Do the Word

I describe this discussion as genuinely uninspiring because it treats donors like dunderheads and nonprofit organizations like diligent and dedicated public servants.

Holden Karnofsky’s blog at GiveWell is a particularly notable stronghold of the donors-as-dunderheads camp.

In his post entitled Perspectives on Donor Irrationality, Holden approvingly highlights the quotes of Jeanne Panossian, who, in commenting on a couple of Holden’s donors-as-dunderheads posts, wrote:

• On donor illusions: ” … It takes extraordinary ethical fortitude to openly tell people how complicated your organization is, normally a donor has made their basic decision in the first 15 to 30 seconds of a conversation …”
• On the administrative expense ratio: “…While I love to talk all day about [my charity’s impact], I have learned it is not worth my while. Waving a flag and telling people how we pay for our paper clips yields me more funds faster …”

Donors yielding up their funds in a 15 to 30 second conversation arising from their frenzied passion for paperclips?

I can honestly say that I have met not one person in my more than twenty years of work in coaching champions for whom that would be even a remotely accurate caricature.

One of Holden’s other commenters heroically takes on the burden of educating the great unwashed donors of the world to better understand the needs and intricate workings of how we nonprofit types must run our organizations as we change the world:

If the donors don’t understand, it’s the responsiblity of the entire non-profit sector to educate them.

Yikes.

Perhaps when donations drop, donor-dunderhead talk rises. After all, if you’re not giving to my organization, what’s wrong with you?

My own experience has been that individuals want to champion causes and be able to effect real change in the world. Ironically, that puts them in competition with many nonprofits, who prefer to champion causes and effect real change in the world but who need individuals’ money to be able to do that. So they have to convince individuals:

• Don’t try this change-the-world stuff at home.
• It’s dangerous work, better left to professionals.
• We’re the best professionals for the job.
• Your giving card is enclosed. Because, after all,
• It’s safer for the world and more effective in general for you to impact causes indirectly, by giving to intelligent, effective types like us.
• By the way, did we mention that we don’t use a lot of paperclips?

Holden wrote a post that shocked me in which he contended that nonprofits focus too much attention on givers. (My experience has been that givers are shocked when nonprofits send them a timely receipt and give them a thank you call, but I digress.)

I suggested to Holden that it was eminently possible–yea verily, even advisable–that nonprofits need to focus more on giver-related measurements, and that such measurements need not–yea verily, even should not–be focused on a giver’s feelings about giving.

(TG Principle 5 says, for example, “A Transformational Giving relationship between a champion and an organization is primarily a peer-level accountability relationship, not merely a friendship or a mutual admiration society.”)

In response to my comment, Holden replied:

Eric: if a charity serves donors by doing a better job on its programs, I’m all for that.

Er…?

Our whole nonprofit sector seems to suffer from a crisis of imagination when it comes to thinking about how we can do a better job coaching our champions about giving. When the best we can do is to suggest that we need to better educate donors about why they should feel good about giving towards overhead and not just program, that’s not good, friend.

Philanthrobloggers are bogged down with the idea that donors give primarily based on friendship, feelings, and flash.

I beg to disagree vehemently with that perspective, while admitting and asserting at the same time that (TG Principle #9) giving is learned, not latent in donors (whom I prefer to call champions). So if givers give to friendship, feelings, and flash…where do ya suppose they learnt that from?

That’s why I’m launching into a new six-part series on this blog entitled, More than a feeling: Six ways to grow (and measure your own growth) in giving that aren’t about feelings. Because ultimately there are not donors and nonprofit organizations but truly only champions seeking to impact causes, and if we have not first learned individually how to grow and measure our own growth in giving and impacting causes, we will not fare so well when it comes our turn to serve at the helm of nonprofits seeking to do that same thing.

Series begins next post. Until then, I’m off to play with my paperclips.

Since this blog is all about Transformational Giving, and since Transformational Giving is all about being comprehensively formed in the image of Christ through what God commends in scripture, and since scripture commends the practice of gleaning (i.e., giving the poor and the alien the opportunity to harvest leftover crop portions), we were excited to see a story about a young gleaner named Corinne Almquist on ABC News.

