Do the Word

Proverbs 29:18 is famously quoted as saying, ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’

For today’s post I want to adjust that to say, ‘Where there is no vision, efficiency reigns.’

The vision to which I’m referring is your vision for what it looks like when your organization is successfully relating to its champions:

• In what ways are they experiencing growth as a result of that relationship?
• In what ways are you experiencing growth as a result of that relationship?
• In what ways is the church experiencing growth as a result of that relationship?
• In what ways is the cause being impacted as a result of that relationship?

I’m still happily trundling through Angela Eikenberry’s Giving Circles. It’s a slim volume, but very dense and not given to casual airplane reading.

I just finished Chapter 2 on The Modernization and Marketization of Voluntarism. Among the gold nuggets in the chapter are the following:

Emerging from the modernist context, and still dominant in society today, is the rational-bureaucratic model of organization. This model is built on the machine metaphor of organizations that draws an analogy between the instrumental relationship among the parts of a mechanical device and the relationship among positions in an organization. These parts and positions are designed to complete the job–whatever it may be–as efficiently as possible.

Eikenberry notes that nonprofits became infected with this thinking in the 1840s as part of the ‘scientific charity’ movement, which had as its aim the seemingly laudable goal of ‘promot[ing] cooperation and higher standards of efficiency among relief-dispensing voluntary societies’.

An interesting thing happens, however, when efficiency rules the roost, namely:

Relationships with volunteers/donors/champions become instrumental–a means to an end, able to be trimmed, packaged, and reshaped in the name of efficiency:

• Staff are more efficienct and proficient than volunteers in the short term; ergo,
• ‘Many of us take for granted today a specialized, task-oriented, time-limited volunteer role, the duties of which are defined by social service professionals’, and
• ‘Thus volunteerism is now viewed less as a duty of the citizen in a democratic society and more as a privelege granted by philanthropic agencies to those who accepted [sic] their discipline’. Ouch!
• ‘Volunteers and donors have moved from a role of civic stewardship to one of money giver, with this giving often described as an ‘investment’ describing much thought and care.’ [Editor’s note: My main complaint about the so-called ‘Stewardship movement’ making its rounds in Christian circles these days.]

Eikenberry cites the example of an arts program that ditched its volunteer program as a cost-cutting move. Lest that sound extreme, can you think of many examples in the nonprofit world today of robust volunteer programs that are not primarily designed to save money (‘it’s less expensive for volunteers to do this’)?

When efficiency rules the roost (and, by the way, ROI–Return on Investment–can be an uncomfortably close cousin to efficiency if we’re not careful), the implied vision of the individual-organization relationship is one where:

• There are ‘less opportunities for individuals to come together in a face-to-face setting and do anything more than read a newsletter or write a check to their charitable cause of choice’ [Editor’s note: I would add, ‘and pray for their charitable cause of choice’].
• Fundraising is irrevocably shaped to favor big givers (since big gifts are more ‘efficient’ than little ones) and mass, impersonal methods of solicitation (much more ‘efficient’ than personal, heart-to-heart connections designed to promote accountable growth).
• A focus on demonstrating to ‘donors’ and other funders ‘efficiency and short-term effectiveness’, i.e., Look at what your gift did this time!
• There arises ‘a marketlike model that stresses the values of strategy development, risk taking, and competitive positioning [which] seems to be incompatible with a voluntary model that should stress the values of community participation, due process, and stewardship’.

Where does it all lead?

There is now a drive for nonprofits in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere to be operationally autonomous, free to ‘formulate and pursue [a] self-determined agenda without undue external pressures, wherever the pressures come from.’

Sadly, that is the implied vision of many Christian nonprofits: a vision wherein they are free to formulate and pursue a self-determined agenda without ‘pressure’ (also known as ‘input’ and ‘participation’) from their supporters.

(In such a setting, by the way, there is a drive ‘to replace community volunteers with entrepreneurial business representatives on their board of directors’. After all, entrepreneurial business people can bring in more money to help free us to formulate and pursue our self-determined agenda!)

What is your vision for the individual-organization relationship?

Tomorrow we’ll examine one of the most fascinating and forgotten alternatives to genuflecting at the altar of efficiency–a turn-of-the-century antecedent to Transformational Giving.

I finally decided to pull Jeff Brooks’ Donor Power Blog off my list of recommended blogs.

It’s not that I don’t like any of Jeff’s posts. I do. It’s just that more and more of his posts remind me of anti-smoking sites run by tobacco companies; that is, even the phrase ‘donor power’ smacks of the way a marketing exec would put the best possible face on an industry that purports to help people find self-actualization through checkbook charity.

(The link in the preceding paragraph is to Jeff’s post entitled Donors are figuring out how to shut you up, in which Jeff criticizes Charity Navigator for its YouTube video, which shares tips for reducing unwanted solicitations. Jeff calls Charity Navigator’s approach ‘more than a little irresponsible’.)

While I still enjoy Jeff’s posts generally and will continue to read the blog, I simply can’t recommend it in general any more because of my disagreement with the basic relational premise Jeff implies between nonprofits and individuals. The question, ‘What is the relationship between the nonprofit and the individual?’ really is the key question of the hour in our corner of the vineyward.

In Jeff’s Three Laws Of Fundraising post/Fundraising Success Mag column this past week, Jeff posits the following relationship equation:

Here’s the deal: Your donors don’t support you because you’re the coolest organization on the block. They support you because they are cool. And you are just cool enough for them to consider inviting you into their circles. You are the trembling, grateful newcomer hoping to be allowed to hang out with the cool donor.

In Jeff’s relationship equation, the cool donor supports you because they are cool. And you, the trembling, grateful newcomer, are aw-shucks grateful for their vote of confidence, not to mention hopeful that they might introduce you to more of their cool friends who can support you because they’re cool, too.

