Generosity is Personal

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As someone who values generosity, I wish I could be more enthusiastic about “Giving Tuesday” than I am. After all, what could be bad about a national day of giving, the development of a cultural consciousness that generosity deserves our attention?

Personally, it’s easy for me to feel a bit overwhelmed (and sometimes annoyed) by all the emails I receive on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I’ve become painfully aware that as a fundraiser I have at times contributed to this deluge of messaging that I myself dislike to receive—seemingly out of fear of missing out in a mad scramble for dollars at the kickoff of the holiday season, which doesn’t at all feel in sync with an “abundance mindset.” For me, it all boils down to feeling a little depersonalized through the “Giving Tuesday” experience (created and driven by the internet) and this is a problem for a very simple reason:

Generosity is personal.

From this principle, developed in various ways in an excellent class* I recently took, here are three powerful insights I intend to carry forward in my work as a fundraiser:

  1. The donor’s personal interests and motivations are always what’s most important. This may seem basic, but I struggled with it at first. I thought, “Does this mean my organization has to cater to every special interest of every potential donor?” No. If a potential donor’s interest isn’t aligned with your organization’s values and mission, that donation is simply not for you. Which leads to the second insight:
  2. A fundraiser’s goal should be to find the best match for a donor’s gift—even if the recipient is not the fundraiser’s organization. If the first insight freed me from the fear of compromising values and mission, this one was even more liberating. The reason is twofold: first, it is a great expression of an abundance mindset (as opposed to one of scarcity), and second, it enables a fundraiser to embody the values about which she or he speaks—or in my case, preaches.
  3. A fundraiser’s personal attachments may be the biggest obstacle to generosity. For me, this was the chief takeaway from the class, at the beginning of which I shared that fundraising was something I “despised”—a strong word but perhaps not inaccurate at that time. As things turned out, it was mainly my ignorance, vainglory, and pride that drove this antipathy toward the practice of fundraising. I am so much more comfortable now with the prospect of talking to people about money and giving, especially since I’ve been freed from the mistaken notion that such conversations must have the goal of persuading people to give more to my cause. They absolutely don’t.

You may have a great experience of “Giving Tuesday” next week, receiving anticipated and welcomed messages from organizations with which you have a strong and positive connection. You might also appreciate the way these email messages have been organized to coalesce in your inbox during the week after Thanksgiving so you can see all your giving options at the same time.

But if your experience is like mine has been, next week’s messages could leave you feeling about as lukewarm as leftover turkey. And this would be a problem if you have a generous heart, if you feel the desire to give for any reason whatsoever—if for example you are thankful for the blessings you’ve received, or if you are passionate in the best sense about an important cause. If that’s the case, don’t let the “Giving Tuesday” blues get the best of you and discourage you from giving. Reach out to a likeminded friend for a conversation or to a generous fundraiser who will help you find a good match for your gift. 

Because generosity is personal. Our giving is an expression of what we value and what we want. It can help solve problems. It can help balance inequity. It shows that we care about something bigger than ourselves. 

Happy Thanksgiving—and happy giving!

* https://lakeinstitute.org/education/executive-certificate-in-religious-fundraising/

A Cure for Instability

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The deadline for mailing gifts to arrive in time for Christmas is quickly approaching. If you’re lucky, you may receive a very personal gift during this holiday season. Even if you’re not so fortunate as to get a hand-knitted scarf from a friend who took up yarn-wrangling during the pandemic, you’ll probably receive something. You’ll probably give too.

Most of us know intuitively that something has been lost in our post-industrial, technologically advanced world. In the midst of unprecedented wealth, power, and knowledge, there is a tangible disconnectedness. Add to it political tension, a coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting economic disruption, and we live in a world of profound instability.

In the midst of this, I was lucky enough to give a gift to someone who understands gifts the way ancient people do. Nearly every time we speak by phone, she reminds me of the gift I gave her and how meaningful it is to her. And she recently gave me the “meta-gift” of understanding gifts the way she does, a book that taught me that there is a cure for this instability in which we live, for which the holiday season presents a golden opportunity: the giving and receiving of gifts. 

In The Gift,º Marcel Mauss presents a stunning survey of gift-related practices in ancient societies from every corner of the globe. His observations and conclusions provide us with a few precious principles that all of us can apply to create stability in an unstable world:

  • A gift is a living thing: It carries with it the spirit of the person who gave it. To give it is to give part of yourself, and to receive it is to receive a part of someone else’s essence. When we give and receive gifts in a truly personal way, we revivify our experience of life.
  • Giving is a good cultural norm: “In ancient societies, people were anxious to give. There was no occasion of importance when one was not obliged to invite friends and share the produce of the chase or forest; to redistribute everything at a potlatch; or to recognize services from chiefs, vassals, or relatives by means of gifts. Failing these obligations—at least for the nobles—etiquette was violated and rank was lost.” The social pressure to give gifts is not a bad thing.
  • It’s in our best self-interest to give: There is an old Hindu teaching that the secret of fortune and happiness is to give, not to keep, not to seek but to distribute it that it may return in this world and in the other. According to this teaching, self-renunciation and getting only to give is the real source of profit and the law of nature. It is in the nature of food, in particular, to be shared; to fail to give others a part is to “kill its essence”, to destroy it for oneself and for others: “He who eats without [this] knowledge kills his food, and his food kills him.”
  • Giving and receiving gifts creates a sense of reciprocity and connectedness: The person who receives a gift does not merely recognize that he has received it, but realizes that he himself is in a sense “bought” until it is paid for.

