Do the Word

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.

Still savoring Eikenberry’s Giving Circles…especially the parts that aren’t about Giving Circles.

Best quote in the book:

‘As early as 1828, Rev. William Ellery Channing wrote about the hazards posed to democracy by volunteer associations (read: nonprofits) because they accumulate power in a few hands:

In a large institution, a few men rule, a few do everything; and if the institution happens to be directed to objects about which conflict and controversy exist, a few are able to excite in the mass strong and bitter passions, and by these to obtain an immediate ascendancy….They are the kind of irregular government created within our Constitutional government. Let them be watched closely.

We’re watching!

Reading Angela Eikenberry’s absolutely fantastic Giving Circles: Philanthropy, Voluntary Association, and Democracy.

There’s a great deal to share in coming days about Giving Circles, but I wanted to first take notice of a thought that she shares that has prime relevance to Transformational Giving.

Writes Eikenberry:

Giving and volunteering are often viewed as individualistic, heroic efforts, based on individual choice; there is typically little incentive or even ability for individuals to look at more comprehensive efforts for fundamental, long-term change.

In TG terms, we’d say (as we contended last week) that most giving and volunteering is P-level, that is, based on Participation in projects (and supporting an institution can actually count as a project, by the way).

Why?

Because absent coaching champions to grow in maturity in Christ in relation to the cause, projects are about all we can interest people in.

Continues Eikenberry:

Poppendeick suggests the general popularity of giving and volunteering can perhaps best be explained by their function as a moral safety valve to relieve the discomfort people feel when they are confronted with privation and suffering amid general comfort and abundance…. Poppendeick believes emergency food programs serve as an illusion of effective community action, lulling the public into complacency: canned food drives give people a warm, fuzzy feeling but do not cause them to think about why people continue to be in need.

One of the characteristics of a good Signature Participation Project (SPP) is synecdoche. That is, by participating in the project, a champion gets a taste of the cause as a whole.

In Eikenberry’s writing we see the impossible-to-overstate importance of synecdoche well-done:

• If your SPP gives people a warm, fuzzy feeling but does not cause them to think about and begin to be drawn into the deeper cause;
• If it serves as a moral safety valve to relieve discomfort related to the cause;
• If it creates the illusion of effective action but does not fundamentally impact the cause;

…then we’re pulling a Matthew 23:15b and could be causing our cause to recede further in the distance than when we’ve first begun.

Strangely enough, there are few things more dangerous to a ministry than self-replicating Participants.