Gift Hub

Rabelesian Philanthropy Conference Flops

Albert at White Courtesy Telephone seconds my call for a Rabelaisian Breakout Group at a Philanthropy Conference, perhaps under the overarching theme of social justice, the role of the fool, or the unbearable lightness of being of earnest.

Wednesday, May 7
LAUGHING AT SOBER VIRTUE
10:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
This event is open to all conference attendees.  A small tankard fee may apply.

I showed up and it was just Albert and me. No booze, no munchies, no takers. Scheduling this was a serious gaffe on Albert's part, actually. So we went out and got drunk and disorderly to no redeeming social purpose and ended up in a holding tank with the dregs of human society, until the legal aid from the Council came to bail us out. They made us stand up at breakfast and apologize to the whole conference for making a mockery of the proceedings. "Albert," Gunderson said, "We hold you primarily responsible. Phil is in the insurance business and knows no better, but for you, Albert, we had higher hopes....."

A Civic Dialogue on the Art of Lberality?

For some of us (even today, even post-postmodernism) the liberal arts are like a Church. The problem with Universities, though, is that the day you are Confirmed (i.e. graduated), you are kicked out of Church. No more rituals, no more Congregation. You get to wait outside the gates until the Offertory, then the Ushers arrive to ask for money.

Giving is a moral act. Giving is both expressive and formative of identity. Giving is how we answer the questions of who we are, what kind of community we want to live in, what kind of world we want to leave, what legacy we want for our children.

Fundraisers at Universities and Colleges will wisely ask, "So what? We are running a campaign here." A Fool would say, "Treat the donor like a student and engage her in the questions that are central to the work of the University, the questions of the liberal arts. Let her apply that thinking to her finances, and gifts from the gifted will flow." The proof of the methodology is the huge dollars raised at Harvard by Charles Collier, using a liberal arts methodology applied to Wealth in Families.

The theme of a fundraising project for a liberal arts college, private school, or university might be, "The Art of Liberality: Engaging Donors and Advisors in The Liberal Art of Giving Well." The outcome of such a program would be donors who are better able to articulate their highest aspirations for self, family and society, and better able to engage advisors in creating a plan that embodies these ideals. So what? Well, maybe some of that money will find its way to the university, college or school, as sponsor, ongoing mentor, Alma Mater, as beloved source of the ideals the donor is motivated now to act upon, live up to, and pass on. Not all of the giving will go that way, but the total dollars raised will exceed, I wager, those raised by a traditional "ask." It works that way at Harvard.

"A Civic Dialogue on the Art of Liberality"? Around the country in selected cities? Make it an event for several colleges? Share expenses among the schools? Invite the highest capacity donors from all the schools? Make the event a public benefit in itself. Bring in a speaker like Charles Collier, Amy Kass, or distinguished alums to teach it? (University of Chicago, the Ivies, the Little Three, etc)? Involving key advisors from the community might well raise their level of play and help them see how and why giving matters to their best clients.

The Foundations of Structural Racism

Structural Racism, pro and con. Shambra deserves a raise. Prior to heading up the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, he worked at Bradley Foundation. For Bradley's work on helping the black community consult this. 

"What is Going On?" Asked Mouse of Cat

"What is going on?" Niebuhr says is the first question of ethics.

"Are my choices the expression of my character, or is my character formed by my choices?" asks Sartre.

The resistance leader under the Occupation is stood up against a wall and shot. Whether she gave more or less than the philanthropist who endowed the sacristy is an open question.

Most of us cannot be faulted for our existentional choices because we do not see what is going on, any more than did Paul de Man, his nose in a text, in Vichy France. Blindness and Insight is the title of his most important book.

Only a few of us are philanthropists, but we are all collaborators. The Courage to Be, or even to see, is rare, but also contagious, like fear.

Gift: Changing the Color of Philanthropy

"Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training (GIFT) develops and strengthens the grassroots fundraising skills of people working for social justice as our contribution to building the movement." See also The Disconnect Between Fundraising and Movement-Building by Priscilla Hung of Gift.

