Being honest I must say I was “pushed” into this. I am a one man band here and the last thing I needed was a new social network to work. Heck, I urgently need to find a fulltime job with benefits so I sure don’t have the time to sit around and “add friends.”

Nedra Weinreich (twitter, blog, consulting firm) contacted me about a month ago with an idea. I met Nedra via twitter as a result of a blog post that was written about invisiblepeople.tv. At this time I really cannot say much more except that for her idea to be executed I needed a MySpace profile.

Two issues – I always do everything with excellence, and I have no money to hire a design firm! I literally have been doing ALL this with NO budget.

Here comes Pearse Street Consulting, Inc to the rescue. They donated all the design services to make invisiblepeople.tv’s MySpace presence a WOW! A very special thanks goes to Susan Dodge for making this happen and to Fuchsia McInerney for having such a huge heart.

So take a look and if you are on MySpace say hello

myspace.com/invisiblepeopletv

This post will be continued, there is exciting news possibly coming soon!

Sorry for the delay in posting this here. The story I wrote change.org about my very first night experiencing homelessness has exploded. You can read the post by clicking here, “My First Night Homeless”

Shannon Moriarty, who is a pleasure to work with and makes me look good told me a few Fridays ago the post received over 10,000 visits on that one day alone. Wow! too me, the comments are even more powerful than the post and you can read those here. Shannon told me when I first submitted the story to her to “just sit back and wait for the comments”. I was not sure anyone would even read it, but she was right. New comments keep coming in. Shannon’s post about PETA giving furs to the homeless post at the inauguration slammed me in the comment category but there is nothing like a little friendly competition so it’s on. J

I am so very grateful for Shannon and change.org. I am honored they would allow me such a powerful platform to speak about the issues of homelessness, especially when I am facing such a severe crisis myself.

Some really great news arrived this week. After three months of contacting Countrywide several times a week and getting a different story each time we made contact with a real negotiator! Shelley Chase, a senior negotiator has been assigned to the account.

This actually all started last July but the short sale process didn’t start until we found a buyer in November. If you’re calling CW for a new loan ya get right in. Try calling to arrange a short sale – complete nightmare. In addition I have researched this some and CW seems to purposely stall on these transactions. Too me, it makes no sense because I would want to get rid of a house when I have a huge inventory of foreclosures like they do now.

Out of frustration and complete desperation I wrote this post and broadcast a link over twitter. You can see at the bottom of the post a few of the people who helped retweet. Why I say few is there were many people who helped yet the tweetback does not show all for some reason. Traffic to this blog increased over 700% – that’s huge! Thanks again to all of you that helped me make a noise. Although CW will not admit it the noise we all made is why finally a real person has made contact.

Before you get all excited like my realtor did something does not seem right. Shelley Chase has only made contact with my realtor and not me, and Shelley has not responded to an email I sent asking why I have to jump through hoops again.

Countrywide has now requested that I resubmit all my paperwork all over again. New everything! Their excuse is because this madness has taken so long the paperwork is outdated. WHAT! I’m I missing something here? Countrywide caused this delay, not us! It’s their fault they gave us the runaround.

So although Shelley Chase made contact with my realtor there is absolutely no forward momentum. My situation has not gotten better; in fact it’s much worse. The paperwork they have is more than enough to start and complete the process and I fear once again we’re getting the “Countrywide Shuffle”. As many of you know if I didn’t pick up this winter homeless shelter temp job in December I would literally be homeless myself right now.

I sure hope this nightmare ends soon. Countrywide looked like the best lender at the beginning, but they are horrific to deal with!

First a little history:

November 16, 2007 I had major surgery and my employer let me go on my first week home on disability. At the time I could not even drive so it was not until the first of the year that I was able to look for work. I aggressively looked for work everywhere and anywhere. Both high-end and minimum wage jobs, yet the minimum wage jobs won’t hire me because they believe I won’t stick around, and executive employment can be hard to find. I lived off credit for 9 months increasing my debt to a crisis level. I sold almost everything I had at pennies on the dollar.

