Do the Word

I did the Transformational Giving seminar yesterday in Korea as coordinated by the Hope Institute and the Beautiful Foundation. What an absolute kick—truly a religious experience in the best sense of the term.

Sixty proto-fundraisers there from across the spectrum, from World Vision/Korea through hospitals, universities, and civic groups.

We loved each other instantly.

I received two of the best insights I’ve yet received into Transformational Giving, both from seminar attendees.

The first was from Kim Kyung Hwan, Social Designer (what a great title) at The Hope Institute, which is the emerging fundraising education arm in Korean society. Mr. Kim said, ‘We have a tradition in Korea that in the highest form of giving, neither the giver nor the receive is sure who is giving and who is receiving, and they both agree to forget about the transaction itself and simply enjoy the deeper relationship that the experience created.’

W*O*W. What a tremendous statement of TG.

The second insight came from Choi Young Hoon from our own Seoul USA Korea office. Mr. Choi said, ‘When traditional Korean drums are played, the ultimate compliment to the performers at the end of the performance is that the whole audience stands up and joins together in a dance that proceeds up onto the stage and around the room, surrounding the performers. The distinction between performer and audience is eliminated, and all that remains is the joy in the dancing and the music.’

W*O*W, part II. A perfect description of the shift that TG brings which moves the nonprofit away from performer and into stage.

The whole day was an Acts 10:34-35 moment. I come away convinced that Transformational Giving truly transcends culture but also finds insightful and unique embodiment within each one.

Getting ready in a few hours to do the first day-long Mission Increase Foundation Transformational Giving seminar…and the first one we’ve ever done in Korea. I so feel like Bon Jovi.

(The stateside TG seminars are coming up in rapid succession: SEA, PDX, AZ, CO, SFO, and LAX. Click here to get yourself all registered.)

The most fascinating part about preparing the material for delivery here in Korea has been working on the translation with my wife and fellow Seoul USA co-founder, Hyun Sook Foley.

What I discovered, blissfully, is that there simply is no word in Korean for ‘donor’. On the one hand, that renders a fair portion of my presentation entirely unintelligible, in that Koreans simply don’t have the concept of making a donation for the sake of supporting someone else’s work.

On the other hand, it delights me to discover that the closest analog in Korean is the word, ‘giver’. Because Korea is a gift-oriented culture, they are hard-wired in the belief that of course it is better to give than to receive, and it makes perfect sense to them that one gives in the context far wider than the transaction itself. It would be anathema for them to consider giving a gift to be the completion of a cultivation cycle. Giving, of course, must be reciprocated by other giving. There is thus not a giver and a recipient but rather two givers who are each sharing things of tremendous value and worth which each other.

That’s why the Korean translation of ‘Transformational Giving’ is ‘Giving that draws transformation’, i.e., one ‘attracts’ transformation through making a gift in a certain spirit or with a certain character.

I have the feeling I will learn a lot more than I teach today.

In a post last week, we talked about two approaches to development that are often mistaken as country cousins to TG but are in fact counterfeits. The first is a form of friendraising, in which we talk to champions about anything except for money in the hopes that God will then put it on their hearts to talk to us about money. The second I call fee for service, in which we help grow the champion in relation to the cause and then we say, ‘Hey, while we’re talking, let me mention a financial need my ministry’s facing, now that you’re more or less indebted to me.’ These two counterfeit forms are kissing cousins of each other in that both see the champion giving money as a consequence of us doing anything except talking to the champion about giving to the cause.

The third form of counterfeit TG is different, though equally counterfeit: chaplaincy.

In the chaplaincy approach, we assume responsibility for coaching the champion in all areas of Christian growth, not just the cause we share in common and on which our nonprofit is called to focus. We, in other words, supplement or displace the role of the local church in general in the life of the champion.

Not good.

Why this happens (and why it’s often mistaken for TG) is understandable. TG stresses the nonprofit’s coaching/mentoring role in relation to the cause the nonprofit and the champion share. It’s not an infinite leap from coaching in relation to the cause too coaching in relation to everything.

Sometimes the chaplaincy role is overt, such as in the case of a ministry who attends our training whose executive director told me how their largest donor said to him, ‘I got hurt by the church, so I stopped going and now I’m giving you my tithe instead.’

Far more often, however, the chaplaincy function is less overt, like for example when a well-meaning nonprofit says to its champions, ‘How can we pray for you?’, to which the champion dutifully responds, ‘Well, my uncle goes in for goiter surgery next week, and…’

So what’s wrong with being a chaplain?

The chaplaincy role obscures and confuses both the purpose of the nonprofit and the purpose of the church.

Rather than asking the champion, ‘How can we pray for you?’, the purpose of the nonprofit is to ask, ‘How can I assist you in praying for this cause we share?’

Rather than seeking to coach the champion broadly in the Christian life, the purpose of the nonprofit is to coach the champion deeply in relation to the cause in such a way that what s/he learns she can teach throughout his or her sphere of influence, including, ideally, his or her church.

Rather than replacing the church in the life of the champion, the nonprofit can imbue that role with a new vigor, meaning, and purpose.

Beats praying for the uncle with a goiter and calling it TG.