Mauss concludes with a few suggestions for modern societies: “The rich should come once more, freely or by obligation, to consider themselves as the treasurers of their fellow citizens…Meanwhile, the individual must work and be made to rely more upon himself than upon others.” Ending with the famous image of King Arthur’s round table, Mauss asserts: “The mere pursuit of individual ends is harmful to the ends and peace of the whole, to the rhythm of its work and pleasures, and hence in the end to the individual.”

These ideas have implications on many levels, from the individual to the national. In a time of instability, giving and receiving gifts may be the most deeply human way to cure it and the disconnectedness that fuels it. 

º https://wwnorton.com/books/The-Gift/

Lose a Little

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Can the advice of a 4th century desert monk be relevant to someone in the 21st century marketplace? At first, the following bit of practical advice from Evagrius Ponticus doesn’t seem to make much business sense:

When buying or selling you can hardly avoid sin. So in either case, be sure you lose a little in the transaction. If possible it is best to place such business in the hands of someone you trust.

from Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life

You’re probably not going to read something like this in business school. Doesn’t it make good business sense not to compromise on profit margins? Doesn’t “lose a little” feel like allowing someone to take advantage of you?

But there’s at least one way to understand this advice that doesn’t mean compromising on principles:

Generosity.

When you decide intentionally to “lose a little” in the form of a gift you freely give, whether during the transaction or after it, the benefits are numerous.

First and most literally from the saying, generosity helps you avoid sin. If that word doesn’t make any sense to you or if you find it offensive for some reason, skip this short paragraph. There are other benefits. But for those who do attach importance to the concept of sin: the most obvious one from which generosity can help protect us is greed.

Second, generosity can be an expression of thankfulness, without which a certain depth of happiness may not be possible.

Third, generosity is an opportunity to do good not just for ourselves but for others. Why not use sales revenue as an opportunity to give to the charities or non-profits of your choice? 

Fourth, generosity builds relationships. It delights the person with whom you are transacting. Chick-fil-A does this to me all the time. I’ve lost track of the number of chicken sandwiches I’ve received as outright gifts or in exchange for my feedback about their products and service. 

Sometimes, giving away a product or service—whether your own or someone else’s—can even generate more business. If they like it, they may decide to buy it. This can be a mere sales tactic, of course, but if it’s an act of real generosity, you don’t lose your reward even if more business doesn’t come from it.

Finally, a true gift signals to the other person that there’s a bigger, more important motivation for you than profit. What that is will differ from person to person or from company to company, but in this age of cultural fragmentation, we’re all looking for the others who have the same values we ourselves hold.

Maybe that old monk’s advice is still relevant. You can always try it and see for yourself.

Beyond Trick or Treat

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In the folktale Stone Soup, a hungry travel-worn boy comes to a big house and asks the old woman who lives there for something to eat. The old lady says she has nothing to give him. Little does she know that this is a “trick or treat” scenario. The boy replies that if she gives him a stone, he can make soup from that stone. The old lady had never heard of something so bizarre—“Make soup from a stone? Fancy that.”—so she complies with the boy’s request. When the pot of water comes to a boil, she comments, “This soup is cooking fast.” The boy says it would cook even faster with some onions. The old lady throws in a few onions from her garden and soon says, “This soup smells good.” The boy replies that it would smell even better with some carrots. 

Unlike the old lady, you probably get the picture now and don’t need the play-by-play account of every ingredient thrown into the pot. You might dislike the boy because he’s a trickster. On the other hand, you might find the story delightful, especially if you feel compassion for the hungry lad who wasn’t given any food by the resident of the big house, or if you think the old lady had a trick coming to her for lying. Regardless of what you think of the folktale, if we strip away “trick or treat” from the plot, we’re left with some powerful ideas:

First is the power of curiosity. It’s the special gift of innocence and childhood, usually dulled by time and experience, and hardened into a protective skepticism. Both curiosity and skepticism are rooted in the fact that there’s so much we don’t know, but curiosity is open to discovery in a way the other isn’t. The old lady could have been skeptical instead of curious. If she had, she might have seen the boy’s trick and shut the door on him. She would have saved herself a few onions and carrots, but she would have deprived herself of something greater.

Once the boy suggests they eat the soup, the old lady says, “Stop! This soup is indeed fit for a king. Now I will set a table fit for a king.” And she takes out her best dishes and tablecloth for their meal. This illustrates another powerful idea: that giving transforms the giver. The soup was not just to the boy’s benefit. It elevated the old lady to a nobler mindset. Generosity, even on the smallest scale, is a quality of kings and queens.

Another powerful idea is that generosity connects us to others. It establishes a relationship, whether we’re on the giving or the receiving end. The boy and the old lady were strangers but ended up sitting down at a table with each other, which reminds me of a beautiful initiative of my alma mater. Without generosity to bring them together, the boy and the old lady would have remained alone.

One last insight from the folktale is that even the smallest gift can make a big difference. That’s good news since no one has unlimited resources. We can’t always give as much as we want to every worthy cause. But if we’re open to being surprised, if we’re open to wonder and curiosity, this attitude can help us open our hands and cast something small—something we can afford to give—into the proverbial pot. And if enough people throw in their onions, carrots, beef bones, salt, pepper, butter, and barley, something magical might happen: we all just might be able to enjoy a bowl of soup fit for a king.