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LAUNCH VIDEO FROM BELOW

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — In a former textile mill alongside the harbor where Herman Melville set “Moby Dick,” Jim Stevens, who once sold salad dicers on late night UHF television, is inventing a new way to tackle poverty.

Jim Stevens / GiftsToGive.org

Stevens founded the non-profit GiftsToGive.org three years ago. On the surface, it’s a warehouse through which clothes, toys, books, infant gear, art, craft and school supplies are recycled and given to the needy in some of the poorest sections of southeastern Massachusetts.

“But there’s more,” Stevens smiles and says with the same enthusiasm he used to summon when selling cutlery and kitchen gadgets which made him a fortune in the 1980s. GiftsToGive is not primarily about the gifts given to the kids. It’s also about the gift of time given by more than 12,000 teens and youth a year who come through the South Cove Mill.

“I wanted to develop a model that attracted thousands and thousands and thousands of kids from both sides of the tracks to share a common goal and to, in essence, teach a new kind of civic engagement, a new kind of philanthropy,” says Stevens. “I like to call it tangible philanthropy.” By that, Stevens means philanthropy that involves giving of self — work, time, commitment — in addition to or instead of giving money.

A key part of Stevens vision is to connect Baby Boomer retirees with youth — both privileged and needy — to together commit acts of volunteer public service. The result is GiftsToGive — a non-profit enterprise that is student powered but adult-volunteer managed and which involved 12,000 students over the last year plus 4,000 adults, says Stevens.

Inspiration signs fill windows at the GiftsToGive mill

“There are a million boomers a month coming offline and I will make you a case that a percentage of them have lived a healthy lifestyle. They have their health, thank God, they’ve managed their money, they’re at the pinnacle of their skill set — and what are they going to do, play golf? How much golf can you play? How many hobbies can you have? And for us as a society to take and not use that resource seems to me almost criminal.”

Supervised by retirees — also volunteers — the work of taking in, sorting, repairing, cleaning and packaging gently used materials is the bigger point of Stevens’ effort. He’s trying to create a culture — and a non-profit business — which depends upon the kindness and support of volunteer seniors and youth — to help those who can’t help themselves. “We’ve converted an old mill into a repurposing center,” Stevens says.

Gift packs for needy youth ready for distribution

On a hot July 20, 2011 day when we visited, there were 40 kids ages 5-9 from a summer camp, 8-9 girls from a lock down facility in Taunton, 15 high-school students who come for academic tutoring in the morning followed by two hours of volunteer service — and 21 teenagers from the New Bedford city summer program for urban gardening. Plus a half-dozen handicapped adults and a nine-member summer internship leadership corps — the folks running the mill operation — ranging from a junior at elite Smith College in Northampton, Mass., to a seventh-grader from New Bedford.

Stevens calls himself a child of privilege, raised in a Boston South Shore suburb. He spent his 20s as a black-suit cosmetic-industry salesman, then decided to become an entrepreneur. By age 32, he had made enough money to early retire, raised his two sons — one autistic — and then emerged to taken on charitable projects.

As a teen, he recalls now, he didn’t understand social injustice. “I watched Dr. [Martin Luther] King change his focus from civil rights to poverty. And I couldn’t understand it. I was amazed by that. And as a 16-year-old I came to realize that poverty was the problem. Poverty is what’s choking us and it’s killing us all. And it was a wake-up call for me at 16.”

In this 44-minute video - the first 3 minutes, 43 seconds give a good overview, Stevens tells the story of GiftsToGive.org, walking us through the recycling, repurposing mill, and introducing us to the students and adults who are among his key volunteer team. GiftsToGive is a member of the Ipswitch iCare family of philanthropies. To request a DVD with a higher-resolution version of the Gifts To Give story, email bdensmore@ipswitch.com.

Forging a new currency for philanthropy — Jim Stevens and the the GiftsToGive story from Bill Densmore on Vimeo.