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An Anonymous Donation Comes with A Riddle

Ruth McCambridge
October 10, 2014
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October 9, 2014; HometownLife

Some institutions know how to create their own good karma.

The branch of the Community Choice Credit Union (with the tag line, “Let’s get together”) in Redford, Michigan says it received an envelope last week with ten $100 bills and a handwritten riddle:

“Know the clue

Know the who

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Anonymous 1679”

An accompanying note said that the money was to be used to fix the sign on the credit union or toward the charity of the credit union’s choice.

Abbey Bierlein, CCCU’s foundation coordinator, said that at first they felt that they should respect the donor’s wish to remain anonymous, but then they decided that the riddle gave them permission to figure it out. So they are busy doing that.

But there is no mystery as to where the donation will go, which is to the credit union’s scholarship fund. (The sign repair had already been budgeted.)

The credit union has a tradition of encouraging community philanthropy. Its most recent is a “random acts of kindness” campaign in August where employees were given up to $200 to perform random acts of kindness and then leave a little card that said, “Community Choice Paying it Forward.”—Ruth McCambridge

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About the author
Ruth McCambridge

Ruth is Editor Emerita of the Nonprofit Quarterly. Her background includes forty-five years of experience in nonprofits, primarily in organizations that mix grassroots community work with policy change. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ruth spent a decade at the Boston Foundation, developing and implementing capacity building programs and advocating for grantmaking attention to constituent involvement.

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