That’s a far cry from our contention in Transformational Giving that the relationship between individual and nonprofit is a mutual accountability relationship, not a friendship or a support relationship. (That’sTG principle # 5, if you’re keeping score.)

We’re going to be devoting this week on the blog to talking further about the relationship between individual and nonprofit. I’ve been doing a little detective work on the subject and discovered some absolutely fascinating clues historically as to why the relationship has taken the shape it has, and how things weren’t always this way…including an early 20th century antecedent to Transformational Giving whose approach was wiped out by the rise of the modern fundraising era.

Stay tuned.

But for today we de-list Donor Power Blog from our list of recommended sites. But we do have a new site to add:

Make It Transformational–the new daily blog by the Giving and Training Officers of Mission Increase Foundation.

Take a sec to click over to this second daily TG multivitamin. I’ve previewed the posts that will appear in the blog’s inaugural week. As you read daily, you’ll see that these aren’t trembling newcomers happy that you’re cool enough to invite them to your RSS feed.

They’re mutual accountability change agents, ready to urge you on–and be urged on by you–to replace Donor Power with real Transformation.

We’ve been writing all week this week about ethnic fundraising as a crucial question facing Transformational Giving (TG), since, unlike traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) which views ethnic fundraising as simply one potential vehicle among many to raise funds to cover the budget, TG takes as its purpose the coaching of champions into the fullness of Christ in relation to the cause God has given us to advance.

But since TG stresses that the champion is responsible for advancing the cause in his or her sphere of influence, and since more and more of us are a part of more and more homogeneous spheres of influence, we have to ask:

Who is going to reach the people who are not like us?

Do we need to add some kind of artificial corrective to TG that says, ‘Reach the people in your sphere of influence, but then also try to reach a few folks who aren’t like you so that your cause can fully spread’?

I never like to start making addendums to TG that way. It reminds me of the astronomer, Tyco Brahe, who preceded Copernicus. Despite the mounting evidence that the sun and stars didn’t revolve around the earth, Brahe insisted that not only did stars follow cycles around the earth, but that the unusual movements that made it seem like they didn’t were due to something called ‘epicycles’ and ‘epicycles upon epicycles’.

If your system requires epicycles, that ain’t good.

So, since TG is nothing other than an exposition of what the scripture teaches about being fully formed in the image of Christ, before we add any ethnic fundraising epicycles, let’s ask:

Does the Bible have anything to say about how and why causes spread beyond the immediate, homogeneous sphere of influence of champions?

The answer is clearly, emphatically:

Oh my. Yes.

Turns out the whole New Testament can be understand in light of this phenomenon. It is, in a very real way, a textbook and a description of exactly how and why Kingdom causes spread to people who are not like us.

• Halfway through Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel‘. By the end of the book he’s saying, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations‘. Is this a strategy change–an epicycle?
• The Apostle Paul portrays it as an intentional development. Writes three chapters about this, in fact: Romans 9-11. Even says things like Romans 1:16–‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of salvation for everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile‘.
• Note the consistent approach Paul takes as he spreads the gospel. First he visits the synagogue and shares the message for as long as he can (see, among many examples, Acts 14:1, Acts 17:2, Acts 18:4). As he is rejected, he then turns to take the gospel to the Gentiles.

So what’s the lesson here as relates to reaching beyond our homogeneous sphere of influence?

It’s what we do next if and when own sphere of influence rejects us, which, as Paul points out in Romans 9-11, typically has God’s purpose beyond it in spreading the cause.

Permit me a personal example:

You’ll recall that my wife and I founded Seoul USA going on a decade ago. One division of Seoul USA is Voice of The Martyrs-Korea, tasked with spreading the message of the persecuted church to South Koreans the way that Voice of The Martyrs-US is tasked with spreading the message to Americans and Voice of The Martyrs-Canada is tasked with reaching Canadians.

But here’s the problem:

South Korean churches are cool to VOM-Korea because it is non-denominational, and its leader is a layperson, not a pastor. For South Koreans, there’s another term for a non-denominational ministry led by a layperson:

A cult.

So when the Seoul USA board met last week, we discussed a variety of alternatives:

• We could appoint a ‘pastor representative’ for each denomination
• We could declare a denomination for VOM-Korea
• We chould approach major pastors in an effort to win them over and have them pronounce us credible

This is a major issue, since 10 of the 11 largest churches in the world are located in Seoul, South Korea. That’s a lot of potential champions and partners!

Now, all of these ideas the board suggested are possible and in fact quite feasible. But Seoul USA’s stated purpose is to equip outcasts to reach other outcasts like themselves.

And that’s what VOM-US President Jim Dau, who is one of the Seoul USA board of directors, exhorted the board to remember. He then got all scriptural and pointed out how every open door that VOM/Korea has had has been to North Koreans.

Conclusion?

God is holding closed the door to South Korea at present while laying the welcome mat out in front of the North Korean door. Or, stated more directly: VOM/Korea can and should begin by reaching North Koreans in South Korea, not South Koreans.

This raised the question:

‘But South Koreans have all the money. North Koreans are broke! How will we raise money?’

I knew at that moment we were in the rarified air of TG.

To the Seoul USA board’s credit, they decided to approve Jim’s recommendation, trusting that if we follow God’s will for our organization, the Transformational Giving of North Koreans will do abundantly and exceedingly more than the quantifably juicier gifts from South Korean churches could ever do.

We’ll keep you updated and let you know how it all goes.

In the mean time, take a closer look at the New Testament for coaching related to ethnic champion development. By following New Testament principles (and Pauline coaching principles) to their logical conclusion, you may end up with your very own Seoul USA experience, as God reorients your champion coaching program around an ethnicity so far out of your sphere of influence that it could only be God!