Do the Word

In yesterday’s post we talked about the very different definitions of Transformational Giving that abound these days, including Kay Sprinkel Grace’s definition of Transformational Giving as consisting of gifts that are jumbo-size in relation to an organization’s overall budget or in relation to the cause which the gift is intended to impact.

So which gifts are lagging in the present recession?

The, um, ones that Sprinkel Grace refers to as transformational.

According to a Christianity Today post last week, their January 2009 survey of Christian donors discovered that 44% of givers expected to donate the same amount in 2009 as they did in 2008, and 34% felt they were likely to give more than last year.

So what accounts for the belt-tightening many ministries are undergoing at the moment?

The drop in million dollar-plus donations, down 33% in the last six months of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007.

Conversely, the ‘other’ kind of Transformational Giving–the kind in which it is first and foremost the giver that is transformed (as per our definition of TG in this neck of the woods)–continues to be delightfully recession-proof.

John W. Kennedy’s well-written article recounts the story of Carolyn Cooper, who continues to sponsor three girls in the Dominican Republic through Compassion International despite having been laid off from her job at AT&T. Ms. Cooper puts the sponsorship payment ahead of all of her other expenses, including her mortgage, somehow making it work despite receiving only $350 a month in unemployment benefits.

The only clunker that Kennedy drops in the article is to conclude that givers like Cooper continue their giving due to the ‘family-like link’ they have to the charity to which they are giving. It’s hardly a stretch of the imagination to contend that a more plausible explanation for Cooper’s giving is not her family-like relationship to Compassion but rather her sense that the sponsorship of the girls is her ministry, not simply Compassion’s. Compassion is the stage, in other words, but she is the performer.

Cooper explains her own actions this way: ‘When I look at those pictures, I remember that I don’t need a bigger car. I don’t need a flat-screen TV. I do need to keep other children from dying of starvation.’

That’s not loyalty to an organization. That’s loyalty to God’s calling to Carolyn as a Christian.

And that’s truly Transformational Giving.

Multiple people use the term Transformational Giving to describe their systems or strategies of fundraising. Humorously, they use the term in diametrically opposite ways. I’m not sure whether to fight for the term or to rest content with Shakespeare that a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.

In the online version of Contributions magazine, Kay Sprinkel Grace reels off a list of gifts–$150 mil to Stanford U, $12 mil to College of the Ozarks, $5 mil to the George Washington School of Medicine–before concluding:

These gifts – some huge, others modest only by comparison – have a common tie: their impact. Because of their size, relative to the overall budget of the organization or the project, they are transformational.

Transformational gifts may be categorized as “big” or “major” gifts, but what distinguishes them is their unique capacity to alter the programs, perception, and future of an organization. More than gifts, they are true investments in the future of an organization and of the community.

This phenomenon – the product of a robust economy and a heightened understanding by donors of the importance of philanthropy in building communities and institutions – is one of the most important milestones in the entire history of philanthropic growth in this country.

Well, so much for that whole robust economy thing there…

What seems to make a transformational gift transformational for Sprinkel Grace is that it is disproportionately huge in relation to the organization through which it is given, as well as disproprortionately large in relation to the size of the opportunity or problem it is tackling.

While Kay goes on to talk about how the givers of these gifts want very much to be involved in the organizations through which they make them, it’s absolutely fascinating to me that what she never makes explicit is that a gift can be (and, in our definition of TG, is most properly understood to be) transformationally given when it is disproportionally impactful on the giver.

When the widow gives her two bits to the Temple treasury, Jesus does not pronounce her gift transformational because of its impact on either the Temple budget nor the impressive slate of activities the Temple was undoubtedly undertaking. He pronounces it transformational because the gift for all intents and purposes wiped her out.

So I for one will continue to plug away for a standard definition of Transformational Giving that is measured first and foremost in relation to the giver (hence why we don’t call it Transformational Receiving or Transformational Spending Of Donation Dollars).

