“There is a lot more trust, faith, and fearlessness around giving more than I think I have…it has completely changed my life.”

For Alissa Hauser, giving is not just a part of her official job, but it’s her daily practice. She is an individual that has put her life into service, trusting that it will work. As a former foster mom and currently the Executive Director of the Pollination Project, Alissa is part of a small team that supports ordinary individuals that are doing extraordinary things to change the world. In this interview with Birju Pandya, Alissa shares reflections from her own leaps of faith, practices in daily giving, and overcoming dark nights of the soul.

Birju: Your values have guided you into social and environmental work and one of the places where you really blossomed was with the Circle of Life. Can you share the story behind that?

Alissa:
The mission of Circle of Life was 100% you make the difference in the world, YOU do. That mission really became a part of me over all those years.

It’s an organization that was founded by Julia Butterfly Hill, the woman who lived for more than two years in a 2000 year red wood tree. She sat there through the worst El Nino storms and through lumberjacks shooting guns at her so that she could draw attention to what was happening with forests all over the world!

I ended up becoming the organization’s Executive Director because I took a leap of faith. I had been working for another organization and had hit that place where I knew I was ready for the next thing. I had no idea what that next thing was but I knew I had to make space for it.

Making that space led me to read Julia Butterfly Hill’s book and then I somehow found out she was hiring for an Executive Director even though the job posting had expired. But I heard back from Julia and it was clear that we were meant to work together.

Birju: What stands out to me as you share is the depth of relationship that led to doing that wonderful work. Can you speak more about the importance of relationships within this type of work?

Alissa:
Relationship is everything, it’s really the foundation for anything to get done. 

For a previous job, I spent a lot of time in Evangelical Christian right wing mega churches.  I’ve spent time in one with 30,000 members.

What I wanted to understand was how on Earth does someone that doesn’t like church walk in the door of this place and within 6 months join a missionary trip to Rwanda on their own dime?

In trying to understand this enormous transformation, I realized that it’s 100% about relationships and has nothing to do with the fear of God. One of the tenets of one of the leading churches is “To go big you must go small”. The more people you have engaged in any kind of organization, the more you have to create spaces for people to know each other intimately and to show up for each other.

Birju: When you were with Circle of Life, did people understand the gravity of the situation as compared to now? How do you see the world differently then versus now?

Alissa: I struggle more today with my own sense of future and hope.

I have those dark nights of the soul when I’m like, “this is game over”. In the late 90s, I wasn’t feeling that way and maybe it’s because I was younger or maybe it’s because things have escalated, I’m not sure.

There is that piece of me that struggles with hopelessness but there is this other piece that believes that humanity is going to climb our way out of the mess we’re in.

It’s being a part of conversations exactly like this that are wellsprings of hope. I have a four year old son and I think about his future and the future of all the people that we work with.

What I know and truly believe is that what we put our attention on expands. As one of my mentors, Lynne Twist, says, “What we appreciate, appreciates.”

When I put my attention on conversations like this, magic happens, things unfold, maybe on a cellular level, maybe on a level that I will never see and understand.

Birju: How did you come across Pollination Project?

Alissa: It came across me. I felt ready for the next change in my life. So I made it known to a small group of close friends and colleagues, and then two days later the founders of the Pollination Project contacted me.

One of them says, “I have been percolating this idea for many years and I want to create more meaning with my money. I want to give 1000 dollars a day everyday for the rest of my life to an individual trying to seed some kind of change in the world. Can you help us?”

I think my jaw was on the floor. What they were proposing was the combination of generosity, empowering individuals that wanted to create change in the world, and planting seeds. It was one of those moments of resounding yes.

Birju: Can you share a story or two of recent grantees and where this money is going?

Alissa:
We just seed people that need the wind at their back…it’s more than the money, in fact it’s so little about the money, it’s really about the yes, that we believe in you…it’s about the network of support and the love that we pour into them.

One individual that comes to mind is Papa Emma, a survivor of violence in the Congo. Having been a previous resident of Nakivale Refugee Camp in Uganda, he realized that often these camps are not physical spaces where people are able to become their best self. Papa Emma became a monk and he spends his time training people on how to teach meditation and mindfulness in refugee camps. Now he is hosting a one-year Peace and Youth Transformation Project aimed at strengthening and empowering women and youth.

We’re talking about a person that is in a community where non-violence is not even a concept that can be explained particularly easily. Being vegetarian means having chicken and fish or having a side salad with your meat. To become a vegetarian and to offer this kind of approach to children, in some cases to children whose families have been slaughtered is not an easy thing. He himself has had family members killed so it’s very much a personal story for him and the kinds of funds he’s receiving makes a real difference.

