Tag Archives: Mark Horvath

Help Mark Horvath Help Homeless Veterans

Update: Thank you. By the time Mark crossed the finish line, we raised $2,170 for homeless veterans. And that money will be tripled. Thank you!

My friend Mark Horvath is doing a 5K walk to help end veteran homelessness and he needs our help. He’s got a $5,000 match—so every dollar you donate gets doubled, up to $5,000 [plus another foundation match triples your donation]—yet he’s only raised $100 $645 so far. And the 5K is on Saturday.

So help me help Mark help veterans who are homeless. Donate now.

InvisiblePeople.tv's Mark Horvath on CNN.com
InvisiblePeople.tv’s Mark Horvath on CNN.com

Who Is Mark?

Mark Horvath is the founder of InvisiblePeople.tv, an nonprofit that gives people who are homeless a voice by telling their stories. Mark has worked tirelessly to end homelessness because he was once homeless himself.

I’ve supported Mark every chance I get, including a book project, a half-marathon fundraiser, interviews, articles and more. I love the guy, I love what he’s doing. Mark is the real deal.

Please donate to support Mark.

Mark Horvath Ready for Action

What’s the Charity?

Mark is participating in the United Way Home Walk, supporting the United Way of Greater Los Angeles. I think that’s a name we can trust.

Plus, Mark lived in Los Angeles. He knows what’s what and I trust that Mark would only raise money for organizations that are truly doing good.

Please donate to support the United Way.

Homeless Veterans?

Yeah. Like Dawn. She served in the Navy for seven years, came home to a difficult situation and found herself homeless. She lived out of her car for two years.

Our veterans deserve better. And thanks to the United Way, she now has a place to call home. Watch Dawn’s story.

Please donate to support Dawn and other veterans just like her.

Refugees vs. Veterans?

I don’t want to get too political on you, but lately all the garbage going back and forth on Facebook is making me twitchy. Seriously, I want to stab myself with a spork.

The one that makes me feel the most stabby is the meme pitting Syrian refugees against homeless veterans. It argues that we’re not taking care of our U.S. veterans, so how can we take care of Syrian refugees.

Let’s forget that the meme assumes we can’t do both. Let’s forget all the politics that so deeply divides us. I think we’re supposed to help people in need. It’s that simple.

Well, here’s an opportunity to help homeless veterans. So let’s help them.

Please donate to support a less stabby Internet.

Did You Say Matching?

Yes. Every dollar donated is matched. You donate $10, it becomes $20. You donate $50, it becomes $100. It’s magic!

Up to $5,000 will be matched. So if we can raise $5,000, that’ll be $10,000 to help homeless veterans. That’s a win.

Please donate to support magic doubling money for a good cause.

UPDATE: So Mark has a donor personally matching the $5,000 he raises, as I mentioned above. But also, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation is offering the Hilton Challenge. For every team that raises $5,000, they’ll match it. So your contribution will not just be doubled, it will be tripled. Like money, money, money. It’s like exponential giving!

How Soon?

Now! The United Way HomeWalk is Saturday, Nov. 21. That’s like 36 hours from now. Time’s a wastin’! We need to raise that money today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Now.

Please donate right now.

Thank you.

Most People Believe the Homeless Have No Redeeming Value: Help Mark Horvath Change That

My friend Mark Horvath runs one of the only homelessness advocacy organizations in the country, InvisiblePeople.tv. He’s giving a voice to people most of us choose to ignore. Mark is the ideal person for this work, because he was once homeless himself. Mark’s birthday is this week and he needs your help.

Every year Mark does a single big fundraiser around his birthday that provides a big chunk of his donations for the year. In reality, Mark is supporting much of the work of InvisiblePeople.tv himself, through consulting and speaking fees. About 80% of InvisiblePeople.tv’s funding comes from Mark. The other 20% comes from donations, mostly in this big fundraiser.

That’s incredible.

First, it’s incredible that Mark gives so much of himself to this cause.

Second, it’s incredible that donations only bring in about 20%. Mark shouldn’t have to hustle so hard to keep InvisiblePeople.tv going. And right now, his campaign has two days left and he still needs $3,700 to hit his goal. That 20% is kind of pathetic. And we’re barely making it right now.

So please donate.

Mark is doing some incredible and much needed awareness work with InvisiblePeople.tv. He captures the stories of homeless people in honest, brutal videos. They’re hard to watch. Because people want to ignore them. We want to write off homeless people, come up with excuses for why we shouldn’t help them (and in the worst cases, take selfies instead of help them). But if we understood what homeless people have gone through, what they’re up against, we’d change our tune (like Dennis, who admits, “I used to make fun of the homeless until I became one.”). Most people believe homeless people have no redeeming value. That’s horrible. And it needs to change. Mark is making it change.

