How I Made $1 Count

By Yosef Shidler

I have been known to wear many hats. Whether it was my once famous website, TheCoolJew.com, that shined a spotlight on Jewish music and entertainment, my penchant for making things happen in Lakewood’s Chabad growing community, or running, with my wife, my professional photography business, CJ Studios. I have never been “camera shy”.

Everything I do, I aim to accomplish with a full heart, and nothing makes me happier than finding ways to bring positivity into the world.

When COVID came and turned our entire existence upside down, the news was filled with many frustrating and upsetting stories. Positivity suddenly became a rare commodity. Even after the lockdowns ended, the pandemic’s shadow lingered. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make things better. I endlessly watched Tucker Carlson on Youtube, and scrolled through memes constantly thinking about how crazy the world was getting. The common dinimnator, that nothing I did seemed to make a difference.

But on one Erev Shabbos in the summer of 2021, all of the pieces came together. I had been listening to daily Tanya shiurim, which were focusing on the importance of giving tzedaka. Wanting to make this important mitzvah an automatic part of my daily routine, I signed up with the famous website, DailyGiving.org, which donates one dollar each day from all of its subscribers to benefit a single, well-known organization within the Jewish community.

My mind started moving in a thousand different directions as I made plans to sign my whole family up for DailyGiving. I was really excited about the concept of our collective dollars going to worthy causes like Bonei Olam and United Hatzalah and Torah Anytime, among others.

That shabbas as I churned these thoughts, in the back of my mind, other ideas were already brewing. I couldn’t help but notice that the beneficiaries of Daily Giving didn’t really embrace Jewish outreach the way I would have liked. I found myself wondering if I could set up a similar model to serve my favorite cause – helping out Chabad shluchim, especially those in remote locations.

Most people, especially those outside the Chabad community, have no idea that shluchim are self-supporting. Many put their lives on the line and struggle just to put food on the table and pay their utility bills.

This is particularly true of shluchim who live in far flung places, and the more I turned the idea over in my head, the more I realized that there was a need for a similar website to Daily Giving for shluchim. Daily Giving acquired more than 9,000 subscribers in three years, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how a similar site for shluchim might fare. Providing them an extra $1,000, $5,000, or even $8,000 could potentially be life changing.

And that’s how the Dollar Daily website got started.

I initially rejected the idea of building my own website as soon as I thought of it. It was the middle of the summer – busy season for us wedding photographers – and I knew it was going to take a tremendous amount of work. I argued the pros and cons in my head, but decided that if there was anyone who could make a Chabad daily giving website happen, it was me. And taking two lessons of Pirkei Avos to heart – the concepts of “If not now, when?” and “Step up and be a leader.” – I decided to give it a whirl.

I wasn’t exactly starting with a brand new concept. Daily Giving already existed. Its founder, Jonathan Donath, was totally on board with me copying his model, as long as I credited his website on our own. He supported this endeavor, agreeing that his project wasn’t meeting the needs of 5,000 shluchim worldwide.

Years earlier, the Friedman brothers- famously known as Avraham Fried(man), and his brother Rabbi Shlomo Friedman, established a fund called Yad L’shliach in memory of their late father. This fund was implemented to benefit financially strapped shluchim. An old friend of mine had been very involved in the organization, and I came to know Rabbi Shlomo Friedman, the organization director.

I reached out to them, and they were excited about joining forces with the Dollar Daily idea. It was obvious that in order to give this concept wings, we needed to find a way to keep it in the public eye. After mulling it over for a few days, COLlive.com agreed to jump in with us, as well.

Our web designer is a rock star who managed to get our website together in time for an Erev Yom Kippur launch and, baruch Hashem, we have been encouraged by the response with new sign ups coming in every day.

People ask me all the time how we decide who our dollars are going to, and long before we started, I put in a lot of effort to ensure diversity. You will notice the funds go toward Chabad Houses, cteens, young professionals, campus shluchim, schools, and the locations zig zag between the United States and other countries. Part of the original idea is that we have recipients in all parts of the world, and we try to not repeat locations in the same month.

