Do the Word

Diana S. Newman’s Opening Doors: Pathways to Diverse Donors is neither an expressly Christian book nor a text intentionally oriented toward Transformational Giving (TG). But it has to be among the most helpful books for TG practitioners to read as we attempt to reset our brains with definitions of philanthropy and generosity that take us beyond standard traditional/transaction fundraising (ttf) fare.

Newman draws a distinction between institutional philanthropy (which she defines as ‘philanthropy governed by an organization’s formal policies and procedures’) and personal philanthropy (which consists of ‘the charitable activities of individuals in direct response to immediate needs’). She notes that when most people think of giving and donations and philanthropy, they’re thinking of ‘relatively wealthy individuals giving gifts of money to favored nonprofit institutions (in which they often serve as board members or advisors)’.

Hard to get more ttf than that.

And, sadly, this sometimes causes philanthropic experts to opine about cultures that have no traditions of philanthropy. Erk.

To the contrary, Newman identifies the vibrant traditions of personal philanthropy that remain strongly evident in non-majority ethnic populations today.

James Joseph, former president of the Council on Foundations, writes that in the annals of American philanthropy, ‘the real heroes were the ordinary people who, with meager resources, accomplished extraordinary deeds. Mired in poverty, racked by frequent epidemics, and oppressed by vicious racism, the poor reached out to the poor, sharing what little they had with each other’.

(I fancy a Hebrews 11 echo in there.)

More gold from Newman:

‘Philanthropy in the Native sense means the tradition of sharing and honoring’, writes Rebecca Adamson, president of First Nations Development Institute, ‘which is generally not a question of altruism or charity but of mutual responsibility. In this worldview, both giver and recipient benefit from the gift [emphasis mine, as I happily note the resonance with this previous post on Korea].

Think of it like this:

What would a tradition of philanthropy and generosity look like in a culture that did not predicate philanthropy and generosity as a function of disposable income?

We’d almost be on biblical footing if we could take that fork in the road. And many non-majority ethnic populations provide us with the opportunity to take that fork, since they embody robust traditions of personal philanthropy that are different not only in degree but in kind from our majority philanthropic traditions.

(And lest we protest that ttf predicates philantropy and generosity this way, let’s recall how ttf is oriented toward institutional philanthropy and thus ranks donors on the basis of their capacity, recency, frequency, personal assets, corporate assets, and all things green. And–dare I say it? I haven’t seen a whole lot of the poorest 20% of the US public in the Christian ‘stewardship’ gatherings either, despite the fact as we established yesterday that they’re already twice as far along the path to generous giving as their wealthy counterparts…)

Tomorrow: An ethnic PEO chart from a 1999 Council of Foundations presentation by an Asian American fundraiser gives us new insight into Participation, Engagement, and Ownership.

As we were noting in yesterday’s post, Angela Eikenberry makes the following claim:

[A]ffluent communities tend to be more generous than distressed communities in which there are wider variations in income and racial/ethnic populations…

It’s a fascinating statement. I certainly don’t want to stretch it any further than Eikenberry intended, so I am going to assume the most conservative possible interpretation of the statement and still take issue with it.

In my view, the most conversative interpretation possible would be that affluent communities tend to be more generous than distressed communities, and that in these distressed communities income and racial/ethnic segregation make fundraising more complicated.

Fair enough, I hope. And yet I want to suggest that while Eikenberry’s statement makes perfect sense (and even quantifiable sense) in a traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf) framework, it is actually highly inaccurate in a Transformational Giving (TG) context.

The accuracy turns on what we mean by ‘generosity’. If we measure generosity in terms of total dollars given, it would be difficult to dispute that affluent communities give more dollars than distressed communities. But if we measure generosity in terms of percentage of income given to charity, the totality of research demonstrates that the less you have, the more you give.

Consider the May 2009 McClatchy Group survey, which concludes that the 20% of Americans with the least income give double the percentage that the richest 20% do–about 4.3 percent as opposed to 2.1 percent.  (Make sure to click the link to read the story about the one homeless guy who buys the other homeless guy a Big Mac.)

