Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 3K264: Can You Give Too Much?

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“You must each decide in your heart how much to give. And don’t give reluctantly or in response to pressure. “For God loves a person who gives cheerfully.”

Apparently you can give too much as Amazon is dropping their Amazon Smile program.  For those not familiar with the program it was very simple.  You could log onto Amazon through their Smile website and then have a % of your purchase price (it was a really small – around 5%) donated by Amazon to the non-profit/charity of your choice.  Amazon would pay them directly.  It turns out that they had given out about $500MM dollars with the program making them, in aggregate, one of, if not the most significant donators to non-profits annually.  But, they decided to stop.  Cost cutting?  Probably.  Simplification?  Likely.  Someone new at the top who doesn’t smile on non-profits all that much? That is possible too.  Whatever the reason, there will be one less opportunity for non-profits and Amazon will continue to roll forward.

Can we give too much to others?  Sure we can and many a person who was not a responsible money manager has found themselves running out of money as they “gave” beyond their means. We can also give too much of ourselves to others and one day find ourselves burnt out, overwhelmed and in a state where we need to be taken care of by someone else.  So yes, we can give too much and work is one of those demands that can pull the life right out from us.  The good news?  It’s the Good News that we can never give too much of ourselves to our God.  If we commit ourselves to giving all of our heart to Him, He will guide us in our giving of all else in our life.  Oh, and He has a God-way of making sure that everything else works out in a way that works for everyone.  Let’s give it a try today.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 9:7 (New Living Translation)