Nipun Mehta
The Journey
Nipun Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace, a global community working at the intersection of technology, volunteerism, and gift culture. As a designer of large-scale social movements rooted in small acts of service and powered by micro-moments of inner transformation, his work has catalyzed networks of community builders grounded in their own localities — cultivating deeper connection with themselves, each other, and larger systems. Today, ServiceSpace reaches millions every month, is powered by thousands of volunteers, and keeps blossoming into local and virtual projects that aim to ignite a “whole greater than the sum of its parts.”
Soon after college, Nipun felt called to trade Silicon Valley’s Internet potential for the “Inner-Net” potential of his own heart. In April 1999, ServiceSpace began as an experiment — four friends helping a homeless shelter build a website. Through larger arcs of serendipity, it quickly drew thousands of volunteers, and while the projects spread over the next 25 years, what was perhaps most pioneering was the process: three creative constraints — no paid staff, no fundraising, no impact measurement — that paved the way for radically uncommon solutions.
At the heart of the work is a simple idea: everyone has gifts to offer, and when those gifts are shared freely, a “many-to-many” field of heart intelligence emerges — revealing regenerative ways to meet the needs of the world. Tending such a field is the art of social permaculture, and a shift from leadership to laddership, where changing oneself is the first step toward changing the world.
This work, intertwined with his own deepening inner practice, has drawn many honors — from the Goi Peace Award to the Dalai Lama’s Unsung Hero of Compassion. Nipun has advised public initiatives like President Obama’s Council on Poverty and Inequality, been featured in over 50 books by wide-ranging luminaries, and spoken everywhere from corporate boardrooms to United Nations halls to Awakin Circles in ordinary living rooms.
“I want to live simply, love purely, and give fearlessly. That’s me.”
A few mile-markers
A brief timeline
Following the previous year’s Gandhi 3.0, we host another — back to back. The hunger for social permaculture feels more present than ever.
Our Compassion Bot pilot comes alive as we flesh out the Awakin.AI portal — supporting voices of wisdom that might bend the arc of our culture toward compassion.
The pandemic hits while I’m in a 30-day meditation retreat. ServiceSpace responded. We launched Karuna News to showcase people meeting suffering with compassion — and then came peer-learning Pods, which changed how online learning was done.
We changed our name from CharityFocus to ServiceSpace. The first talk after the change is still our most popular — Designing for Generosity.
Karma Kitchen begins — a pop-up restaurant where the menu has no prices. Your meal was a gift from someone before you, and you’re invited to pay it forward for the next. Stories went viral, sparking hundreds of “priceless pricing” experiments and UC Berkeley research.
Six months into marriage, Guri and I left home to journey across India by foot — living on a dollar a day, eating wherever food was offered, sleeping wherever a flat surface was found. An unscripted pilgrimage to greet life in the farthest corners of our own consciousness.
At the height of the dot-com heyday, a few friends gathered over pizza. BMWs as signing bonuses, eighteen-hour workdays — and this meeting was about something so simple it was radical: giving. ServiceSpace started.
Started DailyGood during my first (and only) job at Sun Microsystems, when I realized I could send automatic emails at 4am. Soon after, Awakin Circles began in our living room — which my parents hosted for 23 straight years, then rippled to hundreds of living rooms worldwide.
Grew up with the goal of becoming either a tennis pro or a Himalayan yogi. At seventeen, my spirit’s calling overtook the default dreams, and service became the thrust of my focus.
In his own words
A couple of talks
For press & reprint
Bios, at a few lengths
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Short
Nipun Mehta is a designer of large-scale social movements rooted in small acts of service and powered by micro-moments of inner transformation. He is the founder of ServiceSpace, an incubator of projects at the intersection of volunteerism, technology, and gift-economy, now a global ecosystem of more than 1.5 million members that has delivered millions of dollars in service for free. He has been honored as an “Unsung Hero of Compassion” by the Dalai Lama and was appointed by President Obama to a council addressing poverty and inequality in the United States.
Medium
Nipun Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace — an incubator of projects that support a gift culture. In his mid-twenties, he quit his job to become a “full-time volunteer,” and over the last 25 years his work has reached millions, attracted more than 1.5 million members, and grown into projects like DailyGood, Awakin Circles, and Karma Kitchen. President Obama appointed him to a council for social change; the Dalai Lama recognized him as an “Unsung Hero of Compassion”; and Germany’s OOOM magazine named him among the Top 100 Most Inspiring People of 2020. He has addressed gatherings around the world, alongside leaders from Steve Wozniak to Elizabeth Gilbert to John Lewis. One of his most formative experiences was a walking pilgrimage across India with his wife of six months — lessons that became his widely read UPenn commencement address. His mission statement: “Bring smiles in the world and stillness in my heart.”
Full
Nipun Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace, an incubator of projects working at the intersection of volunteerism, technology, and gift culture. What started as an experiment with four friends in Silicon Valley has grown into a global ecosystem of over 1.5 million members that has delivered millions of dollars in service for free. Nipun has received many honors, including the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the Dalai Lama’s Unsung Hero of Compassion, and the Goi Peace Award. President Obama appointed him to a council on poverty and inequality. He is routinely invited to share his message of “giftivism” with audiences ranging from inner-city youth to international dignitaries at the United Nations; his UPenn commencement speech has been read by millions.
Nipun’s high-school goal was to become either a tennis pro or a Himalayan yogi. Instead, by the third year of his Computer Science and Philosophy degree at UC Berkeley, he began a software career at Sun Microsystems. Dissatisfied with the dot-com greed of the late 90s, he went to a homeless shelter with three friends to “give with absolutely no strings attached.” They ended up creating a website — and an organization named ServiceSpace. Over the years they built thousands of websites for nonprofits while incubating projects from DailyGood and KarmaTube to Smile Cards and Karma Kitchen. In 2001, at twenty-five, Nipun quit his job to become a “full-time volunteer,” with no plan of survival beyond six months. So far, so good.
In January 2005, Nipun and Guri, his wife of six months, set everything aside for an open-ended walking pilgrimage across India — “to use our hands for random acts of kindness, our heads to profile inspiring people, and our hearts to cultivate truth.” Living on a dollar a day, they walked 1,000 kilometers before settling at a retreat center to meditate for three months. Today they live in Berkeley, rooted in a practice of small acts of service. The journey continues.