Butterfly Coins inspire, track acts of kindness

SANDPOINT — What happens to an act of kindness once it has been given and received? Does it stop there? Or does it gain momentum and touch additional lives?

A couple of longtime friends and business entrepreneurs became interested in the idea of tracking kindness and came up with a novel plan. In the bargain, they may also have concocted a way to encourage random acts of goodness.

The message — and the messenger, in this case — is the Butterfly Coin. The item is meant to act as both a talisman and a tracking device, according to Bruce Pedersen of Sandpoint and his partner in the project, Ron Hornbaker of Austin, Texas.

The two have engaged in different projects over the years, including the Sandpoint-based Book Crossing, which tracked the path of books as they traveled from one reader to another, connecting people through reading.

A similar approach fell into place for the Butterfly Coins.

“I wanted a tangible item that could track acts of kindness,” said Pedersen. “From that, the Butterfly Coin emerged.”

“We tried to come up with a way to spread some good in the world and have fun while you’re doing it,” Hornbaker added.

“And it has taken off faster than we would have imagined.”

Only available for the past 10 weeks or so, the first run of 5,000 coins sold out almost at once and there are now some 9,000 pieces winding their way across the U.S. and parts of Europe. A second run has already been released, with future editions scheduled to be created about every three months.

Each coin bears a tracking number, which can be used to monitor its path once the initial buyer sets it free in what the designers refer to as “a releasing.” A designated website gives that individual perpetual access to the Butterfly Coins site, where recipients can post their stories of how the coin came into their hands and what they did with it afterward.

Although attractive enough to want to hang on to, the solid brass coins are heavy enough to remind the holder that, by design, they are meant to be set free.

“When you’re carrying one of these coins, it makes you more mindful of looking for opportunities to help people, randomly,” Hornbaker said.

“We purposefully designed these coins to have a heft and weight so that people will be aware of their physical presence,” he explained. “Carried in your pocket, they keep you mindful to look for opportunities to do good.”

“That’s the hope — that it will inspire acts of kindness,” added Pedersen. One of the first entries on the stories section of the Butterfly Coins website proves that theory out.

A homeless person received one of the coins with $20. Soon after, the coin showed up in another homeless shelter with $100 tagging along. As the good deeds rippled out, a third person who was prepared to spend a cold night on the street ended up with the coin — and a warm place to sleep.

The coins caught on quickly, the partners said, and the associated tales are now beginning to roll in to populate the stories page. The recently completed second run of 15,000 coins already has about one third of those in circulation.

“It’s going to be interesting to track the stories over time as these coins get passed around,” Hornbaker said. “They’re probably going to outlive all of us.”

At $6.95 each, the tokens of kindness are appealing enough to collect, though Hornbaker says the physical coin is not what buyers are investing in.

“When you think about it, what you’re getting for that $7 is a permanent, dedicated story page that lasts forever,” he said. “And the potential of a lifetime of watching where that coin goes after you release it.”

“We’re using the money to grow the project,” said Pedersen. “A non-profit needs to perform so it can feed itself.”

Calling Hornbaker “the savant” and himself “the catalyst,” Pedersen said the butterfly image came from his partner’s corner of that creative business relationship.

“I settled on the butterfly because of the Butterfly Effect in chaos theory, where a small action can trigger additional actions far removed from the original one,” Hornbaker said. “A tiny good deed done today might trigger a future act of kindness that’s far beyond what we can imagine. You never know.”

If early results are an indication, the Butterfly Coins could be in for an exciting ride as the word gets out. Hornbaker already suspects that they will play a long-lived role in touching lives in positive ways. When that happens, all of the credit goes to the person who is doing good and the focus shifts away from the creators of the coin to the coins themselves.

“We’re just stewards of the idea, watching what happens with it,” Hornbaker said. “Our hope is that, over time, they inspire some large, significant, extreme acts of good.”

To learn more about the project, to purchase Butterfly Coins or read initial stories on how they are traveling on wings of kindness, go online to butterflycoins.org.