Do the Word

Thanks to Joanne Fritz for highlighting the Chronicle of Philanthropy article announcing the end of ‘The Golden Age of Philanthropy’ in the United States.

The closing credits for the Golden Age rolled at last week’s annual Council for Advancement and Support of Education conference. Blame it all on living on the recessionary downside of home prices and stock market valuations, say conference speakers.

Fortunately, fundraising gurus were quick with advice:

Move one level down the giving pyramid and start cultivating relationships with middle donors.

Sure, it’ll take more resources to raise fewer gifts, and sure, development offices already have fewer development officers due to economic cutbacks (even attendance at the conference was down 15% from last year), but conference attendees were urged to take consolation in the remarks of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who exhorted participants:

I cannot imagine a more difficult but more important job right now [than fundraising for colleges]. Your mission is more important than ever.

Go team?

I could not agree more that the ‘golden age’ of traditional/transactional giving (ttf) is over. What stuns me is that the prescription from ttf’s best thinkers is: gather more workers and keep pounding away at that pyramid, friends!

That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: ‘You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota.’ (Ex. 5:6-8)

TG, anyone?

In yesterday’s post, we went old school with praise for Jane Addams and Hull House as a branch of the TG family tree. The core idea we were lauding was Addams’ focus on identification, immersion, and partnership, not pity, as a transformational driver.

Today we go new school with a ten-pack of Partnership-Beats-Pity resources: a reading list for development professionals interested in coaching champions to bear burdens with, not for, the subjects of our causes, helping impact the things that they care about that arise from the heart of God.

1. Opening Doors: Pathways to Diverse Donors, by Diana S. Newman. Check out this post from last week for my lavish praise of this 2002 work. I love it so much I can almost even forgive Newman for using the d-word in the title.
2. If Jesus Were Mayor, by Bob Moffitt. We’ve talked about this marvelous tome in past posts (namely here and here), but never in light of Moffitt’s brilliant discussion of ways to give and get involved with churches overseas that lead to partnership rather than dependence.
3. A Model For Making Disciples, by D. Michael Henderson. We’ve swooned over this title in past posts here and here, but, again, never in light of Henderson’s pointing out how John Wesley’s Class Meeting discipleship model arose to meet a fundraising need, and how that need was met in a way that put rich and poor contributors on equal footing and even gave the poorest of the poor the opportunity to lead the richest of the rich.
4. When Charity Destroys Dignity, by Glenn J. Schwartz. The book’s subtitle is ‘Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement’. Some of the chapter titles are ‘What Should Wealthy Churches do with their Money?’, ‘Historical Development of the Syndrome of Dependency’, and ‘What can Missionaries do to Avoid or Break the Dependency Syndrome?’ Weird capitalization, sure. But a rich, rich work.
5. Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day, by Collins, Morduch, Rutherford, and Ruthven. Read this book and your pity for the poor will be overcome by admiration and astonishment. The book doesn’t address the topic, but I’ve always felt that matching gifts–where the poor provide  financial gifts of proportional sacrifice for joint projects with affluent Western champions–is TG of the highest order. (Note that I said ‘of proportional financial sacrifice’. There’s amazement aplenty waiting to happen when champions see what kind of a ‘proportional gift’ they would need to make to match a 15 cent gift from someone from half the nations on the globe.)
6. Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa, by Dambisa Moyo. As we were saying in yesterday’s post, when our mindset is ‘help the less fortunate’, it is truly jaw-droppingly astonishing how badly that kind of help can backfire.
7. Missions and Money, by Jonathan J. Bonk. The subtitle, Affluence as a Missionary Problem, is sheer genius. Most missionaries are convinced that Low Support Account Balances are the primary Missionary Problem. The best sections of the book are the ones labeled ‘Old Testament Teaching That the Wealthy Find Reassuring’, ‘New Testament Teaching That the Wealthy Find Reassuring’, ‘Old Testament Teaching That the Wealthy Find Troubling’, and ‘New Testament Teaching That the Wealthy Find Troubling’. Why isn’t this written down anywhere else?
8. The Ethics of Giving and Receiving: Am I My Foolish Brother’s Keeper?, edited by May and Soens. Lots of great essays in this book. Make sure especially to check out Roy Menninger’s ‘Observations on the Psychology of Giving and Receiving Money’. (That’s a great question for champions to ask, by the way: What are the possible responses that can be made to this donation by the end recipient, not the charity?)
9. www.vulnerablemission.com. This is the web home of the The Alliance For Vulnerable Mission, dedicated to the premise ‘That there should be some missionaries from the West whose ministries are conducted in the language of the people being reached, without use of outside financial subsidy.’
10. Why am I concerned about dependency, a blog post by my dear bro and kindred spirit Glenn Penner, CEO of VOM/Canada. Glenn makes a fascinating connection between persecution and dependency and then notes how it’s the latter, not the former, that really gives him the willies.