Philanthropy as Work of the Moral Imagination

I am reading Understanding Philanthropy, Its Meaning and Mission by Robert Payton and Michael Moody. For my own use here is a series of insights, that are largely theirs and partly my own attempt to assimilate their thinking.

• Philanthropy is moral action, requiring moral imagination. "What is going on?," per Richard Niebuhr, is the first ethical question.
• Seeing or not seeing what is going is a moral achievement or moral failing. Being blind, or self blinded, or blinded by conformity and propaganda, or to be rendered myopic by specialized training (as sometimes in law, business, or finance), is a culpable failure of moral imagination.
• To see, to discern, what is really going on is to be a visionary. (Also, sometimes a pariah.)
• Philanthropy begins from a moral vision of the world we want and a moral vision of the world we have.
• Philanthropy may begin in wonder and inspiration or in moral outrage.
• Philanthropy takes as its mission closing the gap between the world as it is and the world as it might better be.
• In giving, both ends and means, are disputed, as are most ethical issues. What is going on? is a question that admits of many answers. In a plural society we meet in the public square via philanthropy to contest and achieve our opposing visions of a better world. In the process we create out of our strife a world better than we could achieve if we marched together under a single party banner.
• Our Constitution was premised on "concordia discors," the well accorded strife of opposing visions, ideals, and branches of government. So too civil society.
• If we each of us were a musical instrument in an orchestra we might spend our lives siding with the trumpets, if we were trumpets and with tubas if we were tubas, and disdaining those instruments on the far side of the orchestra pit. ("We might get somewhere, if we strings could secede and become a quartet.") Yet, in civil society, as in the arts too, or in our political tradition, the symphony depends on the concord and discord of the many instruments each playing a part.
• The Conductor if there is one, bringing music from discord is (variously called) the holy spirit, our traditions, the muses, moral luck, fortuna, or the great god pan.
• Rosa Parks is a more significant philanthropist than Bill Gates.

Payton and Moody's book may not be widely read, though I hope it will be, but it represents another wave rising and falling on the beach, as the tides of moral energy come and go. Their work is a high water mark, at least recently, given how far the tides have gone out. Their well chosen quotations are like bits of old ships and ancient treasures, left by the ebbing tide, and strewn upon the shore for those who might pass by and recognize them for what they are. But we are mostly too busy getting results to go beachcoming for wisdom. Maybe when we retire.

On another note, to say that philanthropy is moral action is like saying that religion is the love of God. "Don't we wish," is one response. Moral action for the good of others and for the public good may be the "final cause," or guiding ideal of philanthropy, or giving, down through the ages, but it is an ideal much honored in the breach. "The catepillar," as Blake noted of priestcraft, "lays its eggs on the fairest flower."

Oronjo

Oronjo provides an easy way to sell content on a weblog, or to have the fee for the content go to charity. Here is the basic idea:

Before publishing your content, you use a wizard on our site. This wizard uploads the secure part of your HTML page or file (the part for which people have to pay) to our server. This even works for weblog articles, without changing their design. Now, a visitor can only get access to your content after paying a fee. People can pay you by clicking the inserted Oronjo icon. They can pay you with a Google Checkout or a PayPal account or with credit card. Content can be sold for a fixed price. If you like the fee can also be decided by the consumer. Additionally, sellers can use discount coupons.

Black Liberation Theology

NPR:

The Rev. James Cone is the founder of black liberation theology. In an interview with Terry Gross, Cone explains the movement, which has roots in 1960s civil-rights activism and draws inspiration from both the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, as "mainly a theology that sees God as concerned with the poor and the weak."

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

The Project for a New American Century  goes dark.  c.f. Ozymandias.

Carbon Credit Trading

Carla Dearing: "Now, thanks to the magic of carbon finance, Daniel Co and his family treasure their pig waste."