Arlan Berglas

Arlan is the director of Global Development for the Pass It On Movement.

If today were my last day on Earth and I could share 500 words of brilliance with the world, here are the important things I'd want to pass along to others...

When I turned 50 years young I semi-retired and had an incredible urge to attempt to make a difference in this world. When I looked around to see what volunteer opportunities were available to me nothing really grabbed me. As an owner of my own business for the past 30 years it was hard for me to visualize working on a program that was someone else's vision based upon another person's personality. Therefore, I decided to create my own volunteer opportunity based upon my own personality.

At this stage in my life I had been very happily married to my best friend for the past 23 years and was blessed with two fabulous daughters 19 and 21 years old. Both daughters were away in college doing great and I was at a stage in my life where I just felt there had to be something more to life. I felt I could give good business and social advice to others so I decided to put an ad on Craig's List saying, "I give free advice on work and relationships, as this is my way of doing volunteer work". After doing this for almost a year acting as a volunteer consultant, I decided I could make a bigger difference if I were to be a volunteer charity consultant and give advice to executive directors of nonprofit organizations.

I guess you can say that I have always been a matchmaker. My wife and I had met on a blind date 28 years earlier and I myself had set up three marriages from blind dates. I thought it would be fun as a volunteer to introduce executive directors of nonprofit organizations to each other. The way I saw it, if I introduce the director of the Los Angeles Unified School District Volunteer Center to the executive director of the Volunteer Center of Los Angeles, there must be something that they could collaborate on and work on together. I started specializing in mentoring organizations in Los Angeles as I myself was mentoring an eight year old and a thirteen year old each for two hours, once a week.

What I had found about three years ago was that these executive directors of these nonprofit organizations were asking me to mentor them. As a volunteer charity consultant I made it my responsibility to help them raise more money and obtain more quality volunteers. I decided to create unique fundraising programs tailor made for each charitable organization that would cost them absolutely nothing to get involved all they could do is raise more money for their cause. It was about three years ago that I created a program called Fundraising For A Better World to We, The World, a nonprofit 501 (c) (3) organization that develops global networks of collaboration and organizes large public gatherings to build mass involvement in the work of creating a peaceful, caring, sustainable world. Fundraising For A Better World because a We, The World program.

Of the 16 fundraising programs that I created, the one that I am the most proud of is the Pass It On Student Mentoring Program. Not only is this program potentially a fundraising program for 1.5 million nonprofit organizations and 83,000 schools nationwide, it is also a program that will give every student an opportunity to have a mentor and to be a mentor. We are currently planning pilot programs in elementary, middle and high schools with pass it on volunteers. For more information, please go to www.ipassiton.org.