a community proving humanity is good

Purposity’s founder, Blake Canterbury, tells The TODAY Show’s Sheinelle Jones how our app is connecting communities so neighbors can see needs and fill them.

Our Purposity Community is Going Strong

There’s actually something called the paradox of generosity. Simply stated, it refers to the idea that by not caring for someone else, we end up not caring for ourselves. In fact, there’s a book about it aptly named The Generosity Paradox: Giving We Receive, Grasping We Lose (2014).

When we started this journey, we weren’t sure exactly what to expect. We believed that people would come along with us on this quest to find purpose through generosity (Purposity), but we didn’t quite conceptualize how quickly our idea would spread.

Over the past week we’ve watched our neighbors in Texas devastated by one of the worst storms in the state’s history. Today we’re launching Purposity’s first-ever disaster relief effort for those affected by Hurricane Harvey.

As Katerina Fake explains it, the idea of creating Flickr came from a search to find others interested in her favorite author. Living in New Jersey, there weren’t many people interested in debating the works of Jorge Luis Borges. But, an online forum connected her to a community of Borges’ admirers in Europe, allowing her to feel like part of a community. From that feeling, Fake later went on to create several technologies to build online community. She wanted to share that feeling with others. Flickr is arguably the forefather of social media as we know it, and it sprang from the need to connect.