What Makes You Stand Out?

Imitation is the “sincerest form of flattery,” or so says English writer Charles Caleb Colton.

Or maybe imitation is “not just the sincerest form of flattery — it's the sincerest form of learning,” if you would rather take the word of George Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright.

I regularly hear from nonprofit organizations that want nothing less than “to be like charity: water.” Now I don’t question that that is a worthy goal. After all, the very fact that we want to imitate something means we are familiar with it. And there’s no denying that charity: water is well-known. It’s been included in a speech by President Barack Obama, been supported by celebrities and won awards for everything from its logo to its entrepreneurial thinking. And it’s certainly doing noble work at — according to its most recent 990 posted on GuideStar, it has a respectable overhead rate of 11.4 percent.