Philanthropic Consulting as Paedia

Here is a little thought sequence. It seems to resonate.

I.  On the Same Page

  1. Inspired Legacies tries to get donor, advisor, and nonprofit on the same page.
  2. Whose page?
  3. The donor's.

II.  Where is the Page Held?

Once we are all on the same page, where will the donor hold that page?

  1. Foot high?
  2. Knee high?
  3. Belly button high?
  4. Heart high?
  5. Level with the eyes?

III.   The Wealthy as  Leaders

What does a person of wealth need to provide effective leadership?

1. Breadth of experience with the issues affecting society.
2. In-depth appreciation of at least one key issue area.
3. An adequate theory or perception of "how things really are."
4. An adequate theory or instinct as to "how things might be changed."
5. Access to best practices, and what has been tried and failed, and why.
6. Role models, peer networks.
7. Ability to recognize talent, bring it into play, delegate to it, back and support it.
8. Personal qualities such as humility, courage, and persistence.

IV. Role of Advisors

• If we did a survey of tax, legal, and financial advisors of how they help clients, not one would mention civic leadership as a deliverable.
• Advisors are all about the means to the ends specified by the client.
• Advisors are most often values neutral or agnostic about client values. Hence they can hardly help to elevate those values.
• For the advisor, values are to identified not uplifted. That would be presumptuous.

V. Role of Nonprofits

Whence cometh the donor's  "values"?

1. The example and precepts of parents.
2. Religious organizations.
3. Schools.
4. Playing on sport teams.
5. Volunteering.
6. In dorm rooms bull sessions.
7. In mentoring relationships with leaders in other walks of life.
8. From books deeply read in youth.
9. By chance, or through grace.

You could go on, but the seedbed of the donor's values are family and civil society.  Nonprofits are crucial not only to providing services to various groups, but to creating a self, a moral identity, a sense of direction, a moral community, and what we call "values," or tendencies, or character, or moral habit. As the apple seed is to the orchard, so is the  moral self to community: both result and cause. Nonprofits are the orchard where  gifts are sown and come to fruition. The fruitful tree is the donor, herself the fruit of what she seeds.

VI. Partnering for Inspired Outcomes

How, then, do we partner for inspired outcomes?

1. Donors to lead towards high ends.
2. Advisors to support means to those ends.
3. Nonprofits to carry out the programs funded in order to achieve the donor's ends in view.
4. But more importantly, the nonprofit to participate in forming the donor's vision, her mental map of the issues, her sense of what might work for social change.
5. More than that, the nonprofit should participate - should have participated  - in forming the donor per se, her values, her very self, as well as her progeny.

VII. Paideia

• We are formed by markets, mostly, by brands and propaganda, and mass media. The self is not what it once was. What we call our self is a sorry affair.
• If we are to be more than consumers, if we are to be citizens, and a free people, we must attend to the making of the moral self, the elicitation of the highest self from the base self. That is the work not of public relations, not marketing, not advertising, not think tanks, not sound bites, not entertainment, not spectacle, and not profit and loss. The term for it is paideia.
• Financial, tax and legal advisors are faithful servants of whatever donor-self shows up. 
• If nonprofits do not elevate the conversation and elicit and nurture what is best in the donor,  and the donor's heirs, we are lost. 
• In the partnership between donor, advisor, and nonprofit it may be that the nonprofit has the most to give and perhaps the greatest as yet unmet responsibility - to elevate the discourse beyond what is in it for the nonprofit - a very poor way to model generosity and vision. 

VIII.  Gift to the Givers

• Can your organization provide to your key potential donors a safe space, like the orchard, in which their gifts and giftedness can come naturally to fruition?
• What can you give to the donor that is so precious it is not sold in stores?
• How can you help the donor foster moral selves and moral leadership among heirs?
• Not your job? Mine neither. So I do it after hours as a citizen. 

Comments

[Holden]

I think where we differ is that this vision for philanthropic consulting doesn't seem like a lost cause to me, in terms of being a reasonable/sustainable business model. (And yes, it could just be that I'm a young fool.) If you are giving the donor something so precious it is not sold in stores, it seems reasonable for them to give you money in return.

I know the idea of paideia appears to have been left for dead by the many marketers in this blog space, but a marketer's job is generally to connect what they're selling with what people already want. CHANGING what people want isn't the role of the marketer; it's the role of the entrepreneur, who decides what the marketer is selling. As you note, entrepreneurs have demonstrated excellent abilities to change people for the worse - why not for the better?

[Phil]

Thanks for the encouragement, Holden. I am not sure that the model would be, other than tuition, speaking fees, and donations. When you stand with a prospective donor and follow the donor's own energy, you have no idea where the course will lead. As a result you can't position your "financial collection bucket," or pay point, with any given nonprofit or any given investment or firm. There are a few people eking out a modest living doing this, but much less than they could make it they were in the business of persuasion rather than elicitation. Tracy Gary's model is "pay it forward," consultation as a gift, and then a gift in return if the donor is so moved. Pretty weak as a business model, but asking for fees puts people off when they are trying to be generous.

