Measuring Random Acts Of Kindness: Track The Trajectory Of Your Good Deed

The concept of "paying it forward" is one of the best aspects of a random act of kindness -- all it takes is one person and one good deed to start a chain of charitable events. That said, it's almost impossible to gauge just how far those chains reach. Until now.

According to Dan Rascon of the KUTV Utah News, one man has decided to change that, by introducing a little modern technology into an age old way of giving.

Jeff Smith from Alpine, Utah, has devised a system of key chain tags to track random acts of kindness. Here's how it works:

Once you receive the tags you register the sheet of 10 on the website and then each time you do a good deed you tag the person.

Those tagged then type in their tag number which is located on the back of the card and then pass it on when they do a good deed for someone else.

The tags are available in sheets of 10 for $14.95 at Smith's website. Smith hopes his tags will encourage more random acts of kindness.

"You left behind a mark and that mark which is traceable makes you feel good," says Smith. "You don't have to go out and plan your day to try and find an act to do because you would probably over plan, because they (kind deeds) are all over."

Since the company began seven months ago, 11,773 people have come into contact with Smith's tags.

Read the whole story here.

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Difficult times have been known to bring communities together as people lean on one another for support. In this recession, there's no shortage of communities around the country that have rallied around a struggling neighbor, reached out a helping hand to those around them, or donated free dry cleaning to the job-seeking and unemployed. We know there are more stories like these and HuffPost wants to highlight them. If you read or hear about an act of kindness in your community, email us the story at [e-mail].

These vignettes are a much needed counterpoint to the doom and gloom surrounding the economy; let's help change the conversation -- we can't do it without you.

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Comments

[Juston Preble]

PS Every board member provides for their families through their personally owned businesses. TAG10.org is just a fun thing to them. Three neighbors who wanted to make a difference together. I cant tell you how much I hate seeing people slander others, especially with no FACTS. What I have shared with you are all FACTS!

[Juston Preble]

So I dug a little deeper for all of you reckless bus drivers, so willing to beat a guy down. A little league base ball club just funded all 400 of the kids in the league who didn't have the resources to buy equipment and pay for tournament travel expenses this year for all the kids. TAG10 was their answer, and at the same time those kids have influenced thousands of people in their neighborhoods to step it up an actually look for people a bit more conscientiously to help in their special way. In Closing everyone with a negative post, why don't you do a little research before you publish to the world comments about something that just got started in which has nothing but goodness behind it. And of which you obviously know nothing about nor took the time to find out. Last case in point. The Board has yet to compensate themselves for any sales. The only people that have benefited from this are those doing the fundraisers, those families who are and will have their life changed for the better by the Loan Provided them through Unitus and the jobs that have been created to build, and manage a website, and manufacture the tags which are shipped out. Wake up find out some facts before you spout off negative words! Good Luck as critics.

[Juston Preble]

What everyone may not be aware of is that Jeff is not the owner of the idea, he is just the spokes person. And before you through a guy under a bus you should do a little research first before being everything but kind yourselves. The board of directors for TAG10.org have been running a beta test to see what market value was for this type of service. You might ask why? Well because they treat every dollar that goes through that site as if it were the widows might. Case in point: Unitus http://www.unitus.com/ a non-profit organization that makes more of a difference with $39.00 than you can possibly imagine, was approached by the Board of TAG10.org to receive a significant portion of the proceeds from the online sales. 2nd Case in point which is not advertised on the beta site that you see up currently is that schools all over the United States and Canada are being given the opportunity to do fund raisers with these tags.

[terramartom]

Forget the mechanics. Just lend a hand when needed. Karma will resolve itself out when it does.

[vdcnorth]

Kudos to Mr. Jeff Smith of http://www.tag10.org for coming up this idea. This is an era of digg, tweets and rs feeds, of geocaching and dollar bill tracking! Following one's good works, especially for the children, helps make consequences and reprecussions in a good sense very real to them. I have four kids and we had already embraced the "pay it forward concept". They find the idea of "tag10" energizing. I much rather they log-on and stay updated on their good works then surf the net for dreck.

[davidwayneosedach]

Smiths act of kindness should be to give these tags away. Or better yet, Give a dollar bill with each one he gives out.

[larsoni]

How is it such a wonderful idea just gets the air sucked out of it by glee-stealers and those who would do things differently?
Dont buy it if you dont want it- the idea of kindness is the key not someone trying to sell stuff

just what we need more stuff we dont need

[elcerritan]

Why is HuffPost giving this guy publicity?

[suigeneris]

Let me get this straight.

This article is basically an AD for a guy who's found a way to profit -- at $15 a pop -- off other people's acts of kindness???

Wow. That takes some nerve.

[SharonMcEachern]

The idea of spontaneous acts of generosity creating more acts of generosity increasing exponentially is wonderful and true. Most of us really want to help others. A successful example of this is the unique FreeRice.com, a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program and its partner the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

You can go to the FreeRice website, and play a learning game (from word games to math and foreign languages) and for every right answer you get 10 grains of rice. Advertisers on the website provide the money to buy the rice you've earned and it's given free to hungry people around the world. As you play a game on the Internet, you know that somewhere in the world, a person will eat rice that you helped provide. Wow! Ethic Soup has a good article on this at:

http://www.ethicsoup.com/2009/05/free-rice-to-feed-the-hungry-just-play-free-internet-games-.html

The United Nations says about 25,000 people die each day from hunger -- most of them children. Although 10 grains of rice may seem like a tiny amount, remember that while you are playing, so are thousands of other people at the same time around the world. It adds up and helps feed millions of people. Do it! It's fun and feels really good.

[CintiBlue]

Too mechanical.

Once it's given, we have no control over it.

At $14.95 a pop, it sounds like Jeff Smith is doing something not so random for himself.

[cindyw]

Do good deeds really need to be documented and tracked? That seems a little too self-congratulatory to me.

[MagicalPossibilities]

My thoughts exactly.

[lizt]

Doesn't this take a bit of the randomness out of random acts of kindness?

[justjohn]

Wow, way to suck all possibility of joy or fun out of the concept! Who actually stood up in a room somewhere and said, "Spontaneous acts of generosity would be neater if we added mandatory paperwork to them!"

I'm not a Christian, but as a kid I listened to Bible stories. And I always used to wonder why Jesus would do something generous and then tell the recipient not to tell anybody else about it.

I figured it out later. And now, with this system you propose, we have the perfect counter-example.