Another grantee that comes to mind is a thirteen year old animal rights activist from Florida, Thomas Ponce. He has been a vegan since he was four years old and his heart is so committed to animals. He created an organization called Lobby for Animals where he trains others on how to lobby legislators for animals that they care about. He won a national animal rights award last year and just a few weeks ago, he has gotten the attention of local legislators. He had his state legislators introduce a bill to protect sharks from shark finning and he’s only 13 years old!

A year ago, at age 12, he applied for this grant and he just needed someone to believe in him. We have treated him as an up and coming animal rights leader.

Birju: How do you see the relationships that your project is involved in evolving over time?

Alissa: There are two trajectories for our grantees. Not every grantee we’ve awarded is phenomenal. We’ve given over 400 grants at this point and we’ve had people who haven’t done what they’ve said and disappear all together. We haven’t had a lot of those people but they exist.

So I’ve become interested with this idea of how does a Thomas Ponce get created? What are the ingredients that need to be present to find a Thomas Ponce? What are all the necessary steps that help him to blossom?

There isn’t a lot of research on what are the ingredients to find this early change social change agent and nurture them so it’s something that we’re starting to look at.

Just this year, we gave second grants to a few people who had great stories of how they used their first grant. It’s an effort to keep building on the wonderful work they’re doing. Now we’re in conversations with a couple of donors and foundations about taking our first stage grantees and helping them get to the next level by giving them more money and support.

Jan: Given the variety of people who are applying for grants and who are succeeding in seeding their idea and given the fact that there are those that might not be as successful, is there an opportunity for the grantees to connect and share ideas so that it becomes a community within itself.

Alissa: We’ve created spaces for our grantees to cross-pollinate. There is a Face Book group for our grantees where they can post a need and we also have a Google Group for them. Sometimes we just make an introduction between people that we think should know each other.

For example, there is a woman in Canada that works with kids through yoga and mindfulness. She shared that she wanted to create a line of kids themed meditation cushions and eye pillows and through our network she is now able to order them from kids in Manav Sadhna’s Earn N Learn program at the Gandhi Ashram!

Birju: Can you share from your own evolving journey? What are you working on at the internal level to push against your boundaries?

Alissa: I’ve come to a place in my life where if my heart says “yes”, I just do it at a much quicker turnaround then before. I don’t sit down and calculate, I just try to give.

In the last year, I’ve given more money away than I ever have and this year will be far more than that. This is driven by being in an environment where we’re pushing each other to have faith and trust and to know that I have everything that I need.

There are many homeless people in the San Francisco bay area that ask for money or food so I try to take on a practice of saying yes to everybody. It doesn’t have to be money but I try to give something, whether it’s a smile, and empathic statement, words of encouragement, anything!

Caller: For your own sense of clarity and purpose, what is your meditation practice? How do you stay connected?

Alissa: Parenting is my primary meditation practice. After that I have a daily giving practice. My son and I say a blessing before placing money into our daily giving bottle everyday. We’ll know when it’s time to give the money away.

This practice reminds me not just of being a mom and teaching my child about generosity but it’s also about doing these little things on a daily basis. I envision a million people everyday doing this practice!

The Earn N Learn kids created the bottle and now Pollination Project has a whole bunch of these banks, waiting to be given away to anyone that sincerely wants to adopt this practice of daily giving.

Birju: Many people would think Pollination Project is being imprudent with money. A thousand dollars a day adds up to a whole lot and some would say it would be better done by aggregating and giving it to a few people. How do you respond to that?

Alissa: I think investing a large amount of money into something is great as well; it’s just a different strategy.

For us every single dollar is infused with intentionality. Every single dollar is a chance to not just build a relationship with a grassroots changemaker but it’s a chance for their work to be seeded and for it to blossom and grow. To me the more of those you can plant, the better because there is so much potential in each one of them.

In philanthropy, people love to use this term, “move the needle”, which asks, “What is the issue we’re impacting? Where are we impacting it? How are we measuring the very specific change that it’s causing?” That’s been a concept we’ve rejected for the most part.

We’re in this for consciousness shift, we’re in this to transform the way people interact with each other and how people are generous and kind to each other.

We feel like every single applicant - we have 1500 of those a year - we feel like every single one of those is a person for us to impact and provide love and give them a sense of being seen as someone that is doing something good in the world. And not just every grantee, but also every person that grantee touches.

It’s an opportunity to be in relationship and model consciousness shift with every single person who we come into contact with so why not?