In June of 08 I applied for food stamps because I was out of food and money. In July I accepted a job in Los Angeles and relocated. Unfortunately the move to LA was at reduced pay and a higher cost of living so I could not pay both rent and a mortgage. My realtor tried to sell the house and we dropped the price $5k every two weeks.

October of 08 I was laid off and right now I only have a temp job that lasts another 58 days. The gig has no benefits and only pays rent. Thanks to some loving people I’m not going hungry, and because I have now given my life to help the homeless I have some peace about my situation, but I am still in a very serious crisis.

Here is the deal:

In November of 08 we found a buyer for my house in ST Louis and started the process of a short sale with Countrywide, yet it has been nightmare after nightmare. To make a very long story short Countrywide is killing me. You can never get to a manager, or the people who are (supposedly) negotiating the short sale. It took a month to schedule an appraiser yet they assigned the data to only one of the loans causing more delay (they kept saying it was not done when my realtor was with the appraiser at the house)

I call a few times a week and they give a different story each time. “It will be 7 business days” they told us in December before the holidays. After the holidays they say that 7 days was just to assign it to a negotiator so now it will be another 10 business days. Once 10 days was up I called and they responded 10 business days is just a ballpark figure. My realtor also calls and gets the same madness.

You’d think that since we have a buyer and the offer is right in line of market value Countrywide would want to make this happen so they don’t have to sell it themselves. Not the case and my buyer is now done with this. My realtor has had other short sales competed in half this time but with different lenders.

I’ve been trying to do the right thing and I paid my mortgage with my credit cards for almost a year. Of course they are maxed but I’ve never missed a minimum payment. Yesterday that payment jumped because Bank Of America more than doubled my interest rate. Now, it’s beyond me to pay. I called B of A last night and they closed all of my accounts and slammed my credit. They said I have been a faithful customer for a long time with never even a late payment, but because my mortgage has not been paid in 150 days they have no choice.

This flat out SUCKS! 14 years ago I was homeless and I’ve worked so hard to restore my credit. If Countrywide had moved on this like they should, and kept their word, I would not be in such a bad situation, oh, I’m still in crisis but now I’m tanked.

This laptop, my car, some furniture, and a box of photos is all I have left.

Please do my a big favor – blog about this, tweet this, forward to someone, yell real loud because if Countywide is doing this to me I am sure there are many others who Countrywide is tanking.

Also, going through a foreclosure/short sale procedure is HORRIBLE. It makes you feel dirty. I feel dirty! I’ve done all I can and I work very hard to do the right thing – always! But this just makes me feel like I am less of a human. With what’s going on in the world today you know someone who also is in a similar situation. Be nice to them, take them to dinner and the movies – get them out of their problem! Chances are they don’t have money to get out much and are living in their crisis. At the very least be a good listener. Losing a house after losing a job is horrible!

This week David Armano with the help of his network of influence used twitter to raise lots of money to help a homeless family in need. That is not only good, it is flat out GORGEOUS. My network of influence is very small compared to David’s, but once I saw the first tweet I screamed as loud as I could to everyone who would listen. I also donated money because I would not ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. Yes, I’m in a financial crisis of my own, but I am sick and tired of people talking about giving yet not taking any real action.

The bad is nonprofits who are grasping for air as it is will only see twitter and not the relationships. Twitter was only the vehicle. David could have sent out a direct mail piece and raised this money. If you are jumping on twitter to raise money – GET OFF! You clearly do not understand the value of building relationships or social media.

The ugly is right now while I type there is a marketing firm out there who felt this buzz and is going to try and sell twitter to a client as a fundraising strategy. Seriously, it would be so gorgeous if more of this genuine compassion takes place, and I hope it does. But the more people with big hearts try and help their neighbors in need, the more the big ugly nonprofit fundraising machine will try and sell the “miracle” of twitter to their clients. That is uglier than my step-sister!

