Proverbs 29:18 is famously quoted as saying, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’

For today’s post I want to adjust that to say, ‘Where there is no vision, efficiency reigns.’

The vision to which I’m referring is your vision for what it looks like when your organization is successfully relating to its champions:

• In what ways are they experiencing growth as a result of that relationship?
• In what ways are you experiencing growth as a result of that relationship?
• In what ways is the church experiencing growth as a result of that relationship?
• In what ways is the cause being impacted as a result of that relationship?

I’m still happily trundling through Angela Eikenberry’s Giving Circles. It’s a slim volume, but very dense and not given to casual airplane reading.

I just finished Chapter 2 on The Modernization and Marketization of Voluntarism. Among the gold nuggets in the chapter are the following:

Emerging from the modernist context, and still dominant in society today, is the rational-bureaucratic model of organization. This model is built on the machine metaphor of organizations that draws an analogy between the instrumental relationship among the parts of a mechanical device and the relationship among positions in an organization. These parts and positions are designed to complete the job–whatever it may be–as efficiently as possible.

Eikenberry notes that nonprofits became infected with this thinking in the 1840s as part of the ‘scientific charity’ movement, which had as its aim the seemingly laudable goal of ‘promot[ing] cooperation and higher standards of efficiency among relief-dispensing voluntary societies’.

An interesting thing happens, however, when efficiency rules the roost, namely:

Relationships with volunteers/donors/champions become instrumental–a means to an end, able to be trimmed, packaged, and reshaped in the name of efficiency:

• Staff are more efficienct and proficient than volunteers in the short term; ergo,
• ‘Many of us take for granted today a specialized, task-oriented, time-limited volunteer role, the duties of which are defined by social service professionals’, and
• ‘Thus volunteerism is now viewed less as a duty of the citizen in a democratic society and more as a privelege granted by philanthropic agencies to those who accepted [sic] their discipline’. Ouch!
• ‘Volunteers and donors have moved from a role of civic stewardship to one of money giver, with this giving often described as an ‘investment’ describing much thought and care.’ [Editor’s note: My main complaint about the so-called ‘Stewardship movement’ making its rounds in Christian circles these days.]

Eikenberry cites the example of an arts program that ditched its volunteer program as a cost-cutting move. Lest that sound extreme, can you think of many examples in the nonprofit world today of robust volunteer programs that are not primarily designed to save money (‘it’s less expensive for volunteers to do this’)?

When efficiency rules the roost (and, by the way, ROI–Return on Investment–can be an uncomfortably close cousin to efficiency if we’re not careful), the implied vision of the individual-organization relationship is one where:

• There are ‘less opportunities for individuals to come together in a face-to-face setting and do anything more than read a newsletter or write a check to their charitable cause of choice’ [Editor’s note: I would add, ‘and pray for their charitable cause of choice’].
• Fundraising is irrevocably shaped to favor big givers (since big gifts are more ‘efficient’ than little ones) and mass, impersonal methods of solicitation (much more ‘efficient’ than personal, heart-to-heart connections designed to promote accountable growth).
• A focus on demonstrating to ‘donors’ and other funders ‘efficiency and short-term effectiveness’, i.e., Look at what your gift did this time!
• There arises ‘a marketlike model that stresses the values of strategy development, risk taking, and competitive positioning [which] seems to be incompatible with a voluntary model that should stress the values of community participation, due process, and stewardship’.

Where does it all lead?

There is now a drive for nonprofits in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere to be operationally autonomous, free to ‘formulate and pursue [a] self-determined agenda without undue external pressures, wherever the pressures come from.’

Sadly, that is the implied vision of many Christian nonprofits: a vision wherein they are free to formulate and pursue a self-determined agenda without ‘pressure’ (also known as ‘input’ and ‘participation’) from their supporters.

(In such a setting, by the way, there is a drive ‘to replace community volunteers with entrepreneurial business representatives on their board of directors’. After all, entrepreneurial business people can bring in more money to help free us to formulate and pursue our self-determined agenda!)

What is your vision for the individual-organization relationship?

Tomorrow we’ll examine one of the most fascinating and forgotten alternatives to genuflecting at the altar of efficiency–a turn-of-the-century antecedent to Transformational Giving.