Do the Word

In this space we previously wrote about What The Mormons Can Teach Us About Major Donor Development. In the interest of providing equal time for all cults [Editor’s note: that’s a joke], we highlight today an absolutely fascinating piece from the New York Review of Magazines (tip courtesy of GetReligion.org) entitled The Most Widely Read Magazine in the World:

Every month, nearly 40 million copies of The Watchtower are printed in more than 180 languages and sent to 236 countries. There are no subscriptions and you won’t find it on newsstands, but it’s still hard to miss. Thanks to the efforts of Witnesses like the Tavolaccis, The Watchtower is the most widely distributed magazine in the world, with a circulation of more than 25 million. Last year, the world’s 7.3 million-strong Jehovah’s Witnesses spent 1.5 trillion hours knocking on doors and “street Witnessing” — stopping folks in parks and on streets — to preach the “good news” with a copy of The Watchtower. Its closest competitors are AARP The Magazine (circulation 24.3 million) and Better Homes and Gardens (7.6 million). It doesn’t hurt that The Watchtower has been free since 1990, with the option of a small donation.

Here’s the crucial P/E/O insight–don’t miss it:

The Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t produce The Watchtower as a piece primarily to be read by their own constituents. They produce it as a tool for their constituents to use to spread the cause within constituents’ own spheres of influence.

What would happen if we nonprofits changed the way we thought about our newsletters and magazines? What if we saw them not as targeted at our constituents but rather as tools that we train them to use to reach others with the cause?

Armed with their copies, Frank and the other Witnesses at the Glendale Kingdom Hall head back upstairs for a pep talk. “Elder” John Juels leads the 10-minute session from the stage, offering tips on how the congregation might keep doors open this morning. Frank Tavolacci calls it “a little bit of rah rah rah.”

“Raise a topic of interest,” suggests Juels, a short, bespectacled man in a bright orange tie. He invites a young blonde, “Sister Rachel,” up from the crowd to the stage for a role play. After a quick knock-knock and some polite doorfront introductions, Juels says the government is a hot topic right now, so Witnesses might raise the spectre of Governor Paterson to keep their bleary-eyed targets listening. “The government of Jesus Christ is coming,” he tells his mock door-opener. “Certainly God would do a better job than some of the people we have today.”

Role playing. Training in how to use the tools. Creative suggestions on how to share the cause. Do you suppose any of this might provide useful insight into how we go about deploying our own periodicals and publications?

The article notes that a special “study edition” of The Watchtower is produced for Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves. What a fascinating idea: a “mass appeal” issue of your newsletter or magazine to be used as a tool by your champions, and a special “study edition” of your newsletter or magazine to be read and discussed by your champions themselves.

Another key learning:

The articles in the Watchtower are not about the Jehovah’s Witnesses and what is happening in, um, Witnessdom. Instead, they are about subjects perceived to be of interest and value to the reader, making the cause of Witnessdom accessible and relevant to issues the reader is currently facing.

“It’s for Witnesses but also for the public,” Pellechia says of The Watchtower. “For people who would be interested in what the Bible would say about subjects like child-rearing and how to keep marriages united.” The magazine might focus on infidelity in May, homosexuality in June and earthquakes in July. Articles might answer questions like “Should you be honest at all times?” and “Has God left us?” (Yes, and no, in case you were wondering.) Each article is littered with scriptural references, which function like hyperlinks, directing readers to Bible pages for further reading. The committee also decides questions and answers for the special “study” editions of The Watchtower produced specifically for Witnesses already in the flock to study at Kingdom Halls every week. The number of study editions printed is undisclosed.

Study editions with questions and answers to help champions grow in the cause. I can’t get over that. That’s a million dollar idea.

Maybe I will develop a study edition of this blog that asks, “Why are cults, for-profit organizations, and secular nonprofits so much better at applying biblical principles governing the spread of causes than we evangelical nonprofits are? When will our development strategies become as evangelical as our theology?”

Jim Harries had me from hello.

Even the title of his post on the Lausanne Global Conversation site–Biblical Giving, Holding Donors Accountable–is about the best five word summary of why Biblical fundraising and development is–and must be–different than any secular fundraising approach.

• In secular fundraising, the trendy battle cry these days is “Hold nonprofits accountable!”
• In Biblical fundraising, the core truth has always been that the giver must be held to account–namely, to carry out that which God commands the giver to do in relation to the causes and attendant courses of action He explicitly commends.

Lest Christian fundraisers cheer too quickly, though, Harries notes that they more than anyone bear a primary sort of accountability, one which, tragically, they exercise all too rarely. The result?

An ethics fail which happens in broad daylight every day.

These days we have many charitable specialists in the West.  That is, those who act as ‘middle men’ between the conscience-stricken and the poor.  Their raison d’être obliges them to promote and defend the notion that ‘giving’ is both helpful and effective in impact.  Yet they themselves are not ‘givers’ in the normal sense of the word, because the ‘giving’ they do is of the money of others, from which their own incomes have already been extracted.  This unfortunately leaves them suspect. These ‘middle men’ can be accused of profiteering from the maladies of others.  Their self-interest often has them promote strategies against poverty that are actually oriented to the perpetuation of their own activities.