My friend Moira Nordholt wrote a great post “Influence 4 Compassion” – I’m adding it because I met Moira on Christmas day this year. She was using twitter to help the homeless. Of course, that got my attention. #tweetUplift

This short video shows one of the main reasons I started invisiblepeople.tv

Thanks to Lloyd Davis for the video and Tessy Britton for bringing it to my attention

Phil Cooke rocked my world tonight with a great post: “Conversation #4 For 2009: The Prosperity Gospel Is Lost”

Two quotes that slam me:

“Some of the greatest men and women of God were poor and it had no impact on their right relationship with God.  So rich or poor, we can all serve God and make an impact.”

“It’s raised a lot of money for sure, but at the same time has created a selfish generation of Christians.”

Flat out. I’ve tried “Magic Jesus” and it does not work.  Rain falls on the just and the unjust. We cannot buy God’s favor, and if someone is telling you we can – they are lying.

The prosperity gospel plays off our greed and our selfish desires just like the subprime mortgage lending that now has America in crisis.

The commercialized church is a joke. It does far more harm than good! The commercialized church needs to change or die.  My prayer is that in this troubled economy everyone will wake up to what really matters, and discover the real truth about God!

to quote once more from Phil’s post:

“Whatever you think from a theological point of view, it’s time to put prosperity teaching to bed.”

You cannot grow a giving heart when you are always focused on receiving. Bye-bye Magic Jesus. It’s time to pray for other people and not a new Mercedes.

I have been wrestling with this post all day mainly because I am not a writer and I honestly want to convey all the love and respect I have for Charles Lee.

We connected kind of by accident. His church needed a rent-a-drummer and I needed food. Seems like a match to me. What I didn’t plan on is how much Charles wrecks me. My first thoughts were, “this is cool I get paid to sit in church”, but when Charles started to speak I was so challenged I could not take their money. Heck, I want to support them. You need to support them.

Well, I’ve TRIED to give them their money back, but they keep sending me checks. How I’ve personally been able to deal with this is I don’t play drums – they are filing my fridge. As some of you know I am going through a financial challenge and literally the money New Hope sends me was my only income for a few months. The temp job I just landed only pays rent so the money they send me is still filling my fridge. To my shock on December 15^th the whole church made a commitment that I would not go without food in 2009. You know what, I believe them – they are not like any other church I have ever experienced.

Again – words cannot describe Charles Lee.

Charles has lots of great ideas. Ok, one may be questionable. He actually allowed me to speak at three of his services. Me?!! You can read about it and download the podcast here. I don’t point to the service because of me. What Charles said to his church that day I never believed was possible. You’ll have to hear for yourself.

Here are more of Charles’s great ideas. The Idea Camp, The Freeze Project, and JustOne

But, and it’s a big BUT, Charles submitted an idea to a contest on change.org . Wait! That’s not all! His idea made it to the finals. The winning top 10 ideas will be presented to the Obama administration just before inauguration day. Cool, huh?

So click on the following link and vote for this cool idea

National Campaign to Build More Trafficking Shelters

Then check out New Hope’s website and sign up for their podcast.

I’m telling ya. I never knew church could be so real! Charles Lee ROCKS!

I recently had an interesting experience that as a fundraiser hits home. Working at the winter shelter I saw a need a few weeks back. It was a huge need that seemed to go unnoticed and easy to solve. In true “hardly normal” fashion after trying to figure out how to work with the system to solve the issue I just ran to Home Depot and made it happen.

The next day the issue was still there and what I bought was never used. Honestly, it bugged me. I hate wasting money and the reason I made the purchase was to make that nights relocation easier on all.

Here it is a few weeks later and my donation is still not used as I INTENDED. Please notice those last two words.

This is what I learned:

As a donor, even though it was a small donation – I wanted to see what I donated being used. It is extremely important to show fulfillment to validate donor’s gifts.

As a donor – I need to let go! Although the reason I made the donation was not used as I PERSONALLY wanted it to be used, the organization decided to use it a different way. They are doing the work and they have to do what THEY feel is best for them. When giving a gift of any kind cut the strings. It’s not easy, but it is the right thing to do.

Interesting, though, both of those lessons are the exact opposite for us working in donor development. We must show donors their money is being spent as intended. Designated funds is a law! But as a donor we must let go and allow our gifts to be used by the organizations we give to as they wish.

This has been on my mind for a bit so I thought I would start the conversation.

What do you think?