Do the Word

Great post this morning (well, it’s morning in Korea anyway) on the temptation to raise money transactionally when our organizations hit dry patches.

The author is my dear brother Greg Stier, founder and president of Dare2Share Ministries. I told Greg when I first met him, ‘Greg, you’re the guy who would have hit up the rich young ruler for a donation’. Since then, Greg has gone on to become one of the best and most articulate advocates for a biblical approach to fundraising. He wrote the preface to my book, Coach Your Champions, and frankly it’s my favorite part of the book.

In Greg’s post this morning on the temptations of fundraising, he likens Saul’s premature and ill-conceived sacrifice in 1 Samuel 13:8-10 to the way we nonprofits often choke in the clutch and succumb to secular fundraising approaches at precisely the moment we need to be steadfastly committed to doing things the Lord’s way.

The Apostle Paul noted in Philippians 4:11-13 that he had learned to be content in a little and a lot, and this is a discipline nonprofits are reluctant to learn. We have the (decidedly unscriptural) sense that if fundraising is down, we must be doing something wrong, and if fundraising is up, we must be doing something right.

Paul thought otherwise, lived otherwise, and wrote otherwise. Greg’s post this morning is a great (and typically entertaining, as Greg’s posts always are) restatement of that great truth.

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.