Responsibility for the ethics of giving is delegated to the above group.  Those who give to the middle-men have to trust that they pass on their funds in an appropriate way.

From a Transformational Giving standpoint we’d say it like this:

• The role of the Christian fundraiser is to be the lead giver to the cause.
• This leadership is drawn from knowing, doing, and teaching what the Bible calls all Christians to do in relation to the cause.
• In other words, Christian fundraisers are not solicitors of funds but player-coaches of giving.
• They encourage others to imitate their actions, not merely respond to their solicitations.

Sum it up and say:

If you seek to be good at Christian fundraising, let it be through growing into the fullness of Christ in relation to your cause and then coaching others to imitate that same maturity. Let it not be because you learned tools, techniques, and strategies that made it possible for you to solicit like the pros.

Robert Egger, the engaging founder of DC Central Kitchen, is instituting a “Bill of Rights” for everyone who volunteers at this “$5-million annual operation, which hauls in close to two tons of food per day, converts it into 4,500 meals, which we deliver to partner agencies that serve seniors, kids, people in shelters, and folks in recovery/addiction programs throughout the DC metro area”.

So what’s it say?

ALL volunteers have the right to:

• Work in a safe environment.
• Be treated with respect by all staff members.
• Be engaged in meaningful work and be actively included regardless of any physical limitations.
• Be told what impact your work made in the community.
• Ask any staff member questions about our work.
• Provide feedback about your experience.
• Receive a copy of our financial information or annual report upon request.

Egger admits that most of these rights are, in his words, “pretty obvious”, but he contends that by publicly committing to these standards, something will be set into motion not unlike what he witnessed when he was a restauranteur in his days before DC Central Kitchen:

Back in the day, when I was running nightclubs, there were really only a handful of “great” restaurants in America, and they were all French, period. Now, just about EVERY city in America boasts a bevy of great dining establishments. How did that happen?

I’ll tell you. Restaurant critics (often women writers who, in the 1960’s and 70’s, were relegated to the “women’s page” of the local paper) began to explore a new way of reviewing restaurants. This generation of writers began with a simple concept—diners had rights—and they crafted a whole new set of metrics that used “diner’s dollars” as the sharp point of their critical pens. They championed a new generation of American chefs by telling an escalating number of diners that they did not have to take what was served and like it—they could send it back. They could demand better. And demand they did. Soon, restaurant managers were training staff to be more accommodating and to talk to customers about the ingredients of the food. Open kitchens began to appear. Soon chefs began to come out of the kitchen to greet increasingly sophisticated diners and sit with them to talk about food theory, locally sourced products, green practices and giving back to community. And now, with the advent of the internet, comes technology that allows ANY customer to review a restaurant. And, it is because of that customer driven system that just about EVERY community in America now boasts numerous great restaurants that continue to push the boundries.

There’s a lot to like in what Egger says. It’s a fascinating line of thinking and sure beats the status quo. But here’s the question:

Is restaurant/patron the most fruitful analogy for the relationship between nonprofit and volunteer?

Transformational Giving (TG) principle #6 contends:

The champion, not the organization, is called to be the primary means of advancing the cause within the champion’s sphere of influence.

That suggests that a more productive–and provocative–framework for a Volunteer Bill of Rights might go something like this:

TG Central Kitchen starts with the idea that it’s your responsibility, not ours, to care for the homeless people within your sphere of influence.

To the degree that we can be a helpful platform to equip you and enable you to carry out that work, we’re going to get along great.

We’re willing to pour our time and energy into training you to become not only a tireless advocate for the homeless, but an even more effective one than we are. Greater things than we have done will you do.

To that end, ALL volunteers have the right to:

• Utilize TG Central Kitchen as a gymnasium to “bulk up” on their ability to impact the cause in their everyday lives–you know, when they’re not at our “gym” and they encounter a real live homeless person.
• Enter into mutual accountability relationships with staff where they hold each other accountable for growth in relation to the cause.
• Be the actor, not the audience or the assistant to the actor. Understudy roles are OK, provided they’re not permanent.
• Learn how to assess for themselves whether what they’re doing is making any difference whatsoever.
• Ask staff members questions that enable them to imitate and then ultimately surpass their work.
• Receive feedback about their work designed to enable them to move on to greater levels of responsibility the longer they volunteer.
• Give in ways that primarily impact the cause and only secondarily, if at all, benefit our organization.

Sadly, this Bill of Rights is not nearly so obvious. We’ve spent so long convincing people that their role is to support us to achieve our cause that the idea of us supporting them to surpass us in the cause we share is considered downright radical.

But as Katya Andresen noted last week, unless we start to recognize and act on this, we may have volunteers rolling their eyes over the “rights” we’re “willing” to grant them at “our” nonprofits.

Thanks to Sean Stannard-Stockton for the tip on Eggers’ post.