‘I believe kindness is a ripple effect,’ said Zach Bartlett.

When Zach was furloughed from his job with the Milwaukee Bucks he found himself at home looking for something productive to do. Like many of us, he landed on social media.

Never in one million years thought I would download TikTok. Never. The first day I was like I’ll download it. I got nothing to do,’ Zach remembered.

But it was there that Zach learned about the ‘Venmo Challenge’ and became inspired to start one in the Milwaukee area. He called on friends, family, and strangers to donate cash through the Venmo app with the goal of collectively surprising restaurant workers with the money.

Zach shared videos of him surprising workers with hundreds of dollars in tips to show donors their money was helping others and to inspire others to perform acts of kindness.

Zach said donations ranged from a penny to a couple hundred dollars.

‘There are so many people that have donated throughout this whole process but just small amounts of kindness and add up to one bigger thing in the long run,’ said Zach.

After doing 30 surprises for the challenge, Zach thought he was ready to be done and focus on finding a job. The challenge was rewarding but time-consuming.

But then the holidays came up and he received multiple messages from people asking about the next surprise.

‘I had people nominate an individual if they wanted to tell me a little bit of a story of what they were going through,’ said Zach.”