Gift Hub

The Generations Just Get Nicer as They Go Along

Mr. Trexler riffs brilliantly on a Gifthub post on generational differences in activism and giving. Actually, for the record, I am pleased and proud my own kids turned out to be every bit as nice as the nice people their age blogging about philanthropy. My kids tell me, "What can we do, Dad? Protest does not work any more." I agree, we can do nothing, kids, get on with your job, career, romantic life, and next vacation.  If the world goes as it is, these may be the years you look back on as surreal - when there were polar bears roaming the ice flows, when bees flew from hives, when tap water was potable, when $4 dollars bought a gallon of gas, and when speech was relatively free. As would any parent, I take pride my kids' achievements, and am glad they stay out of trouble with the authorities.  I would be pleased if one or both were to study under Jeff Trexler, whether in law school or business school, and learn how to make an honest dollar in social ventures, while preserving their sense of social purpose and impotent irony. I only hope that those in charge serve in loco parentis. With such an obedient populace the responsibility to guide the tractable young must almost be unbearable. Maybe it is sedation that does it. Whatever it is, something seems to be working well in defense of the intolerable.

Blogging Philanthropy in the Context of What?

Philanthropy in the context of what? When we blog about philanthropy, what is our presumptive context?

• Business
• Religion
• Political policy
• The underground economy in drugs
• Money laundering
• Hagiography (Celebration of Donors)
• Business models for working with the wealthy
• Governmental collusion with legal and illegal elites
• The national security state
• Citizenship
• Career options for philanthropy professionals
• Announcements and press releases in the vicinity of philanthropy
• The state of the media
• Environmental collapse
• Activism
• Fundraising
• Financial services
• Civil rights, human rights, and social control
• The liberal arts
• Client values
• Family Values
• Legacy
• The history and practice of satire
• The theory and practice of spin
• Moral and philosophical traditions of healing
• The penal system
• The pillory and other devices to induce shame in wrong-doers
• Vigilante social reform
• The role of the internet in sourcing mobs, crowds, wisdom, and rough justice

For the last few years I have been trying to stay on topic by reading a good many blogs devoted to giving, philanthropy, fundraising, social ventures, philanthropic capital markets, and other subjects clearly central to "blogging philanthropy." Yet, I find myself still sneaking off to read the irreverent, well informed few who are blogging about how our world is going, and who are piecing together an understanding of that world (both its overt and covert dynamics) in the light of deeper traditions, whether from the liberal arts or from spiritual disciplines. I have become more and more convinced that the Dewey Decimal System is a poor guide to giving. Further, I have become convinced that plain style link and comment blogging is about useless for motivating social change. The plain style is by its nature even handed, respectful and moderate.  It forces us to use as Speaker our Authentic Self, the one that has swallowed so many lies with a smile, whose social bearing is that of courtesy and deference to the intolerable. What might change us is what is forbidden; what is interdicted, what is inadmissible in polite society. We do need to bring back the Feast of Fools. Maybe that is the proper context for Blogging Philanthropy? The world turned upside down.

Another way to ask it: Is giving a lens we look at, or through? Is it the subject, or the lens through which many a subject comes into focus?  Maybe the topic is not blogging philanthropy, but blogging the world we have, and the world we want, from the perspective of philanthropy? What philanthropy is, and what it might yet be?

Spitzer and the Security State

Atomized Junior on Eliot Spitzer and what his fall portends:

What elites have to fear is other elites. Elites are insulated from ordinary rules and trouble. They do not fall unless enemies they have manufactured among the powerful tip them to the mob. All this is no more than tempest in a teapot. A theatre in which celebrity is the usual echo or shadow.

A observation (via Laura Rozen's War and Piece) made by Jack M. Balkin in the web log he maintains, The Spitzer Case and the National Surveillance State - Balkinization, that the newly created rules for financial transaction observations under the Patriot act were leveraged against Eliot Spitzer. This as he argues point out the potential danger of such surveillance being continually refined, extended in scope and narrowed in focus until it can be used to target anyone and anything. Protected from observation of its decision process, out of reach of any meaningful oversight, by its National Security status. The only outcome of the confluence of such degrees of power and secrecy is immediate even instantaneous malfeasance corruption and criminality. You damage more than you protect.

