STARFISH ON THE BEACH:

mail99615
Aug 1
2 min read

The Joy of Micro-philanthropy

By Mark Young

President, Rational Games, Inc.

August 1, 2025

There is a wonderful Zen story about a man walking along a beach after a violent storm, which has washed up thousands of

starfish onto the beach, now all gasping for water to survive. He meets a small boy who is carefully picking the starfish up, and one

by one throwing them into the waves.

“What a pointless effort!” said the man to the boy.

“There are thousands of starfish on this beach; you can’t possibly throw them

all in the water yourself.

Surely you don’t think you are making a difference?”

The boy calmly picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea.

“I sure made a difference to that one”, the boy replied.

This story illustrates the Herculean task faced by small philanthropy efforts and certainly resonates with me. At Rational Games, we are in the final stages of converting our nonprofit association into a proper German Stiftung, a much more solid foundation for grant-giving. But how to overcome this “Starfish Challenge”?

For me, it is about three things:

1. Realize that we are small; however, with proper focus and selection, we can indeed make a significant difference to selected projects. We have learned that grants of 5,000 or 10,000 Euros can indeed mean the difference between survival and eventual flourishing for many social entrepreneurs.

2. We have learned to offer more than a once-a-year cash injection to our grantees, with a focus instead on capacity building: help with writing business plans, crowdfunding, professional marketing messages and much more. They see us more as enablers than as funders.

3. For years, we have made a concerted effort to find partners larger than us who not only have deep pockets but also a shared passion for our idea of harnessing games and play to help resolve conflicts. We call it our “Kangaroo” project, one that enables us to keep doing what we do, but hop in a partner's pouch to go faster and farther.

Over time, this strategy has yielded considerable success, so that our small foundation has, with partners, given away over $ 1 million since our founding in 2001.

Now to make it 10 million! Who's the next starfish on the beach that needs our help?

Comments, advice and support are most appreciated.