Shared from the 10/3/2018 Albany Times Union eEdition

GIVING

Hundreds get Good Thing

Schenectady man gave out $100 for 365 days in memory of his sister

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Lori Van Buren / Times Union

Jeff Buell, who launched “Do the Next Good Thing” a year ago, sits in his home on Sept. 26 in Schenectady.

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Provided photos Above, two men who delivered groceries to Jeff Buell were surprised when he gave them $100. Buell made the first donation to Trey Hart,

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left, who has diabetes and wants to become a doctor.

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At right, Buell was so impressed with maria’s attitude, he

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Betsy feiden was one of the people Jeff Buell met as part of Do the Next Good Thing. feiden survived abuse as a child and has had to fight to get ahead. She says Buell, now a friend, reminds her there is love in the world.

Schenectady

There was Norene, who just got out of jail.

And Betsy, a single mom who wants to be a pilot.

Also Kylie, who was taking in a concert; Warren, who was playing a drum on North Broadway in Schenectady; Dave and Luis, who were delivering groceries; and Gary, who was going fishing.

Jeff Buell, 38, surprised them with $100 each, along with hundreds of other people as part of a campaign he launched a year ago called Do the Next Good Thing. He pledged to give away $100 a day for a year to random strangers and write about the experience on Facebook. He gave away $1,000 on the 30th of each month. Do the Next Good Thing was created in memory of Buell’s sister, Laurie Bereza, who died in 2016. But Buell was also tired of the meanness he saw on social media, and although he likes to strike up conversations with strangers, he saw many people did not — and therefore missed out on human connections. He had a theory, and after 365 days of Do the Next Good Thing, he says he was proven right.

“People are inherently good. People are hungry for kindness, and people are willing to dream along with you,” Buell said.

The Facebook page for Do the Next Good Thing has more than 10,600 likes, but it never went viral. That pleases Buell in a way because another one of his goals was to build local pride, and most of the people who follow the page are local.

It was harder than Buell expected it would be. Surprising strangers with a crisp Benjamin seems easy, but Buell was looking for connections, too — stories about people. It startled people when Buell approached. He’s 6 feet 5 inches tall, he has a beard, and he’s usually wearing a hat. The pictures he posted to Facebook capture the shock on people’s faces over and over again — disbelief mixed with joy, and sometimes tears. Human interaction can be inspiring and fulfilling but Buell describes himself as an introvert with extroverted tendencies, so it was exhausting too. Sometimes he gave anonymously by folding money into a tree branch, or underneath a discarded cup, or between the pages of a bundle of newspapers. Many of the recipients he never expects to meet again, some became friends. Buell met Betsy Feiden at a restaurant, and because she is someone who likes to talk to strangers too, he quickly learned the story of her brutal upbringing as a foster child, the moment she hit bottom and her climb back up to become a mother and a student working toward her pilot’s license.

“He inspired me to keep going and see the good in people, because there is an awful lot of hate in the world,” Feiden said.

A year later, with all that giving accomplished, he admits a secret: he didn’t have $48,500 when Do the Next Good Thing started. His personal expenses are low — he is single and he lives in an apartment owned by his company — and he was expecting a good year, but it wasn’t as if he had the cash sitting in a box, ready to distribute.

It worked out. Buell says he never had to borrow money to give it away.

Buell’s mission also shifted slightly throughout the year. At the beginning he said he didn’t care whether the people he gave money to needed it or not. But as the time went on, he says he “leaned in” to neediness a bit. He connected with Renee Fahey, founder of Street Soldiers. Every Friday, Fahey gathers food and supplies and gives them away to homeless people. Since 2016, she has expanded from Albany to Saratoga Springs and Troy. Fahey and the others who have joined her don’t represent a nonprofit, they just share what they have with people in need. When Do the Next Good Thing started, several readers let Buell know about it, and eventually he went to Academy Park in Albany to see what it was about. He handed out water and absorbed the scene around him.

“It was like meeting a celebrity,” Fahey says. “He does what he does from his heart, not because he wants attention or a pat on the back.”

Buell spread the word about the Street Soldiers’ GoFundMe page, which promptly brought in $10,000 — more cash donations than Fahey ever had before.

Buell calculates the involvement of Do the Next Good Thing has resulted in $50,000 in donations for various organizations. It feels good, he said.

From time to time, Buell dipped into the current of good things for himself. Buell says he opens up to strangers more easily than he does to those closest to him, which irritates those who love him. He suffers from depression, and recently when he was feeling particularly down, he wrote an eloquent post about it on the Next Good Thing Facebook page. The support rolled in from people who know what it’s like to battle depression, as well as friends and strangers who wished him well.

Buell is now contemplating what’s next for Do the Next Good Thing. Someone he met through the project suggested recently it should be “BE the Next Good Thing,” and the Face-book page can be a place for people to tell their stories about the things they do to spread kindness.

lhornbeck@timesunion.com 518-454-5352 @leighhornbeck

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