To that end, I resurrect this gorgeous quote by Dr. Lenore Ealy, Project Director of the Philanthropic Enterprise, from a 2004 blog post (eons ago in Internet years) on Gift Hub:

The measure of a gift is the transformation of the giver as well as of the recipient and society. The transformation may be spiritual, ethical, aesthetic, or political. The crust of self-interest breaks open like a cocoon, and, having once been a caterpiller crawling on the earth, out flies an entirely new, far lighter, creature of the air.

One of the anchor concepts of Transformational Giving is the SPP–the Signature Participation Project.

The SPP is created to enable potential champions to step onto the first rung of the PEO (Participation/Engagement/Ownership) ladder.

(PEO is the engine of Transformational Giving. It’s the structure of how we disciple champions. To learn more, attend the upcoming Transformational Giving seminar and/or grab yourself a copy of my new book, Coach Your Champions.)

It’s called a ‘signature’ project because it must be as uniquely related to the organization as a person’s signature is uniquely a product of himself or herself and his or her experiences. (Wow, what a clumsy sentence. But at least I’m gender inclusive. So to speak.)

A golf scramble or an auction or a walk-a-thon is a bad SPP because it’s about as unique a signature as typing your name on a check–kind of easy to be copied, there, pal.

So here I am in the Land Of Morning Calm (AKA Korea) this week ostensibly introducing all things Transformational Giving, and what do I find here?

An SPP.

The nonprofit organization is called Christians For Social Responsibility. (Their counterpart, Christians Against Social Responsibility, apparently was too busy to meet me.)

CSR publicizes North Korean human rights abuses to Korea and also around the world. It was the latter part of that sentence that led to the creation of their SPP.

One of the pieces of video most recognizable to people involved in the North Korean cause is that of a North Korean defector in China attempting, with a crowd of other North Koreans, to rush into a foreign embassy to asylum–a one-way ticket to South Korea. Just as the defector is passing through the embassy gate, however, he is veritably clotheslined by a Chinese guard, who then drags the defector off…to deportation and death.

CSR recruited a famous Korean bicycle club to travel to Europe from June 8 to June 20, 2008. There, they bicycled from capital to capital, and at each capital they re-enacted the event as a costumed drama in which the riders played the parts of North Korean defectors and Chinese guards, and that same defector got collared and dragged off in every city.

The drama was always performed at the gate of the Chinese Embassy in that city, in the midst of an unsuspecting crowd, and as crowds watched, puzzled, as the events unfolded around them each time, the non-actors handed out pamphlets that talked about the plight of North Koreans and the policy of China to repatriate them to certain death in North Korea.

The SPP is brilliant on so many levels.

First, the bicycle riders were recruited into the participation activity of doing the tour. They each paid their own way–no small expense. This debunks the idea that P level activities can’t involve potential champions using their own money, and a lot of it. These riders had no particular past association with CSR, but now more than half the riders continue to be passionately active for the organization off their bikes.

Second, the idea of street theatre creates a fascinating dimension of participation. Bystanders were drawn into participation whether they wanted to be or not. As the drama unfolded around them, they had to decide, ‘What will I do? Will I do anything? What’s happening anyway? And how will this affect my lunch break?’ Street theatre is, it seems to me, an incredibly robust frontier for SPPs. I’m resentful and jealous that I didn’t think of it.

Finally, the strategy is brilliant because it maxes out each of the characteristics of a good participation project. It’s short term (13 days plus the flight). It’s high touch (you try riding on one of those bicycle seats for 13 days). It’s high impact (when was the last time you found yourself in the middle of a pack of defectors streaking to freedom?). It’s high yield (the event ends with a spontaneous protest by the newly informed; after all, they’re right there at the Chinese Embassy, and their adrenaline is flowing and their sense of righteous indignation has been raised through the roof). And it’s synecdochic (participate in one embassy protest and you won’t want to miss another; plus you’ll likely want to read the pamphlet and start learning more about the cause of NKs and China’s looney policy to repatriate them).

I came to Korea to teach SPPs…and while here I truly got schooled.

Great job, CSR.