Do the Word

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.

The tragic oil spill off the Gulf Coast has given rise to a second tragedy which, while infinitely less tragic, offers a crucial future-leaning lesson for all nonprofits.

Steve Gelsi of Marketwatch has a  fascinating update on something about which you’ll vaguely recall hearing, namely, that people are giving the hair off their heads for oil cleanup.

Stoked by social-networking sites as well as coverage in the mainstream media, San Francisco-based charity Matter of Trust now reports hundreds of thousands of pounds of hair have been donated from every state in the United States, as well as from Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

It’s the latest Signature Participation Project (click here to stroll back through all the previous posts defining and describing that term, which is near ‘n’ dear to Transformational Giving):

Volunteers on the Gulf Coast are hosting parties, called “Boom B Qs,” to assemble hair booms in backyards, according to co-founder [of nonprofit Matter of Trust, which is coordinating the thing] Lisa Craig Gautier.

But here’s the sad turn of events from which nonprofits need to learn:

BP, the oil spiller in question, wants nothing to do with the project.

The oil major is aware of the hair-based booms, but it’s decided to stick with Sorbent booms for now, BP spokesman Mark Salt said Tuesday. The Sorbent booms are made by Andax Industries, based in St. Marys, Kan.

“It’s great that people are involved, but we’re sticking with the Sorbent booms, since there’s no shortage of them at the moment,” Salt commented. “We don’t want to dismiss the hair booms, but the Sorbent boom is superior.”

“It’s great that people are involved”?

There’s something more at issue here than a missed PR opportunity for BP–though let me at least take a minute to note that that’s no small massive PR opportunity that BP is passing up here, which is saying something given that the company isn’t exactly riding a wave of public confidence and goodwill.

Good heavens, imagine the marketing potential for BP gas stations to encourage people to bring their hair clippings in for a discount with every fill-up.

Instead, the company will undoubtedly mop up the oil and then seek to mop up its image problems with a full-page ad from their president in the New York Times noting their renewed commitment to something or other, followed by funding of a new Bill Nye the Science Guy curriculum for middle schools, etc etc.

What’s at issue–no less for oil companies, but especially for us nonprofit types–is a point Katya Andresen makes expertly in her post this week, Why Millennials Are Going To Keep You On Your Toes, namely:

We can no longer expect donors to line up at our door or pore over our fundraising letters, saying, “Please tell me what I can do to help!”

Instead, they are pressing ahead and figuring that out for themselves–and they’re more than happy to implement the (often very creative and effective) solutions they create. On their own. Outside of a nonprofit organization.

Meaning we no longer hold the corner on the market as the one-stop shop where people go to be directed what to do in the event of a tragedy.

Katya puts it this way:

The biggest thing that needs to change this year is how we think about our donors.  We are in the midst of an enormous generational shift that has major implications for our work.  Younger donors expect engagement and involvement.  They are anything but passive.  Think of it this way.  Just as in marketing we have left the broadcast era where consumers passively take in promotional messages, we have left the low-expectation donor era.  This generation is going to keep us on our toes. Let’s not disappoint this bright-eyed, eager group of budding activists.  And let’s be glad they aren’t rolling their eyes at us either.

Not rolling their eyes at us too much yet. I hope. Anyway.

In the case of the hair boom, Gelsi notes that the inventor was, interestingly, a hair stylist with no formal science background:

The name of Alabama hair cutter Phil McCrory comes up frequently in the effort as an inventor of hairy booms for oil cleanups.

In a 2008 interview with National Public Radio, McCrory said he got the idea after looking at the oil-soaked fur of otters in Alaska during the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, and decided to try it on hair he swept up at his shop.

“I took the hair home, put it in my wife’s panty hose, created a little imaginary spill there in my little pool and cleaned the water up,” he said in the interview. “Within a minute and a half, I had the water crystal clear, and all the oil was in the panty hose loaded with hair.”

What inventions and insights are your champions developing in relation to your cause in their backyards? And what would it look like for you to use your expertise in the cause to help them–and incubate further inventions–instead of trying desperately to sell them your own?

Bit of oil-soaked advice here:

Don’t be like BP, saying, “It’s great that people are involved in our cause, but we’re sticking with our approach, since it’s working and there’s no shortage of financial need for us at the moment. We don’t want to dismiss the ideas of others, but our approach is superior.”

In the future which is now washing up on shore, that’s a public statement you won’t be around long enough to make twice.