The story doesn’t quite hit the biblical bullseye in that Corinne Almquist is not herself poor but rather a surrogate who gleans the food herself and then provides it to the poor:

Ideally, people who take free food from a food shelf would help with gleaning. But “that’s really a time issue,” she says. “Many of the people using the food shelf are working multiple jobs and are already struggling to find time to cook and feed their families. They don’t necessarily have time to come out and help pick.”

In an economy with a 10% unemployment rate it seems like there’s room for some further thought on that one, but we’ll leave it alone for now.

What is worth ruminating about for now, however, is that the article says Corrine received a one year fellowship (from Compton Foundation Inc. in Redwood City, California)  to practice gleaning and spread the practice within her sphere of influence, namely, Northwestern Vermont.

Almquist’s quest to introduce gleaning is “quite inspiring,” says Ms. Snow, who is acting as her mentor for the fellowship. “She has tremendous energy and drive and sees her potential to make an impact.”

So my question is this:

What could happen if churches began to see themselves as Transformational Giving foundations, granting fellowships to champions in their congregation with tremendous energy and drive to spread certain practices of biblical giving within their sphere of influence?

At present, churches see themselves as recipients of donations and tend to hire giving consultants (for example, capital campaign consultants) for the purpose of getting congregation members to give more donations.

But imagine a church providing a one-year fellowship to an individual within the congregation who has been faithful to practice a particular kind of Transformational Giving (say, for example, Corinne and her gleaning), for the purpose of enabling that individual to devote themselves full time to growing even deeper in that practice–and to spreading that Transformational Giving practice within the church and the community? (And don’t miss the mentorship component in all of that, by the way.)

Corinne, interestingly, does not appear to have started a nonprofit gleaning organization; instead, she works directly with farmers and food banks, individuals and idealogues, to glean and to encourage others to glean, to offer gleaned food and to encourage others to eat it.

She even includes recipes with the turnips she gleans so that people will know what to use them for.

Once churches overcome their institutional survival instincts (which, while completely sensible, are not completely biblical), they will be set free to set others free through Transformational Giving fellowships. And when they do that, who do you suppose will benefit the most from that practice?

The church, of course.

As TG Principle  7 notes:

In a church-based TG fellowship program, the congregational Corinnes would influence, mentor, and grow the other members of the congregation, with the pastor and other leaders influencing, mentoring, and growing the congregational Corinnes. After all, wouldn’t it make sense for the pastor and other leaders, instead of spreading their time out to try to teach giving to the whole congregation who may or may not be ready, to teach the Corinnes who can then reach many in the whole congregation who can then reach many in the whole congregation–a far more effective progression?

That’s 2 Timothy 2:2 in action…and that’s the basis for the (yet largely untested in modern times) practice of Transformational Giving training and transmission in the New Testament.

When it comes to fundraising, there’s transformational, transactional…and aversional?

Just in time for your year-end fundraising, ThinkGeek is now offering the SnūzNLūz Wi-Fi Donation alarm clock:

The SnūzNLūz uses the very complex psychological phenomemon known as ‘HATRED’. Basically it’s human nature to wish harm upon your enemies. Similarly, it’s human nature not to give your enemies gobs of cash so that they can grow big and dominate the world with their totally wrong, stupid and invalid point of view. ThinkGeek realized that. That’s why everytime you hit the snooze button, the SnūzNLūz will donate a specified amount of your real money to a non-profit you hate. The problem of sleeping in is solved.

The New York Times notes that you can select from more than 6,200 hated charities (ThinkGeek suggests PETA, the ACLU, The Wilderness Society, the GOP, Moveon.org, and the American Coal Foundation.)

And it’s easy to setup and use too! Just plug your SnūzNLūz in and either connect it to your network via the RJ45 jack on the back, or via WiFi (WPA supported) if available. Then simply configure via the embedded web browser configuration utility. From here it’s a snap. Simply select your online banking institution from the list of supported banks (currently over 1600 are supported). Supply your login information and then select your favorite HATED charity or non-profit from the included lists (over 6200 currently supported). Then plug in your donation amount per snooze incident ($10 or more), set the time, and alarm, and voila, instant time profit!

For all those who know traditional transactional fundraising has run its course but are reluctant to coach champions transformationally, the third way has officially emerged.