If you have thoughts on a sustainable "model" for open-ended philanthropic advisory services, I would be interested.

[Holden]

I think your analysis is right that it's a tougher model to sell. So all things being equal, you are leaving money on the table by choosing to go this route, but you can leave money on the table and still make a living.

I guess I'm thinking less about philanthropic consulting ("I will help you figure out what you want, for a fee") than about running an actual charity. I think charities should start with what they think is the best way to improve the world, then try to sell it to donors who may or may not already agree. Compromises in message and even activities sometimes have to be made, but I feel that the fundraising I see now has come way too far toward building the message and the charity around what donors want to hear, rather than building the marketing around what they should hear. Charities should aim to educate donors, not just serve them.

When it comes to consulting, it still seems logical to me that you could say "I offer more than tax management; I offer deep discussions about values." Some people would hate that, others would want to buy it. But you know this market far better than I do.

[Holden]

One more thought: it seems that you think one of the problems is that it's typical to charge for "money under management," which means the financial incentive is not to give it away. What about a model that says "I will charge you a fee on what you GIVE (to actual today-work, not to foundations and vehicles) - and you will give only when I can convince you that it's really worth the money"? More like a contingency recruiter or real estate broker (you pay when you've found something you want to buy) than like a money manager (you pay every year regardless).

[Phil]

Yes, an exit fee from say a donor advised fund. I believe some organizations do use that model. I can't help thinking that the best answer might resemble a school, or institute, with materials, programs, tuition, discussions, and ultimately gifts. Your point is well taken about making a suboptimal living is still making a living.

The distinction you draw between organizations and consultants giving donors what donor's want, rather than what they need, is critical. Selling to wants is the path to success. Getting people to want what they need is more difficult, as every teacher knows.

[Gerry]

I don't know why you still struggle about this business model issue. You are already operating in the ethic of the gift economy, why can't that work? There should be no reason to assess a fixed fee as we would in a fee for service model, you are in conversation with the donors. You simply have to explain that in order to do the good work that is helping them fulfill their dreams for a better world in their giving plan, and to make that gift available to anyone who can use it, you need a certain amount of cash and other resources. If your clients don't give you more that you can use, enough that you would have to give some of it away yourselves, then I would say the process isn't working right.

Beyond the work of coaching the givers, I expect that a community will form around this network node, and this community might take a more comprehensive approach to their giving. Once projects and people are identified that are doing the necessary work, this community might organize a capital campaign. Several donors would step forward to lead the campaign, and raise the necessary resources for the projects that make it through a collaborative vetting process.

Holden is getting at this above too. Rather than having donors direct funds based on their desire, there needs to be collaboration between donors and activists. Maybe a congress of sorts that identifies needs and funds organizations working effectively on those areas of need, and quantifies the appropriate size of each initiative and authorizes capital campaigns to meet those needs. This should all fit well within models that donors already are familiar with in philanthropy, but would be much more collaborative.

[Phil]

Gerry, excellent comment, thanks. The model you describe is actually the one Tracy and I are groping around with. Yes, she is funded mostly with gifts from donor friends, and secondarily with speaking fees and consulting fees. Yes, we are "donor-centered," but also "community-organized." The donor is called "a donor" because she is engaged with a community of interest. Her giving strategies are created in conversation with peers and with activist leaders. The "congress" you describe is much like Threshold and Momentum and Women Donors Network and other networks in which Tracy is a catalyst.

That said, when you introduce advisors and advisory organizations into the picture, there is no one "Congress" or community. The advisors and firms will bring in prospective donors from all walks of life, all religions, all geographical areas, all educational levels, all shades of political viewpoints. That leads "professional advisors" to be "values-neutral values-based planners."

So, Tracy would be perceived in such "values-neutral donor centered values-based planning" circles as an advocate rather than an "objective and disinterested" resource.

Inspired Legacies has made a conscious decision to try to be a network of networks, a catalyst across the range of causes and communities, rather than a special pleader for a specific community. Better yet, it has made the decision to both work from passion for specific causes, while also being a node on a transpartisan network. (Like being both an owner of the Boston Red Sox and also on the Board of the Baseball Commission. You root for our own team, but also try to keep the playing field level and fair - an old fashioned notion these days, and one worth upholding.)

I am not sure this is good business. I am sure it is a good use of personal time. A sophist does nothing without checking your credit card first, as would a physician's staff person in a medical facility. A Fool, however, just dives in. "First do no harm," he says, reaching for the hacksaw, with a smile reminiscent of Curly in the Three Stooges. "All that matters to me is that your life insurance is up to date."