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By Root 226 0

and a mini-NGO. A Nepalese women’s group, Gurung Gaon, used a Heifer water buffalo to improve their lot. Beyond passing on the offspring, the women saved enough of their income to buy one hundred geese for five families in China. The group leader, Leela Tamang, said, “Before Heifer, I didn’t know what sharing was.” Ghanaian farmer Anthony Gygrengye Kodom and his wife, Mercy Dansua, are members of a farmers’ group supported by Heifer. In 2005, they received twenty chickens and five beehives and passed on their gift within just seven months, then grew their operation to include more than seven hundred laying hens and twenty-five beehives. They also went beyond their gift requirement, providing land to their farmers’ cooperative for communal chicken coops. Women in a Heifer project in Zimbabwe passed on twice as many pigs as required because they wanted more women to enjoy the same prosperity they did. In the Dominican Republic fifty-eight families have gone so far beyond the requirement that those receiving dairy cattle have increased more than tenfold, to 650 families.

When I was back in Arkansas for the Heifer headquarters opening, one of the local TV stations ran a story on black farmers in the Mississippi Delta passing on the first offspring of Heifer-provided cows. As governor and as president, I tried to help farmers like them who wanted to hold on to their farms or get back into farming. More of them will do so because of Heifer’s gifts and the practice of passing them on.

Just a decade ago, Heifer was still a modest operation, raising $6 to $7 million a year. In 2006, contributions reached $80 million, thanks to good publicity, celebrity support, effective marketing, and energetic and visionary leadership. The Heifer president, Jo Luck, is passionate and relentless in her pursuit of supporters and new recipients. She’s equally comfortable talking to corporate CEOs and celebrities and sitting on the ground in Africa, Asia, and Latin America listening to villagers talk about their lives.

Heifer’s rapid growth doesn’t mean the organization can’t use your support. Remember, nearly a billion people still live on less than a dollar a day, and about 820 million go to bed hungry every night. There is virtually no limit to the good Heifer can do. Donors know the program works. And best of all, by turning every beneficiary into a donor, your gift just keeps on giving.

Nearly everyone can make a meaningful contribution. You can give a heifer for $500 or a share of one for $50; a water buffalo for $250, or a share for $25; a llama for $150, or a share for $20; a sheep, goat, or pig for $120, or a share for $10; a trio of rabbits for $60; bees, a beehive, and a training kit for $30; a group of ducks, geese, or chickens for $20. Young students who want to contribute to Heifer can participate in Read to Feed, in which sponsors pay them for the books they read. Last year the effort raised $1.2 million.

I have devoted an entire chapter to Heifer because I believe that if the concept of “Passing on the Gift” were to be integrated into other giving programs wherever possible, it would dramatically increase the impact of good works at almost no cost. What if all the givers of money, time, and skills required the recipients of their gifts to do something, however modest, for others in similar situations? In a sense, that’s what happens when those who benefit from NGO leadership-training programs will pass along the skills they’ve learned. Of course, it won’t work in all cases. Infants with AIDS, for instance, are giving back enough if they just survive and go on to a normal childhood. But there are many other efforts in which the positive value of giving could be multiplied by asking the beneficiaries to pass on the gift.

For example, at the midyear meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in April 2007, the crowd was brought to its feet by a beautifully eloquent seventeen-year-old South African girl who had been helped by the Ubuntu Education Fund, which provides support to orphans and vulnerable children (ubuntu means “I am because