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Gulf Coast Benefit Concerts On Cnns Ireport

July 01, 2010 · By Sloane Davidson, Founder and CEO, Hello Neighbor

A huge thank you to Jill Foster, Geoff Livingston, Dan Morrison, and May Yu. Through Citizen Effect's #CitizenGulf campaign, they came to explore the Gulf Coast, meet with nonprofits and find out how they could best help the efforts going on here for recovery and to encourage citizen philanthropy (a favorite topic of mine you all know).

Since I'm smack in the middle of co-producing tomorrow night's Gulf Benefit Concerts (85 and counting in 11 countries), I couldn't be with them during the day as they went to St. Bernard Community Center, to visit Catholic Charities and other wonderful groups, but we did get together for dinner last night at Cochon to talk about giving, New Orleans, my experiences here (and frankly travel stories I hadn't told in awhile including tales from my Burma trip last summer).

To be around such incredible minds, giving souls and dedicated citizen philanthropists was engaging and inspiring. And then it was even better because they were able to help promote tomorrow's events through the iReport above and also through an exciting blog post tomorrow (publication TBD) and their own social networks.

They kept saying, "Thank you so much for taking time away from the benefit shows to have dinner with us, we know you have so much to do!"

But really, it's a thank you to them. For coming here and learning. For being open to the experience and being emotionally drained and exhausted, for wanting to keep giving and find more ways for their communities (online and off) to be engaged down here. It was the least I could to do give them my 110% (the very best Sloane I could be) because the emails, the follow up, the Gulf Coast stuff - that was there waiting for me when I got home to my place in the French Quarter last night. ** Offline comes before online always. Remember that. **

If you like what I'm rapping about in the video above, I hope you'll attend a benefit concert in YOUR area tomorrow night (or get some friends together for an awareness party if your city doesn't have an event) AND MAKE A DONATION to support our efforts. After all, 100% of donations are going to Gulf Restoration Network and it all then goes directly to the communities in need. No loopholes. No delay.

Tomorrow isn't just the day of the benefits, and it's not the end of this effort by any means. It's only the beginning.

Yours, Sloane