Our Mission

Long before there was a website, my wife and I kept what we called our good deeds basket. It was not a phrase we used now and then — over the years it became the way we looked at an ordinary day. We were not asking ourselves whether we had done something good. We noticed chances to help, and what came of them went into the basket.

Nobody was keeping score, and there was nothing to win. The basket was just how we held on to the idea that the small things count too.

Helping someone was never a special occasion. It simply became part of how we tried to live. Some of what we did was very small, some of it was bigger. At the end of most days we told each other what had gone into the basket.

Over time I began to wonder whether the tradition could become something bigger. Sharing our deeds with each other made us notice them more. Perhaps a place where people anywhere could share theirs might encourage more of the same.

That family tradition became gdbasket.

Most of the good in the world is small. Someone carries a bag up the stairs. Someone stays an extra hour. Someone helps a stranger and then goes home without telling anyone about it.

Kindness spreads by example. People rarely act because they were told to — they act because they saw someone else do it first. If one deed here moves one more person to do something good, that is enough.

So we are building a map of it. Not a feed to compete on, but a record of where care is actually happening, kept by the people who did it.