The World Cup. The Knicks. Your donors.

If you need a sign that people are yearning for togetherness, community, joy - look around you.

Millions of people lining the streets of New York for the Knicks victory parade. Cities across the globe stopping everything to watch the World Cup together. Reel after reel of people from different countries bonding over shared joy. Strangers becoming neighbors in the span of ninety minutes, united by something larger than themselves.

Nobody had to be convinced to show up. Nobody needed a nudge. They came because something in them needed it.

There's a term for what happens in those moments: collective effervescence. The sociologist Émile Durkheim described it as the energy that emerges when people gather around a shared experience - the electricity, the joy, the sense of belonging to something beyond each of us

People are hungry for connection. For shared purpose. For a place to put their energy and their hope.

Mission-driven organizations are in a position to answer that call.

Not with a parade. Not with a stadium. But with a room, designed with intention, around a mission that matters. A gathering that gives people the experience of collective effervescence - and channels it toward something that changes the world.

That's what the best events do. They don't just check off the box of bringing people together. They remind people why they showed up - and make them want to keep showing up.

The hunger is there. The question is whether you're creating the conditions to meet it.