The Bible itself sure belongs on the top of this list. Make sure to keep a weather eye out for the partnership-beats-pity theme therein–and hit the comments section at the bottom of this page to let me know what you find.

Because of my role as co-founder of Seoul USA, I typically receive quite a few inquiries from people asking me, ‘How can I help North Koreans?’

• One inquirer asked about painting the churches of NK defectors in South Korea
• Another wanted to know if it was possible to sponsor underground NK churches in NK and China
• Another wanted to raise money to buy a truck for the NK folks who do our Gospel balloon flyer launches

These are all seemingly laudable intentions, and I know with certainty that they were offered with unmixed motives. The NKs are sorely oppressed. Who wouldn’t want to help?

Interesting thing, help.

As a general rule, we help those who were perceive to be less fortunate than we are. And because we perceive the individuals we seek to help to be less fortunate than we are, it colors the way we offer help and the types of help we offer.

The following questions would lead to two very different answers and courses of action:

1. How can I help the North Koreans?
2. How can I help impact the things North Koreans care about?

Transformational Giving (TG) is first and foremost a submission to what the Scriptures teach us about being shaped in the image of Christ. One of the coolest things about TG (and, more completely, the Scriptures) is that giving is grounded in identification with the recipient, not pity. For example:

• Leviticus 19:34 says, ‘The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt.’
• Hebrews 13:3 says, ‘Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who were mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.’

Were modern fundraising letter writers to pen Leviticus 19:34, I suspect they would have written something like this:

Treat the alien well. After all, you’ve got a lot to be grateful for, and it’s tough being an alien. Here’s a tear-jerking story of an alien that will cause you to say, ‘Man, compared to this alien, I have no troubles.’ Your gift of $15.70 can provide education and shelter for one alien for a week.

And who wants to be a persecuted Christian? Modern fundraising moves us to help the poor persecuted folks. Interestingly, however, the call in Hebrews is to remember them as if you were there with them.

Identification. Not sympathy prompting help.

(And if you find yourself asking, ‘So you’re saying we shouldn’t help these folks???’, please scroll back up to the two numbered questions noted about a dozen lines back.)

Fundraising today is largely an effort to drive people to help, based on sympathy. Transformational Giving can be fairly thought of as an effort to encourage us to bear one another’s burdens, based on identification.

Eikenberry reminds us of one of the progenitors of such an approach in the nonprofit world:

Jane Addams, founder of Hull House.

Hull House was a settlement house in one of Chicago’s most menacing neighborhoods. Addams (who came from quite an affluent background) didn’t commute in to Hull House from the suburbs. She moved there. And she called others to as well, bringing ‘the affluent and the poor in contact with one another by attracting idealistic, college-aged, upper middle-class youths to settle in por neighborhoods or, at least, to volunteer some time.’

Addams believed that ‘social ethical action should be done through people working together cooperatively, rather than through individual action.’

How did that happen?

‘To move from an individual ethics to a social ethics, Addams believed, one must immerse oneself in the direct experience of life as lived by people of all backgrounds.’

In other words, the more we know people, the more we move from ‘helping’ them…to helping impact the things that are important to them, and to us, because they are important to God.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that your champions have to move into the neighborhood your ministry is seeking to impact (though it doesn’t necessarily not mean that, either.)

When I served simultaneously as pastor of an urban church in Houston, Texas and director of men’s ministry at a local rescue mission, I brought five graduates from the mission’s rehab program to live next to the church and become members of the congregation. (Interesting term, members.) I should have written a book about what happened as a result of that experience–what happened to the five guys, what happened to the church, what happened to my wife’s Mercedes (her sole remembrance of her affluent pre-Eric life as a fashion designer in LA), and what happened to me, too.

Or when I served as President of the Los Angeles Mission, identification meant shifting from serving a meal to the homeless (who, in such a situation, can only respond with a kind of bowing, scraping, obsequious gratitude) to preparing, serving, and eating a meal with homeless men, women, and children.

See, when we invite speakers to share their testimonies, when we send out direct mail letters with tear-jerking stories, we encourage people to sympathize…and to offer help accordingly.

But when we help the ‘helper’ and the ‘helpee’ to work together cooperatively on issues of joint concern, passion, and calling, we encourage people to identify…and to be transformed accordingly.

In what ways can your ministry help its champions work together cooperatively with the subject of your ministry’s cause on things that are important to God?

P.S. Check out this page of Hull House champions. From Leo Tolstoy to HG Wells, individuals were challenged and changed by partnering with rather than pitying the subjects of Hull House’s focus.