Frank McKinney’s BIG journey began with a newspaper picture of a needy man. A successful real estate “artist” and creator of some of the most magnificent oceanfront homes on speculation (he just finished Acqua Liana the world’s largest and most expensive certified green home at

I met and connected with a great, BIG person today — entrepreneur Ileana Kane — who turned us on to this video. Turn on your computer’s audio, turn up the volume, and check it out. Wondering what it means to be BIG? Looking for inspiration

A few weeks ago, I spoke before a group of nonprofit administrators about how to raise money and market their organizations more effectively. I had recently given a similar presentation to for-profit marketing directors and was using those slides as the foundation for my speech

How many fund-raising appeals have you read that cite countless statistics to prove the effectiveness of the charity? I could wallpaper my house with them. No offense to the statisticians and numbers-crunchers, but charities that build their campaigns on such logical appeals may be undermining

People who volunteer time to charities donate on average 10-times more money to charity than people who don’t volunteer, according to a new study The lesson: Engaging volunteers should be a strategic priority if you want your organization to become BIG or get BIGger. Here

In Chapter 10 of the Generation BIG book, we note that “Every BIG person in this book dared to dream and chose to act. That is the essence of the BIG journey — dreams to action.” I just read a great blog post by social media advisor Chris Brogan that frames dreams to action as “Tiny Revolutions. He writes, “Every step towards success requires a tiny revolution. Evolution is too subtle. Revolution is too drastic. In between, let’s add ‘tiny revolutions.’”

If you itemize or even if you take the standard deduction, you probably want to consider the following. Too often I see people who have in essence paid more tax than they should have by not squeezing every bit of value out of their deductions.

To understand this concept, you need to understand the value of your deductions and the tax cost of income.

Can the nonprofit world handle a flood of helpers? That’s the question posed by The Chronicle of Philanthropy in the headline of its lead story (Oct. 15, 2009 edition). The article’s premise: More and more people are seeking opportunities to volunteer with charities, but the charities may not be ready, have the desire or the ability to engage them.

BIG TIP: Always focus on how you can spread passion for your cause. If you do this, the money and the donors will follow. There is no greater calling than to share one’s passion about a meaningful cause. Too many many non-profits fail to spread passion. They spend so much time soliciting transactions that they forget the big picture.

Never in the course of our history has there been a crying necessity for people to take a hard look at how much they are paying in taxes. Tax planning is a vital requirement for anyone who wants to pursue a BIG dream.