The Gift of Giving

Did you know at one time - a long, long, long, time ago - that listeners could charge on 7 Cups? When we went through YC, we thought that was going to be how 7 Cups was going to generate revenue to help cover the bills. What happened was that .01% of people charged and 99.9% of listeners did not charge.

Listeners very clearly communicated to us that 7 Cups was to be a 100% volunteer based service. People were going to give of their time out of the goodness of their hearts. They did not want to be compensated. Listeners were committed to freely giving the gift of compassion.

Since that time, listeners have given gifts of compassion - imagine them as little wrapped gift boxes 🎁🎁🎁 - to millions upon millions of people all around the world. We now have 20,000 conversations on 7 Cups a day. That is a lot of gift giving!

Giving a gift feels amazing. Some of you are excellent gift givers. You pay attention. You see what someone needs, and then you give them the gift and they are delighted to receive it because it fills a need they have. The old saying “giving is better than receiving” is true and anyone that has given a gift knows this to be accurate.

On 7 Cups, people come and they ask for help. That is what happens when a general or personal request is made. That request is an ask - it is an indication of a need to connect, a need to be heard, a need to be understood, a need to be seen, a need to be validated, a need to feel less alone. Our listeners pick up these chats, they answer those requests, and when they do, they give a gift to our members. A gift of listening.

Think about that space between a member and a listener. The request is sent out from our app on a phone on one side of the planet. The listener, on the other side of the world, sees the username and the issue and selects them. They connect - strangers that do not know one another - and they start talking. The member begins to open up and shares some of what is causing them pain. The listener paraphrases, tries to see the world through their eyes, and says this back to the member in their own words. In that space between, something remarkable happens, the listener gives the gift of compassion - out of the goodness of their own heart - and the person feels loved, understood, and cared for.

That is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and remarkable thing.

Fast forward to February 2021. I finally - after years and years of trying to understand what we are doing on 7 Cups - see 7 Cups as an ecosystem. I share this idea with a friend, a medical anthropologist, and he says, “Glen, this is a system of reciprocity or what Marcel Mauss calls a gift economy.” I have never heard of this before and immediately I’m excited to learn that 7 Cups can be understood through another lens that I cannot yet see through.

I do all this research on Mauss, gift economies/exchanges, and consult with my friend to better understand what we are doing. Long story short, with zero planning or deliberate building, we have accidentally recreated an ancient pattern called a gift economy where social bonds and connections are primary. Where this gift of compassion is shared from leaders to listeners and listeners to members and members to other members, listeners, and people in their life. On any given day, we have tens of thousands of compassion gifts circulating around the 7 Cups community. A good conversation, a WTG in a sharing circle, a shout out, a spotlight - all of these are gifts going round and round 7 Cups.

One interesting thing about the Kula tribe and their conception of a gift is that it becomes heavier or more valuable as it passes from one person to the next. Imagine our gift boxes of compassion circulating. Someone sends a gift to me about how awesome a listener or mentor is. I hear this and send it over to the community management team - hey I just received this message and think this person is great. They then send it over to the mentor and say hey great job! And so on. That gift of compassion becomes heavier with each person it touches. It becomes more meaningful.

7 Cups differ from the Kula tribe and ancient societies in a number of ways. We are based on the Internet, so we have unintentionally layered on a digital approach to gift economies. Also, if you watch that ecosystem video, then you’ll see that each party gets something and each party gives something naturally.

I wanted to share this gift economy model with you, because when I learned of it I was struck by its significance and how much more substantial it makes our work. Like someone in the desert sweeping off the top of a pyramid and then seeing the rest of it under the sand. We, collectively, have swept off an ancient - and beautiful - pattern of relating to one another.

We give gifts to one another on 7 Cups. It is a beautiful practice. Beautiful isn’t the right word. It is more than that.

Thank you listeners for being the first gift givers. Thank you for giving to me and many others millions of times. Thank you or helping us rediscover things we have forgotten.

A couple of questions to consider:

When you read the above (or watch the videos or read the links), what stands out to you about 7 Cups and gift giving?

How can we strengthen our gift economy even more? (I’ll share more on this in another post and weave in comments from this thread).

With gratitude,

Glen