In yesterday’s post we talked about the very different definitions of Transformational Giving that abound these days, including Kay Sprinkel Grace’s definition of Transformational Giving as consisting of gifts that are jumbo-size in relation to an organization’s overall budget or in relation to the cause which the gift is intended to impact.

So which gifts are lagging in the present recession?

The, um, ones that Sprinkel Grace refers to as transformational.

According to a Christianity Today post last week, their January 2009 survey of Christian donors discovered that 44% of givers expected to donate the same amount in 2009 as they did in 2008, and 34% felt they were likely to give more than last year.

So what accounts for the belt-tightening many ministries are undergoing at the moment?

The drop in million dollar-plus donations, down 33% in the last six months of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007.

Conversely, the ‘other’ kind of Transformational Giving–the kind in which it is first and foremost the giver that is transformed (as per our definition of TG in this neck of the woods)–continues to be delightfully recession-proof.

John W. Kennedy’s well-written article recounts the story of Carolyn Cooper, who continues to sponsor three girls in the Dominican Republic through Compassion International despite having been laid off from her job at AT&T. Ms. Cooper puts the sponsorship payment ahead of all of her other expenses, including her mortgage, somehow making it work despite receiving only $350 a month in unemployment benefits.

The only clunker that Kennedy drops in the article is to conclude that givers like Cooper continue their giving due to the ‘family-like link’ they have to the charity to which they are giving. It’s hardly a stretch of the imagination to contend that a more plausible explanation for Cooper’s giving is not her family-like relationship to Compassion but rather her sense that the sponsorship of the girls is her ministry, not simply Compassion’s. Compassion is the stage, in other words, but she is the performer.

Cooper explains her own actions this way: ‘When I look at those pictures, I remember that I don’t need a bigger car. I don’t need a flat-screen TV. I do need to keep other children from dying of starvation.’

That’s not loyalty to an organization. That’s loyalty to God’s calling to Carolyn as a Christian.

And that’s truly Transformational Giving.