Of course, our number one priority is shluchim who are going through hard times. You can bet that when a shliach tells us that they are about to have their water cut off, we work them into our schedule as quickly as possible, albeit with the utmost discretion. The beauty of this program is that our subscribers can see where their money is going every day and have the satisfaction of knowing that they play a part in helping shluchim in so many different places. You don’t need to know which shluchim are from urgent situations or which could just use a boost. It’s simultaneously anonymous and transparent.

It has been extremely rewarding to see our hard work pay off, even though we are still looking at relatively small numbers. A reality that we are confident will change over time. Our first distribution was on October 1st, and we currently have a little more than 260 people signed up. This means that every day, we are giving out over $260 dollars to shluchim. I know that right now we aren’t solving anyone’s financial crisis, but I have full faith in the generosity of Klal Yisroel. It is incredible to see our pooled dollars flying all over the world.

While I thought I knew a lot about shlichus, DollarDaily.org has been a real eye opener for me. We have gotten more than a few requests for help from shluchim in places that I have never even heard of. I pull up Google Maps and marvel at the fact that people give up all the comforts of home to spread yiddishkeit in incredibly remote areas.

You can bet that shluchim in places that are off the beaten path aren’t getting a lot of communal support, which means that those who sign up for Dollar Daily are helping shluchim plant the seeds of ahavas yisroel and Judaism in places where few, if any, existed before.

Members of Chabad communities are asked practically every day to help shluchim in various places, and while you want to support as many as you can, giving to so many locations probably means your donations will be smaller. You often get the feeling that your contribution isn’t really having a big impact. How many times can you give $18 to the next guy moving out on shlichus?

But by being part of Dollar Daily, your dollar becomes part of a much larger donation. This makes it far more significant, not to mention the fact that you are helping shluchim literally all across the globe.

Of course, Dollar Daily isn’t just a Chabad tzedakah. No matter who you are or where you live, if you travel for vacation or business, chances are excellent that you have availed yourself of a Chabad minyan, restaurant or meal while you are on the road.

In my “small town” of Lakewood, I can’t even tell you how often I hear people telling me that they planned a trip, knowing they could count on Chabad to be there for them. Dollar Daily is a great way to make sure that those vital services can continue.

Equally important is the fact that while there are great organizations that help people who are currently in the Jewish community, shluchim are taking care of our brethren wherever they may be.

It is no small feat when Hatzolah picks up a Zaidy in Flatbush and takes him to the hospital, but equally significant is a 75-year-old Jewish man in Germany who lost his faith and recently had his nishama kindled. The off the derech kid in Lakewood is absolutely in need of our communal care, but so is a teenager in Kansas who has never heard of Shabbos or kashrus. The list goes on and on, and while many communal causes are crucial to the fabric of our greater community, so is supporting the work of Chabad shluchim in communities you may have never even heard of – which is probably the most unadulterated ahavas yisroel.

While I thought I understood what life was like for shluchim, starting Dollar Daily made me realize just how clueless I was.

I spoke to one shliach recently, who told me that his kids start online school at 6PM every night to compensate for the difference in time zones and another who drives an hour plus each way, every day, so that an inmate can put on tefillin.

Their stories shine much needed light in our post-COVID world, and I am starting to share them in a downloadable newsletter called IllumiNations. This newsletter will provide a small glimpse from a different shliach each week, showing just how far these dedicated men and women go to spread the light of Yiddishkeit.

If you’re Lubavitch, not Lubavitch, or anything in between, Dollar Daily directly impacts your life.

As Rabbi Berel Lazar, chief rabbi of Russia told me, Dollar Daily isn’t going to give shluchim enough money to stop their fundraising efforts, but what it will do is to show them that there are hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of people who want to help them out. It sends them a clear message that their work is important, their sacrifices are valued and that we are all here for them, cheering them on from the sidelines.

I can’t think of a better way to spend a dollar each day – can you?

Visit DollarDaily.org – sign up now!