The Green Peak Give Program
Vermont trails, conservation, housing or any 501(c)(3).
Why we stopped buying closing gifts
Instead of asking which libation to buy to celebrate closing; I ask a better question instead: what does your family actually care about? Whatever the answer is, we fund it when we close in your honor, in your name, to the organization you pick.
You get a decision instead of an object. You make an impact.
Writing a check takes me four minutes. It's the easiest part of this by a wide margin.
What I'm actually after is a Tuesday night in February. Dishes still on the table, somebody's phone face-down, and a nine-year-old being asked, for the first time in her life, where she would send a hundred dollars if it were hers to send. (This is a real story).
A closing turns out to be a strange, good moment to bring it up. You have just made the biggest financial decision of your year — maybe of your life, together, out loud, as a family. You are already talking about what things are worth and what you want your life to look like. It is the one week all year when a question like this doesn't come out of nowhere.
That is how a life lesson is learned.
That is the point.
