they are also seeking volunteers who would like to get involved.

“The goal is to have people know about us and to find people who are really interested in this and who want to get in on the ground floor with this to help,” Wachter said.

The cost to run the site is low, and the pair said marketing will be the biggest expense they have.

Now that the site is up and running, Dudiak said he feels the weight of the work he has taken on.

Today the men hope to get more visibility, but three years from now they expect to be raising millions of dollars.

Now that the site is up and running Dudiak said, “Ten percent is a sense of accomplishment but now it’s 90 percent burden in the sense that we need to help and make it work.”

To learn more about No Greater Gift visit the website at www.nogreatergift.org. You can also follow the nonprofit on Facebook or on Twitter.