I’ve been supporting Mark and his work since the beginning. I helped publish the Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness book that supports Mark’s work. I’ve interviewed him for Church Marketing Sucks and Foursquare, sharing his story of being homeless and nearly becoming homeless again in 2008, when he launched InvisiblePeople.tv after being laid off. Earlier this year I ran a half-marathon to support Mark, ultimately raising more than $700 and barely managing to finish (13 miles is tough and I needed all the support I could get).

So I’m asking you to support Mark’s work, give to his birthday campaign. Let’s raise that 20% and then some.

Thank you.

Running 13 Miles for the Homeless

On Saturday, Jan. 25, I’m running a half-marathon.

That’s 13.1 miles.

It’s a little crazy. I’ve never run that far before (12 miles is my record). But this is where my running is taking me and I’m giving it a shot.

I’m a little lacking in motivation, so I decided to use Mark Horvath and his work with InvisiblePeople.tv to help the homeless as inspiration. I’m trying to raise $500 for InvisiblePeople.tv with this half-marathon.

So please, cheer me on by making a donation.

I’m feeling pretty good about it today as I write this, but come Saturday I’ll need all the inspiration I can get. I felt pretty bleh when I ran 12 miles a few weeks ago, and I don’t want to feel that way on Saturday. I’d rather think about Mark Horvath and how running those miles is helping him and the homeless people he serves.

I’d appreciate your support. And InvisiblePeople.tv does incredible work telling the stories of the homeless and being an advocate for a people who have no voice.

You can make a donation here.

Thank you.

Support Homeless Documentary & Game

I’ve been a big support of Mark Horvath and his work with InvisiblePeople.tv for a while. His passion and resolve to fight homelessness is inspirational.

Mark always has cool stuff up his sleeve. Now there’s an Indiegogo project to fund a documentary about Mark’s work and a social game to help fight homelessness. It’s a cool concept and more than just a movie about Mark, there’s a smartphone game that can get people involved and push them towards real activism.

They’re trying to raise $100,000 in 37 days, which seems like a tall order. They’ll need to raise $2,700 a day. Yesterday they raised $396. So they need your help.

It’s also backed by a nonprofit, so it’s tax deductible.

Check it out and consider supporting the @home campaign:

Stories Can Heal

Classic LesOne of my favorite memories from my grandpa’s funeral is sitting around his kitchen with my cousins telling stories and jokes. That little kitchen filled up with people and laughter again, which my grandpa would have enjoyed. My grandpa was old and it was his time to go, but that act of storytelling helped to heal the wound of losing him.

I finished reading Tell Me a Story by Scott McClellan this week. It’s good stuff (you can read my review for more). Something Scott talks about in the book that I resonate with is the idea that telling stories can be healing.

I’m not a particularly good storyteller—that’s probably why I’m a writer. I like to edit and rework and figure out how best to tell a story. I work better in the written word than the spoken word. But I think part of what draws me to the word is telling stories. It’s self-indulgent, but one of the things I like to write is simply telling stories about my life. In some ways, I think that’s because there’s healing happening there. The telling of stories allows me to process, to figure things out, to think things through and find meaning or comfort or grace.

That’s probably why, in my moments of greatest distress, I turn to writing. I tell the story. Some of those stories aren’t meant to be told to anyone but myself, but still I tell them.

In adoption, I think this is why it’s important that we tell the stories. It’s easy to gloss over what could be uncomfortable details and avoid those stories. But by telling those adoption stories, we give voice to them, we shine a light on any “messy” details and we find a way to embrace them. A story gives us the narrative to do that. It gives us a voice and something to cling to when we’re confused or fearful.

That’s powerful. Continue reading Stories Can Heal

Open Our Eyes: Sales Report

Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of HomelessnessThis fall I released the book Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness. The little book tells the stories of homeless people—families, kids, grandparents—and supports the work of homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his site, InvisiblePeople.tv.

All profit from the book goes to Mark. All of it. Here’s a quick report on book sales so we can be an open book:

  • October sales: 2 copies, $7.68 profit (we didn’t launch until November, so you folks were ahead of the curve)
  • November sales: 57 copies, $218.88
  • December sales: 30 copies, $77.59

These are only numbers for print copies and we earn roughly $3.84 per copy from Amazon sales (the numbers don’t add up because sales through other channels have a lower royalty rate).

Ironically, payments for digital versions come later, and I received the first one today:

  • November sales: 30 copies, $99.20 profit.

So far I’ve sent Mark two payments. The first was for $226.56 at the end of the year (October & November physical sales) and the second was for $176.79 that I sent this morning (December physical sales & November digital sales).

So to date Open Our Eyes has earned $403.35 to support InvisiblePeople.tv. We’ve also sold 119 copies, which puts us in the top 21% of books published. It’s not vast riches to solve all Mark’s problems, but it’s something. And hopefully it will grow.

Thanks for your support and thanks to everyone who made this book happen. I’d love to keep these payments going for a long time, so please buy a copy if you haven’t already and spread the word.

Looking Back at 2010

It’s New Year’s Eve and nobody’s really working today, so it’s time for a little 2010 recap. Thankfully my wife did a full recap in photos, so I can skimp a little.

