Do the Word

As usual, Sean Stannard-Stockton has a fascinating conversation underway at Tactical Philanthropy–this time on words that describe great philanthropy.

So far, words submitted by contributors include:

• passion
• connected
• juicy
• impact
• innovative programs
• measurement of outcomes
• performance management
• accountability and transparency
• capable leadership
• theory of change

My own personal preference has yet to make an appearance, namely:

• good

As in, you know, virtuous. As in, “versus evil”. Light shining in the darkness and the darkness comprehending it not and such.

Just as non-profit nation is marching under the battle cry of good to great (and passionate and juicy and impactful and measurable), for-profit nation has vaulted over us heading in the opposite direction, from great to good.

Morally good, that is.

“Good is better than great,” contends Umair Haque in his Harvard Business Review article, The Great to Good Manifesto . “Many are great. But very, very few are good.”

Indeed.

While the GiveWell blog last week was publishing a great-is-better-than-good post entitled Haiti earthquake relief seems less cost-effective than everyday international aid, Pepsi–through its Refresh initiative–is getting in touch with its Inner Yoda. Writes Haque:

We often equate “doing good” with, a la Google, passively being “not evil.” Yet, they’re not the same. Yoda knew that good is more than just the absence of evil. And he was no mere wise elder — he was also one of the most deadly of the Jedi Masters. So the Yoda Concept says: going from great to good happens when a company goes on the offensive against rivals who are merely great and who are failing to do good. It isn’t enough to simply “do no evil.” Pepsi’s Refresh is interesting in this light because it’s Pepsi going on the offensive against Coke in terms of making each dollar do more good, and less bad.

Still, Haque’s praise for Pepsi’s great to good approach is tempered:

Pepsi’s great failing with Refresh is this: merely investing marketing dollars in worthwhile causes can never make up for something as economically meaningless as merely selling sugar-water. A culture of meaning means that Pepsi needs to refresh the idea of Pepsi — not just how it’s marketed.

The beauty of Sean’s question about words that describe great philanthropy is that it forces us to declare what we view to be the ultimate end of our work–what it looks like, in other words, when we win. For the purveyors of sugar-water, they purport that more is at stake than measurement of outcomes and management of performance. It may all be little more than marketing goofer dust for Pepsi, but it is fascinating to see who is talking the most these days about, as Haque puts us, “making each dollar do more good, and less bad.”

Tom at The Agitator lends space to Lisa Sargent who highlights what she describes as “a trailblazing multilevel donor loyalty program used by M. D. Anderson, a Texas cancer center that has seen direct mail revenues increase five hundred percent since it started the program.”

The trailblazing element?

The program is open to donors who don’t give a lot, so long as they give for five years or more:

‘The Partner’s Circle sprang from the observation that people who gave a little bit of money continuously throughout their lifetime often ended up bequeathing the institution significant donations from their estates,’ says Cindy Lappetito, vice president and general manager at loyalty-marketing company Epsilon, which created M.D. Anderson’s direct marketing campaign and donor loyalty programs.

Effective? Yes. Transformational? Er, not so much. The impetus to include low dollar givers seems to arise more from shrewd traditional transactional marketing than from a James 2:1-7ish egalitarianism.

For sheer transformative value, consider the disloyalty card being distributed by World Barista Champion Gwilym Davies at East London coffee shop Prufrock. To get a free coffee at Davies’ Prufrock shop you have to go grab a cuppa at eight other East London coffee shops.

Comments James Hoffman via his coffee blog:

There is no catch, it isn’t some cunning ruse to sell more coffee.  It might work if one roaster supplied all the places on the card – but there is a complete mix from Burgil to Union, from Square Mile to Nude’s in house espresso.  Gwilym just wants people to go and try coffee in different places.

This man is a great ambassador for coffee.

“A great ambassador for coffee”–not a bad reputation. And if such be true for coffee, then how much moreso for us in the realm of world-shaking causes? Are we known as “great ambassadors for the cause”–or as effective fundraisers (or not) for our organizations?

What might a donor disloyalty program look like?

How about a monthly giving program where once a quarter the gifts accrue to your organization…and each of the other months the gifts accrue to a different nonprofit you highlight that is having a powerful impact on your cause that is different than your own?

The message?

We want to be great ambassadors for coffee.

Or, more precisely, we care about the cause, not just our organization, and we value a wide variety of approaches that we think you should know about–and invest in–too.

The SPP, or Signature Participation Project, is a key element of the Transformational Giving process of coaching champions.

If you’re new to the blog or would like a refresher on what an SPP is and what good and bad examples look like, click here and head down the rabbit hole of links in this first post. They’ll take you back through most if not all of the previous posts on this subject.

That most recent post on SPPs was about my vote for the worst SPP of 2010, Movember’s moustache growing campaign.

The campaign’s main flaw?

The, um, tenuous connection between a man’s prostate and his moustache.

That being duly and as tactfully noted as possible, let’s turn to one of my favorite SPPs for 2010, The Uniform Project.

Emma Carew just did a nice Chronicle of Philanthropy piece on the Project (I encourage you to click through so that you can see the video that follows that article):

Inspired by the school uniform she wore as a child in India, the New Yorker Sheena Matheiken has been wearing the same dress for 273 days in an attempt to raise money for the Akanksha Foundation, an Indian charty that supports children who would otherwise be unable to attend school.

She and her designer friend, Eliza Starbuck, made seven identical black dresses, and Ms. Matheiken has been wearing one every day with the addition of different accessories, with the goal of doing so for one full year. The Uniform Project, as they’ve dubbed it, has raised more than $53,000, or enough to keep 147 students in school, according to a widget on their Web site.

Ms. Matheiken calls the project “fashion philanthropy” on her Twitter page, and updates the project’s blog daily with a snapshot of her daily outfit, dressed up with accessories that have been designed or donated by others, or items she has purchased on e-Bay and Etsy. Each day readers rate the outfits, using labels such as “batty” and “brave” or adding their own.

Here’s what I like about this SPP:

1. It’s synecdochic in a deeply personal way. Ms. Matheiken was raised in India, where school uniforms were mandatory. By wearing a “uniform” for an entire year as an adult, she herself is experiencing a taste of school life once again, in solidarity with those whom through her own actions she hopes to keep in school.
2. It’s participatory. Champions can contribute to her outfit every day, and they can comment on her outfits on the blog. Through the outfits she selects, she is able not only to have fun but to illustrate certain aspects of the cause she is championing.
3. It’s high touch. I mean, let’s be respectful to Ms. Matheiken and ask permission first, but essentially you can touch and see and even send in accessory pieces for the dress she wears. This enables people to become progressively more involved. Donate a bow one day, a buck the next.
4. It’s understandable with reference to itself. That is, I don’t have to know anything about the Akanksha Foundation to understand what Ms. Matheiken is doing. I can see her in her uniform and understand that, just as when she was a child, there are children in India who need an education, to whom I can make a donation.
5. Because the dress and blog are such personal media, they can be vehicles for Ms. Matheiken to draw those she meets deeper into the cause, rather than just soliciting a transaction.

One major potential drawback: this appears to be a self-contained SPP which does not have the goal of drawing people deeper into the cause. But the concept is so delightful and so potentially able to be a means of drawing people deeper into a cause that anyone whose nonprofit primarily does work overseas ought to be able to draw upon this SPP for inspiration.