Do the Word

Even as I traveled to Phoenix to do the day-long Transformational Giving seminar yesterday, I should have been fixated on the joy of having been able to do the seminar in shirt sleeves rather than a suit (way to go, PHX! Our largest crowd and the best weather so far!)

Instead, I’ve been inexplicably fixated this week on David Meerman Scott’s assertion that what we’re all really after is ‘attention for our companies’.

My final word on the discussion, drawn from my truly enjoyable time with Phoenix folks yesterday, comes from Willie Cheng, author of Doing Good Well: What Does (and Does Not) Make Sense in the Nonprofit World.

Cheng contends that there is something nonprofit organizations should want more than attention.

Extinction.

According to Cheng, ‘the ultimate aim of a charity is to be extinct’:

Individual charities are set up to solve specific societal issues, and hence should be working themselves out of a job by finding the solutions.

It’s modulated slightly differently than we would say it (in TG, we’d say that the role of institutions is to build up God’s people and then become extinct when God’s people reach maturity in the cause), but the principle is the same: nonprofits are intended to be nonpermanent. They’re designed to seek extinction, not attention.

What would happen if your nonprofit set a ten year limit on achieving its purpose, at which point it would automatically dissolve?

Or, in a more TG vein, what would happen if your nonprofit set a ten year limit on transmitting its purpose so fully to its champions and partners that it no longer needed to exist?

Perhaps the animosity between churches and nonprofits would decline if nonprofits declared and practiced their impermanence.

Attention for our companies–that’s what David Meerman Scott recently wrote that we all are seeking.

Not so, we replied this week, noting yesterday that Transformational Giving is focused on the champion, not the company (or, in our case, the nonprofit).

Today we focus on the first word in David Meerman Scott’s wish list–Attention–and we contend that what Transformational Giving seeks is something entirely different.

Rather than seeking attention for the company, Transformational Giving seeks transformation for the champion.

Transformational Giving principle #8 (see here for the whole TG Ten list) says, ‘Giving is not the process but rather the result of the process of the champion being comprehensively coached to advance the cause effectively within his or her sphere of influence.’

In traditional marketing/fund raising/sales/public relations, the goal is to generate attention that leads to sales. In Transformational Giving, the goal is individual transformation.

That is,  the champion of the cause (who is a reflection of the organization, not its representative, by the way) facilitates transformation  in those within his or her sphere of influence who witness the change.

Is it really so far-fetched?

World Vision has already been measuring it.

The Bible commends it as how change happens.

And history demonstrates it’s how Christianity spread in the first place.

Jim Daly, President and CEO of Focus on the Family, offered a vivid reminder of this at the commencement ceremony for Colorado Christian University this past weekend. (My wife was receiving her Master’s degree in Counseling at the ceremony, so I was grateful to get good blog fodder at the same time that I was taking in a seminal moment in the life of our family. Go, Mrs. Foley!)

Daly noted that the early church spread so quickly because during plagues, the early church moved in (to feed last meals to dying patients) just as everyone else was moving out. And as men and women in the ancient world tossed their female and handicapped babies in the river, church members fished them out and raised them as their own.

It might be possible to contend that, in so doing, Christians were doing what David Meerman Scott classifies as ‘earning attention’, and that that attention was indeed attention ‘for the company’, the church.

Much more natural, however, would be Paul’s explanation from 2 Corinthians 3:2, in which he himself turned the traditional notion of marketing on its ear:

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.

Transformational Giving doesn’t equip representatives and supporters with brochures. It equips them to be brochures–living brochures–that transform even in the watching.

Attention, in other words, is the poor man’s substitute for transformation.

We’re commenting throughout this week on David Meerman Scott’s claim that the ultimate goal we all seek is ‘attention for our company’. In yesterday’s post, I raised the questions: Is attention for our company the goal of Transformational Giving? Is TG simply another way to achieve the standard marketing goal?

You’ve already undoubtedly guessed that I intend to answer in the negative, but what may surprise you is that the ‘no’ is multifaceted, comprehensive, and emphatic.

Today, let me begin with the second part of David Meerman Scott’s formulation of the phrase ‘attention for our company’ and demonstrate why Transformational Giving is not focused ‘for our company’ at all.

One of the key themes I’m teaching in the day-long TG seminars this month is that fundraising is an inadequate way to describe the biblical framework for giving because it introduces a Kingdom ‘nonentity’–the nonprofit organization–and seeks to make it the locus of God’s activity.

Saying that the nonprofit is a Kingdom nonentity does not mean that nonprofits are unimportant or unnecessary. Far from it!

It does mean, however, that–in the biblical framework–institutions grow God’s people and then ultimately become unnecessary, because God’s people reach their full stature in Christ. (Contrast this with the traditional development framework in which God’s people grow institutions; and then God’s people become unnecessary, except for as human ATM machines who support the work of the nonprofit.)

This explains why John the Baptist says he must become less, so that Christ can become more…and why Jesus offers this scathing offhand in Luke 21:5-6 about the most central institution in his own time, the Jewish temple, which he knew was about to give way to an eternal, living temple:

Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, ‘As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.’

The contrast between traditional development’s focus ‘for our organization’ and Transformational Giving’s focus ‘for the champion’ can best be seen in these two slides drawn from the seminar, which contrast the roles of performer, audience, and stage in each framework.

In the traditional framework, the nonprofit is on the stage, attempting to achieve David Meerman Scott’s dream of achieving attention for itself:

The nonprofit calls attention to itself

In the Transformational Giving framework, however, notice the shift:

And the focus of attention is...

In Transformational Giving, the nonprofit is the convening mechanism, the stage, the platform for the champion’s activity and growth…

…but not the focus of the attention.

More tomorrow.