Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas! And a prosperous New Year! You never know what you are going to find under the tree this time of year. However, one of the most surprising things that Santa might be carrying in his sack is the prosperity that rings in the New Year.

Arthur C. Brooks makes the surprising contention that the act of charitable giving leads to prosperity, putting quite the Randian spin on the axiom that it is better to give than to receive. He does not invoke Santa in his book Who Really Cares but he does cite myth-busting research when comparing liberal vs. conservative giving and American exceptionalism with respect to our culture of individual charity.

And then there’s his link between charity and prosperity. How can giving away your time and money make an individual, much less an organization or society, more prosperous? Suggesting that increased prosperity leads to more charity would not be surprising – nor that the two are correlated. However, it seems counter-intuitive to suggest that charity actually helps generate prosperity. Yet that is what Brooks does in his penultimate chapter, “Charity Makes You Healthy, Happy, and Rich.”

Brooks expounds several theories on why this might be so. Although not completely persuaded, the one I found most convincing was Robert Putnam’s “social capital” theory: “Charitable giving can also generate ‘social capital’ – the trust and social cohesion a community enjoys … Charitable acts, such as giving and volunteering, tend to strengthen social networks between people. These networks stimulate economic success.”

Social networks operate in the workplace, as Brooks notes. But it’s Robert E. Kelley in How to Be a Star at Work who explains a possible mechanism.  One of Kelley’s keys to stardom is getting plugged into a knowledge network – or “knowing who knows,” when you need answers quickly. But it’s not enough to know who has the answers you need, you need to be part of their network so they’ll be willing to help you when you need it.

Kelley’s answer? “Proactive One-Way Trading,” biz jargon for charity in the workplace. You need to find ways to help other people by donating your time and expertise to them before you need to ask them to reciprocate. You need to first earn social capital that you can spend later when you need it.

In MBM, we are explicit about building an organizational culture that shares (and seeks) knowledge. The MBM Guiding Principle of Knowledge says we should “seek and use the best knowledge in decisions and proactively share your knowledge.” Brooks and Kelley might argue that in order to build social capital and your personal knowledge network you should reverse the order and proactively share (“one-way trade”) your knowledge first before seeking. What do you think?