Do the Word

The Daily Tell shares a report about two new sites for which financial giving is a P- (Participation-) level activity: SeeYourImpact.org and Jolkona.org.

Both sites operate according to the same principle: Encourage donors to give by providing a plethora of project options across a range of causes through which a visible, reportable impact can be made on a single person for a relatively small gift. After giving, the donor receives a report within a few days detailing how their gift helped that single person, and they are encouraged to share that report with their friends.

The sites are clean and easy to navigate through and understand. Sanitary even.

The projects are short-term, high-impact, and understandable without external reference to a nonprofit organization.

The low-dollar price of entry for giving is designed to appeal to younger donors with limited funding resources. Trevor Neilson, President of Global Philanthropy Group sees this “democratization of philanthropy” as quite the trend:

“Just a few years ago philanthropy was really seen as something that rich people do for poor people,” he told the news provider. “The trend we’re seeing now is that everyone can be philanthropic, and can organize themselves around issues they care about.”

I find myself wanting to like the sites and yet, in the end, unable to do so.

There are all kinds of good things I could say about them, since they embody several of the principles of Transformational Giving. Each project presented is a pretty fair example of a Signature Participation Project. Granted, throwing hundreds of them at a potential donor at any one time calls to mind the fundamental marketing dictum that 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 0, which is to say that choice paralyzes and the authors of these sites might be better off picking one really strong Signature Participation Project and building a single site around that, such as nothingbutnets.org. I even like the fact that these sites view Participation as having a strong financial component, an approach that many ministries think is implausible.

But I think what leaves me so nonplussed by both of these sites is that, in the end, I think they are answering a question that I’m not sure anyone is really asking.

Both sites are predicated on the belief that what causes people not to give is that:

1. They’re not sure that their small amount of money can make a difference.
2. They want to see timely visual proof of the one person their gift is helping, and this is not provided by most charities.

Certainly neither of these points is unimportant; people obviously want to know that they can send a small amount of money and have it make a visible difference.

But are those really the two barriers that prevent most people from giving?

Peter Singer might say yes, and the Nikolas Kristof Op-Ed might tend in that direction.

But I myself would ultimately say no–that overcoming  these two barriers is necessary but not sufficient.

The barrier that must be overcome in order to grow people in relation to the causes we love is internal, not external.

Every day provides every person on earth with the opportunity to make a significant difference in the life of someone else. It can be done for very little money–most often with no money at all. And the results don’t even need to take days to show up via email–instead, they are immediately apparent on the face of the person we help.

Why don’t we take advantage of such opportunities? Because they are not attractively packaged for us and sanitized for our protection?

Perhaps.

But John suggests something else:

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

Detach giving from a rich knowledge of Christ’s love for us, says John, and we will miss the opportunity to give no matter how attractive and clever the form.

Are the giving opportunities you offer to champions aligned to an awareness of Christ’s love for them…or the timely and well-packaged needs of others?

Both have existed since the dawn of time, and yet only one has yielded true transformation in the area of generosity.

Not too long ago I dumped on Donor Power Blog and actually de-listed them from the recommended blog list on my site. They’re still de-listed (too traditional/transactional in my view), but as I noted in my post I still read DPB daily and always enjoy Jeff’s style of writing even though I typically differ from his perspective.

Jeff had a nice post today referencing an Improbable Research piece that I definitely encourage you to check out.

In the piece, IR mails a wide variety of items–a rose, a football, tennis shoes, a $20 bill–and evaluates whether they were delivered, how long they took, and in what condition they arrived.

Neither Jeff nor IR had a particular application step in mind for all of this, but I do:

Before you sit down to write your next direct mail letter:

• Read the Improbable Research Postal Experiments article
• Ask yourself, “What could I mail to my champions other than a letter that would enhance their ability to impact the cause?”
• Then ask yourself, “What could I mail to my champions and encourage them to mail to people in their sphere of influence that would encourage my champion’s champions to impact the cause?”
• Check out the 2008 Echo Award winners and note how all of these highly successful packages involve sending something other than a letter–something far more unusual (and, as the results from each package suggest, far more successful)
• Check out this passage from Daniel 5 and reflect on this truth: How God sends a message is as important as the message He sends.
• Now write your letter

I’ll be expecting my deer tibia in the mail from you nine days from now.

When Jesus (in Mark 9:35) said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all”, do you think he meant that we should be very, very humble as we ask our fellow Christians to donate money to support us to do the work of ministry (typically while showing them a really sharp PowerPoint presentation with embedded video about “our” ministry)?

Probably not, eh?

If we’re going to take the Bible literally, we probably better make good on Mark 9:35 as part of that package.

Taken literally, Mark 9:35 makes a point quite a bit like Ephesians 4:11-13, namely, that if you’re a Christian nonprofit leader, your purpose is to serve and support ordinary Christians, equipping them to grow into the fullness of Christ in relation to the cause God has put on your heart.

Like Angelo Dundee to Mohammed Ali.

But this is so very different than the self-identity that we breed into our Christian nonprofit leaders. We teach them that they are Mohammed Ali, and we seminar leaders are Angelo Dundee.

That would make ordinary Christians the fans (and major donors the people who pay the really good money for a ringside seat).

What a far cry from the self-identity of the Apostle Paul in relation to his churches.

We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

It’s not that the Apostle Paul experienced all this while carrying out the full ministry of God while being supported by ordinary Christians. It’s that the Apostle Paul experienced all this  for the purpose of training ordinary Christians to carry out the full ministry of God.

It’s time for the director of the homeless shelter to reconsider his ministry.

Instead of saying, “Look, my calling is to care for the homeless people of Phoenix; please send money so I can do this,” let him follow in the path of the Apostle Paul and say, “Look, my calling is to equip the Christians of Phoenix to care for the homeless people of Phoenix; let me serve you by equipping you, creating a platform where your giving in every way–your time, your finances, your spiritual gifts–can join with the comprehensive giving of others to accomplish what God commands.”

As I mentioned in a blog post last month,

Larry Lloyd at the Memphis Leadership Foundation told me the other day, “Transformational Giving first requires a change in the self-identity of the nonprofit leader. TG leaders have to be fundamentally committed to mentoring their champions to do the ministry. Absent that self-identity change, TG can never take root in an organization.”

Be Angelo Dundee, friend. Not Mohammed Ali.