Commenting on the survey, Josh Smith offers this great narrative gloss:

This report confirms the opinion I formed during years of collecting canned goods as a Boy Scout. While walking through neighborhoods on chilly fall mornings, it was quite obvious that families who themselves would be considered in need by many, donated bags of canned goods bursting at the seams. While there were also some full bags in the more “well to do” areas of town, the generosity that flowed from low and lower-middle class homes was hard not to notice, even for a 13-year-old.

What we’re really looking at is the vast dichotomy between how ttf and TG define generosity and philanthropy. What’s fascinating–and what I discovered personally when I I taught TG in Korea recently–is that many of the non-majority ethnicities in the US and many of the non-Euro populations abroad have concepts of generosity and philanthropy that are far more compatible with TG than the US’ majority ethnicity.

So where we’re headed this week in our ethnic fundraising excursion is that one of the best reasons for us to find ways to reach out to ethnicities beyond our own generally homogeneous spheres of influence…is that other ethnicities can offer us insights into TG that exceed what we can find in our own culture.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing some of those insights from a 2002 book that ought to be on every TG coach’s bookshelf, whether or not you ever intend to venture outside of your own ethnic group.

It’s only fair that since we ended last week with a timely warning against traditional/transactional fundraising (TTF) that we begin this week with a caution for practitioners of Transformational Giving (TG), related, interestingly, to the question of TG and ethnic communities.

I think the subject is on my mind today because in our church this morning the pastor was praying his July 4th weekend prayer, in which he praised God for building a community ‘with no regard for ethnicity’. I of course understood what he meant, but it gave me pause for thought in that my wife (who is originally from Korea) was the only non-Caucasian individual in the room.

In Eikenberry’s Giving Circles, the praises of which I have been extolling for over a week now,  she throws down the gauntlet with a provocative quote about most charities also having no regard for ethnicity, or geography, or residential segregation by income:

[B]ecause the voluntary sector is so decentralized and locally focused, it does not have the capacity to reallocate resources from affluent to distressed communities. This is a significant problem when one considers that about 90 percent of charitable contributions are raised and spent locally, affluent communities tend to be more generous than distressed communities in which there are wider variations in income and racial/ethnic populations, and there has been an increasing residential segregation of Americans by income over the past forty years.

I want to take issue with Eikenberry’s assertion that affluent communities tend to be more generous than distressed communities, but all in good time. First, however, I want to rephrase and reframe her quote so as to sharpen up a very legitimate challenge to Transformational Giving, namely:

TG Principle #6 states:

The champion, not the organization, is called to be the primary means of advancing the cause within the champion’s sphere of influence.

A corollary to that principle is the very provocative strategy (which Mission Increase Foundation will be teaching in August/September in its extremely popular Marketing Your Ministry free workshop/lab sequence; sign up now)  that recruitment of new champions is the responsibility of the champion, not the nonprofit organization.

So sharpen up the question this way:

• If champions are recruiting new champions, and
• If champions are recruiting those new champions in their sphere of influence; and
• If champions’ spheres of influence are becoming generally more homogeneous in income, ethnicity, and virtually ever other measurable social characteristic (churches, for example, are becoming even more segregated by age), then
• How can causes ever move beyond people who are like us?

TTF’ers (traditional transactional fundraisers) don’t get vexed by this question because ethnic donors are just one particular (and highly optional) pathway among many to meeting their organization’s budget needs.

TGers (practitioners of Transformational Giving) ought to be very vexed by this question, because our goal is to coach, by the power of the Holy Spirit and the advance preparation of God (cf. Ephesians 2:10), God’s people to grow up into the full image of Christ. If this question isn’t giving us a Romans 10:15 moment, could it be that we all have a little ttf in us after all?

So this week we turn to the subject of ethnicity and coaching champions. The subject is so vast that if we can even outline the contours of the discussion–talk about who’s talking about it and what they’re saying and what it has to do with discipling people in the image of Christ–then it will be a week well spent.