The Bluegrass Area Chapter of the Red Cross is raising funds and I’ve agreed to help. Their Heroes Campaign is designed to raise about $80,000 and nominate people in the region to be recognized for their heroic efforts.

I’ve agreed to be one of the team captains and raise at least $3,000 by March 24th. This is a request for your help.

If you donate to the cause, I’ll match your donation and you can nominate someone to be a Hero.

I would love to show our local chapter the power of online fundraising. If you choose to donate online, please put my name in the “Comments” box on their form.

Here are the steps to take:

1. Decide to help the Red Cross — do you really need to decide to help them?
2. Choose how much to donate. I suggest a minimum of $25, but I’d love to see an average online donation of $100.
3. Choose your method of donating. This Red Cross page gives you many ways: http://www.redcrosslexky.org/donate.htm
4. Just write my name in somewhere on your donation or e-mail me to let me know you donated. You can also use this blog post and comment your amount. I’ll match it.
5. After you donate, don’t forget to nominate a Hero using this PDF: http://www.redcrosslexky.org/Heroes%20Nomination.pdf
6. Fax the PDF to me at 859-422-8422.

The timeframe is tight — just a month — so let’s get to it!

And of course — all donations are tax deductible!

The thousands of people aided in the area thank you.

I just found a few new questions to use when thinking about whether to work with people over a long period of time. The questions stem from a Warren Buffett interview at Emory University. 

The questions are straight from one of Buffett’s responses:

What if you could buy 10% of one of your classmates and their future earnings? You wouldn’t buy the ones with the highest IQ, the best grades, etc, but the most effective. You like people who are generous, go out of their way, straight shooters. Now imagine that you could short 10% of one of your classmates. This part is usually more fun as you start looking around the room. You wouldn’t choose the ones with the poorest grades. Look for people nobody wants to be around, that are obnoxious or like to take all the credit. If you have a 500 HP engine and only get 50 HP out of it, you’ll be beat by someone else that has a 300 HP engine but gets 250 HP output.

Professional investors, especially angel and VC’s, already ask themselves this. I suppose I do in one form or another. But, to add the mental correlation of buying or shorting a stock…well, that takes it up a level.