2010 has been insane.

Bigger Family
The biggest moment, of course, was welcoming a preteen into our family, along with all the Hannah Montana and Justin Bieber and sparkly pink that comes with a pre-teen. It’s been quite a ride with Yeshumnesh and we’ve got a ways to go. I’ve never felt so old—and at the same time so young. I did manage to welcome Yeshumnesh into our family with a new haircut. First time in three years I paid for one. The mohawk made our Christmas card.

Writing Wins
I also published three books:

Addition by Adoption, is my book of tweets about raising kids and bringing Milo home from Ethiopia. A portion of the proceeds go to clean water in Ethiopia, and in September we hit the $5,000 mark and raised enough to build a well in Ethiopia. The book is also just barely turning a profit, which is exciting.

Then there’s Open Our Eyes, the book that supports homeless advocate Mark Horvath. If you want to know more about what Mark does, read Ka’e k’e‘s story. It’s been a big year for Mark. We also helped him win $50,000. The book has all kinds of big names contributors, like New York Times best-selling author Chris Brogan. All profits from the book go to support Mark’s work with InvisiblePeople.tv. The profits aren’t much—I send Mark his first payment yesterday ($226.56), but he won’t be retiring any time soon. Knowing Mark he’ll be spending it on someone else.

I also published a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel. More for fun than anything and to give self publishing a try (works nicely, crappy cover and all). The post-apocalyptic fun continued all year as I kept diving into more post-apocalyptic literature (hmm… maybe I should have reversed that order).

For all the writing success, I also had a big failure. My fourth attempt at National Novel Writing Month fell flat. I gave up after two weeks when the story wasn’t coming together and I realized my life was too busy.

Giving Back
With building a well in Ethiopia and publishing a book to fight homelessness I’ve done a lot of giving back this year. But it started even earlier when we responded to an earthquake by coloring. Lexi’s pictures ended up raising $675 for Haiti. Other folks got in on the action about the time the idea fizzled out. I’d love to do more with it, but I think I have enough charity cases on my hand.

Open Our Eyes Press

Earlier this week I reported the first week sales for Open Our Eyes. The book’s been doing pretty well and we’re building on lots of publicity. Here are some of the highlights:

You can find more on the reviews page. We still need all the help we can get to keep the momentum going. Please consider tweeting it, liking it on Facebook or doing whatever you can to spread the word.

And don’t forget to buy a copy from Amazon.com.

Thanks.

Open Our Eyes: One Week

Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of HomelessnessLast week we launched Open Our Eyes to lots of rave reviews. It’s been a busy week and very exciting because all the profits go to homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his nonprofit InvisiblePeople.tv. It’s been fun to see so many people come together to support the book.

I know it didn’t mean anything, but it was especially cool to see the book climb to #7,864 on Amazon’s sales rank and #3,680 on their Kindle store.

In reality, we sold 44 print copies and 21 digital copies. That works out to something in the neighborhood of $220 for Mark Horvath! (I’ll have exact numbers later, but the Kindle royalty figures are current through Saturday, which missed a few sales)

Those numbers may sound small, but that’s quite a launch for a self-published book. My hope is that momentum will continue to build and books will continue to sell, raising more money for Mark.

A big thanks goes out to everyone who helped make this thing possible. Now we just have to keep pushing it and build on this success. So you if you haven’t bought a copy yet, do it today.

Go Buy Open Our Eyes

Help the homeless: I wrote a chapter. You can buy a copy.Back in January I pulled the trigger on yet another book idea. I loved the work Mark Horvath was doing to help the homeless. I hated that Mark was nearly homeless himself (again), living in a cockroach apartment with nothing in his fridge but a discounted vegetable tray and a bottle of water. He was eating his meals at the homeless shelter.

It was stupid (and it still is). Somebody should be supporting Mark and making sure he can do this work without working himself to death. But nobody had stepped up. So I did. I couldn’t do much, but I figured I could put together a project that produces something people might be willing to buy, and we could give the money to Mark. So that’s what we did.

I got a whole bunch of Mark’s friends to contribute—people like Trust Agent author Chris Brogan, mom blogger Jessica Gottlieb and Ford’s social media guru Scott Monty (and 21 others). We wrote up stories of homeless people from Mark’s travels across the country, telling the stories of moms and their kids, people who had been homeless for days and 0thers for decades, people from Seattle and Florida. The result is a manual to motivate action. It drips with Mark’s attitude and passion, the way he used what little resources he had, plugged them into social media and turned this thing into a real movement.

I hope you’ll check it out. It would mean a lot to me and it would support Mark.

Today’s the day, folks. Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness launches today. Please go buy it:

Then tell your friends to buy it, review it on Amazon, like it on Facebook, whatever you can do. I need your help. Mark needs your help. The homeless out there need your help. Thanks.

Remember that all profits go to homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his nonprofit InvisiblePeople.tv.