Over the past few days, I’ve encountered a number of questions about my campaign to raise $5,000 for charity: water for my birthday.

First, thanks for asking. I’m blessed to know you care. Here are the questions. If you have more, I’d love to answer them.

Why?

I’d love to be a hipster and just say “Why not?”, but that’d leave us both feeling a little empty.

The truth is that I feel called to impact the world because of The Gospel of Jesus Christ. There are needy people, Jesus said we should help those in need, and I saw a non sequitur in my life–I say I want to help people, I’m called to help the least of these, but I haven’t been doing a thing about it. I needed to rectify that. This is my first step in that direction.

I’m blessed to be living in the most prosperous nation in the world. I drink the recommended 8-10 glasses of clean water a day, and before last month, I rarely thought about people who are drinking water that’s killing them. Why am I doing something? Because something needs to be done.

Why charity: water?

When I attended the Catalyst Conference last month, I heard the charity: water CEO Scott Harrison speak. I’ve been burdened with the need to provide clean water before, [through organizations like ClearBlue] but I’ve never taken action. Scott presented the idea of donating/selling your birthday to give to charity.

Scott talked about the importance of telling a story when inspiring people to take part in a charity. His passion inspired me, and I decided it was my turn to pass on the story. [And for my devoted blog followers, I gave you a heads up in my Catalyst post: “I’ve got big plans (that most certainly involve you) for my birthday…” Consider charity: water that big plan involving you.]

At any rate, I realized that I know a whole lot of fantastic, generous, giving people and saw an opportunity to tell a story to them. This is that story.

I also chose charity: water because they’ve made giving easy and accessible. Even people with good intentions won’t give if it’s too complicated. Donating is easy—charity: water has made giving life easy.

Is it legit?

The short answer: absolutely.

I don’t think non-profits get more legitimate than helping developing nations and giving 100% of the proceeds to charity. That’s just nuts. If you want to dig around for yourself, here’s all the information and background on charity: water you could ever want [and a direct link to the financials]

Are you doing this to prove something?

The only thing I hope to prove is that there are people with giant hearts who are willing to give until it hurts not for my birthday, not to make me run a marathon, not to get their names on a donor page or a t-shirt, but to prove that helping people who can’t help themselves isn’t just a good idea, it’s a responsibility.

So you’re running a marathon?

That’s the deal. We raise $5,000, and I’ll go 26.2 [the specific marathon is still to be determined based on scheduling conflicts, but I promise it’ll be before the end of June 2011].

And how’s this for upping the ante: if we break $10,000, I’ll run the marathon barefoot.

Does a suburban kid from Akron, Ohio who hasn’t run more than a mile in months often go barefoot in marathons?

Considering I’m not a masochist, my normal response would be no. That is, unless, the kid mentioned above is raising money for something really important. Unbelievably important. More important than darn near anything else I’ve ever done. In that case, it looks like the answer yes.

The least I can do is run a race so people can drink clean water.

Why should I care?

I hope I’ve answered that already in this post, but more than anything I hope you care because human beings, people just like you and me, people who live on the other side of the world don’t have something we take for granted. They don’t have something we waste. Their water is killing them. That’s not right. And we can do something about it. Let’s do it.