Do the Word

As we’ve previously discussed in this blog (and in greater detail in my Coach Your Champions book), P/E/O–or Participation/Engagement/Ownership–is the workhorse of Transformational Giving (TG). P/E/O is the process of coaching the champion to grow in the image of Christ by deepening the character and nature of their involvement in the cause in which God has given us to labor, by the power and advance preparation of God (a la Ephesians 2: 10) and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

P/E/O has a different goal than traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf). In P/E/O, giving is one of the results of discipleship…but the goal is ever increasing transformation into the likeness of Christ.

When you study most ttf models, there is a lack of vision as to what the ‘donor’ becomes as a result of the ‘cultivation’ process…other than a bigger and more frequent giver to the organization doing the cultivating.

That’s what’s so fascinating about Jessica Chao’s Continuum of Philanthropy model, which Diana S. Newman details in her brilliant book, Opening Doors: Pathways to Diverse Donors. Chao’s model is neither ttf nor self-consciously TG or Christian, but it’s plenty instructive.

Chao originally authored the model to demonstrate the three stages that Asian-American immigrants pass through on their way to philanthropic maturity.

• At the Survival stage, immigrants ‘share resources–money, goods, skills, and information–with family members and peers. For most the struggle is to establish a home and some foothold on the economic ladder of opportunity.’ Note that from the very outset, generosity is neither a product of disposable income nor primarily conceived of in terms of cash donations or gifts to formal charitable organizations.
• Immigrants reach the Help stage once they’ve established a financially and emotionally stable platform in their new country. At this point–almost instinctually, says Chao–they feel a desire to give back, particularly to children and extended family members, but also to the wider ethnic community of which they’re a part.
• At some point, immigrants move beyond simply responding to need. They ‘begin to visualize the ideal community’. This quest takes them beyond their ethnic communities and organizations and drives them to connect with mainstream organizations–not for the purpose of supporting those organizations but rather for the purpose of supporting their vision of the ideal community by drawing the mainstream organization into their sphere of influence. (Echoes here of Transformational Giving principle #4: A champion connects with an organization for the purpose of enhancing their mutual impact on the cause, not only to support the organization’s impact on the cause.

Graphically, Chao’s S/H/I (Survival/Help/Invest) model looks like this (microscope not included):

While Chao’s model is quite a bit different than the P/E/O model, both have in common what Newman quotes Paul Schervish as calling ‘an inclination [for individuals] to be producers rather than simply supporters of philanthropic projects’. Schervish notes three motivations inherent in that orientation:

• Hyperagency, or ‘the ability to set one’s own agenda’;
• Identification, or ‘the donor’s ability to identify with the recipients of the contribution, both personally, and globally’; and
• Association, or ‘the social networks in which donors learn about the needs of others, both within and beyond their local communities’.

So as we seek to study the scriptural model for generosity and giving and philanthropy, it’s fair to ask, Which gets us closer to the biblical mindset: the Western majority ethnic population focus on the wealthy among us giving a portion of our excess through institutions, or the non-majority ethnic focus on personal philanthropy as a comprehensive process of maturity and growth (i.e., we’re talking more than money here) that’s characterized by hyperagency, identification, and association?

Judge for yourself as you consider the Apostle Paul’s description of the giving of the Macedonian churches in 2 Corinthians 8: 1-7 (noting that, fascinatingly, hyperagency, identification, and assocation figure prominently, as does the comprehensive nature of giving that goes far beyond money):

And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints. And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God’s will. So we urged Titus, since he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part. But just as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

So where does all of this lead?

Well, we began the week asking the question, ‘If PEO involves us spreading the cause in our sphere of influence, how do we ever reach people who are not like us–people who are geographically, racially, culturally, and economically different?’

All week long, we’ve been looking to ethnic communities to lay the groundwork for the answer to that question. We’ll look forward to tying it all together tomorrow.

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.