Do the Word

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.

Great post today from Jeanine Skowronski at Yahoo Finance about the Global Rich List, a website that seeks to enable you to determine exactly where your income ranks you compared to every other person on the planet.

For example, if you make $52,000 a year (the median American household income for 2009), you are the 58,252,719 richest person in the world (or in the top 0.97 percentile of all moneymakers).

You can even get a widget from the site that lets you share your exact ranking with others through your Facebook page or personal website.

Far from being an effort to enable you to boast in your riches, however, the site purports to show just how much you can do with your comparatively vast wealth:

The site uses your wealth ranking to invite you to share your wealth with others. It told me, for example, I could buy 25 fruit trees for farmers in Honduras for just $8 (as opposed to 12 organic oranges for the same price) or a $30 first aid kit for a village in Haiti (instead of an ER DVD box set). However silly these suggestions may be (who spends $30 to watch ER?), charitable giving is clearly the point.

The site is fascinating and fun–after all, who can resist taking fifteen seconds in order to determine where they rank compared not only to the Joneses but to every Jones worldwide?

According to the site, Poke “wanted to do something which would help people understand, in real terms, where they stand globally. They want us to realize that, in fact, most of us who are able to view this web page are in the privileged minority.”

The assumption, however, that once we realize how privileged we are, we will become more generous in sharing with others runs counter to two stark realities:

1. Giving is learned, not latent. It is not a lack of information that makes us less generous, nor the presence of information that makes us more so–nor even the presence of compelling opportunities for giving. (Aha–we pause at that last thought! We fundraiser types are conditioned to believe that compelling opportunities are the necessary and sufficient condition for giving among those with the capacity to do so. So, um, how’s that working for you?)
2. The more we have, the less we give. The most generous people in the United States are those who make well below the median American household income. In fact, the more we make above that amount, the less we give away as a percentage of our income.

So what are you doing today to help your champions learn giving? Are you doing anything more than presenting compelling opportunities for giving? What one thing can you do today to coach your champions to grow in their generosity?

In a post last week on D. Michael Henderson and What Mormons Can Teach Us About Major Donor Development, I made a not so subtle recommendation that you buy everything the man ever wrote.

I received a gratifying number of emails from people who ordered Henderson’s Ladder of Faithfulness, from which I quoted in the piece.

Good step.

But it’s not everything the man ever wrote.

So in an effort to coax you into the rest of his catalog, let me quote from Making Disciples One Conversation at a Time on the subject of the kinds of conversations we should be having with our champions as we coach them to full maturity in Christ in our shared cause through the vehicle of a mutual accountability relationship.

First of all, note the centrality of such conversations to your overall effort–and why you can’t expect success if you skimp on them!

Ministry always entails relationships, and relationships require communication. So the way to improve your ministry is to improve your conversations.

Second, recognize that such conversations are something entirely different than friendly chats, nor do they arise spontaneously out of same:

The reason we engage in redemptive discussions with our friends is that both of us are committed to following Jesus. We want to be like Him and to do His will and work. Every time you meet with your friends, you need to keep that objective in mind. All parties to the conversation must agree that this is where the conversation is headed.

In fact, seeking to be spontaneous in such a conversation–because you feel awkward about walking a champion through a P/E/O chart, for example, and prefer to “shoot from the hip”–actually works against you:

Regarding the subject of conversations, in one of my classes a student objected to what he considered regimentation of discussions. ‘I just like to be free to talk about whatever comes up,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to be bound by rules. I want to say whatever comes to my mind,’ to which I answered, ‘It’s not all about you.’ Lots of people want to talk, and they do. They drone on and on about whatever strikes their fancy. But self-centered conversations don’t accomplish much. If we want to serve God first, others second, and ourselves last, we need to shape the direction of our discourse.

Coaching conversations follow a delightfully predictable and manageable four-step process:

Here are four elements that every effective conversation should contain:

1. A clear goal
2. Shared information that relates to that goal
3. Strengthening of the relationship
4. Agreement on the next steps toward the goal.

Next, don’t use the coaching call just to “give an update on the ministry” and “let you know how to pray”. Use the call to ask productive questions:

Productive conversations start and end with productive questions. The first words of a verbal encounter set the stage for the rest of the interaction. ‘John, I’m glad we have this time to talk. I know you’re serious about following Jesus, and I know your time is valuable. Let’s make the most of it. What is the most important issue we can discuss today?’ Or you might ask, ‘What’s on the growing edge of your relationship with Christ?’ or ‘Is there a particular decision you need to make or an issue you need to clarify?’ You should also ask, ‘Is there something you sense I should be tackling?’ That insures that the conversation will be mutually beneficial—a discussion between fellow strugglers

Finally, remember that the coaching call itself is just part of a wider process:

The most effective conversations share information before, during, and after the conversation itself. The people who make the most difference in other people’s lives are constantly sending each other supplementary material: books, articles, quotations, personal notes, tapes, or reports. People who are good at this follow up their discussion with a note that reaffirms their discussion, perhaps with an enclosure—an article, a photo, or a news clipping. And, just as often, they send some information prior to actually meeting: ‘John, you mentioned your interest in serving the poor in our own community. Here’s an article on “Neighborhood Networks” that might give you some ideas. We can discuss it when we meet on Tuesday’.

What a fantastic book. Order yourself a copy today, and, while you’re waiting for it to arrive, pick up the phone and call a champion today to put into use what you already learned, above.