The first Hop Cards are on their way

A long while back, I found myself thinking about paying it forward. You do something kind for someone, they do something kind for someone else, and the kindness keeps going. It’s a lovely idea. But there’s a part of it nobody ever gets to see: what happened next? Where did that one good deed lead?

Wouldn’t it be neat to see the good things that came from your act of kindness?

Hop It Forward is our way of finding out.

How it works

It starts with a small printed card — a Hop Card — with a QR code and a four-character code on it.

1. Do something kind for someone, big or small, and hand them the card.
2. They scan the QR code (or go to hopitforward.com/hop and type in the code), say where they got the card, and tell its story in a sentence or two.
3. Then they pass it on with a good deed of their own.

Each pass is a “hop,” and every card’s journey shows up on a map — stop after stop, story after story. There are no accounts and no app to download: just a card, a kind act and a few words. A story shows a first name (only if you give one), a city and what happened — nothing more.

If you remember Flat Stanley, the paper boy kids mail to friends and family to see where he travels, it’s a bit like that. Only this time, what travels is kindness.

The pilot starts now

Over the next three weeks, we’re sending out about 40 Hop Cards to friends and family. Most will start in the United States, and a few are heading to Canada, New Zealand, Germany, France and Poland.

The site speaks English, Spanish, French, German, Polish and Ukrainian, and every story is translated into each of them, so a card can cross a border without losing its story.

Until the real stories arrive, the homepage shows a preview built from made-up examples, so you can see what the map will look like once kindness has been hopping for a while. Every one of them is marked “Made-up example.” The real ones are on their way.

What we hope to learn

This is an experiment, and honestly, we don’t know how it will go. Here’s what we’re watching:

• Do people keep it going? Passing a card on asks a little of everyone it reaches. We want to see how often it happens.
• How many hops does a card make? Two? Ten? More?
• How far does it travel? We’re counting the miles from stop to stop.

We’ve planned for the pilot to run until the first 50 real stories come in. That number may change as we learn — if the cards travel more slowly than we expect, or faster, we’ll adjust.

How to be part of it

• Get a Hop Card. If you’d like to start a chain of your own, ask for a card in the mail.
• Follow along. Leave your email address below and we’ll let you know how the experiment is going. During the pilot there’s no set schedule — just news when there’s news.

Thank you for reading, and for whatever kindness you pass on next.