The defensive and entranced nature of the security state into which the United States is descending looks towards a coming class of supremely empowered elites who will place themselves with deliberate care at the head of technological and particularly informational apexes, out of which they will declare a protected property. We glide smoothly towards a gilded era of mass society police state.

Jesus Made Me Do It

A Social Venture Entrepreneur should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence, but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things. -Juan De La Cruz (John of the Cross)

Actually, I inserted "Social Venture Entrepreneur" in the above quotation; John of the Cross had said, "Christian." I just wanted to hear how it sounded to mix contemporary prudence with timeless wisdom.

Our Broken Media

Cursor.org:

Chris Matthews fingers "politicians like the Clintons" for the decisions that led to the death of 4,000 in Iraq, CNN is accused of making anti-war protests 'look like a circus,' and "On the Media" reports on how the Bush administration has gone about 'Stagecrafting the War.'

Social Media and Social Protest

A. Fine on social media and social protest:

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary (that can’t be the best word to mark a milestone tied to such a shameful event) of the start of the Iraq war. Protest marches happened across the country, and again San Francisco was the center of the intersection of civil protest and social media. But this time a new tool was introduced, Twitter. Like Jeff Jarvis (read it here) I was an initial skeptic of Twitter, it seemed too cute, just another way for Millennials to announce themselves to the world - whether we want or need to know where exactly they are at any moment in time. But, as described here on Wired, Twitter played a critical role in helping to organize protesters throughout the day: “What’s new in the last four years is the addition of the text messaging,” says Taylor. “In the past, (street protest organizers) have had walkie-talkies out there and a bullhorn, but the people with the radios would always get arrested by the police.”

Still, the Heat Ray will fry them all but good.

Knowledge Management in Web 2.0

Dave Snowden interviewed in a podcast by Jon Husband on knowledge management under web 2.0. Two deep thinkers in deep conversation about IT, community, connectivity, openness, and the proliferation of knowledge inside and outside the corporate firewalls. (Who does their best thinking on company time, in conversation with other company stooges, under the watchful eye of immediate superiors? That is my question, not Dave and Jon's but it was inspired by their critique of actually existing knowledge management.)

The Authority as Anachronism

Tom Belford at The Agitator on generational differences and how they will affect both media and cause groups:

For at bottom, what do cause groups do other than interpret current events and package and spin that information to mobilize supporters around the threats and opportunities represented by those events? But just as under-30s don't seem to need an Uncle Walter anymore, why would they need a "trusted voice" like the Sierra Club or an ACLU to help them understand things ... when they have Google and 300 I-messaging buddies to sort things out?

The Public Good and Its Stewards

Another kind of giving market:

U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Deborah Platt Majoras will leave her government post to work for Procter & Gamble (P&G), the largest U.S. consumer products company. Even though Majoras has excused herself from FTC matters that may impact P&G and will need to follow a year-long "cooling off" period, Multinational Monitor's Robert Weissman is concerned. "P&G is the leading company involved in 'buzz marketing,'" he writes. When Commercial Alert petitioned the FTC to investigate buzz marketing as "fundamentally fraudulent and misleading," the watchdog group cited P&G's teen buzz marketing division, "Tremor." Majoras's FTC agreed that the "assumed independence" of a buzz marketer might mislead consumers, but decided against further investigation or action. "The P&G case -- involving a quarter of a million teens who are not instructed to disclose their relationship with the company -- apparently was not noteworthy enough," Weissman concludes. An FTC ethics staffer said of Majoras's new job, "It is how things work. The nature of the business is the revolving door.

If we were doing a double bottom line analsysis of P&G would we include capturing the FTC Chair as a plus or a minus? Or does it net out to a wash? (Plus on the profit line, negative on the social good line?) Who is doing these calcs? Jed Emerson? I mean, who keeps score for us?

Giving Good Measure

Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. - Luke 6:38

What is good measure of a gift and what the expected return? If we asked Jed Emerson, would he know? (With thanks to Dave Snowden.)