Philanthropy - What's Love Got to Do with It?

I am developing a talk entitled, "Philanthropy in Scary Times: What's Love Got to Do with It?"  Now, if I can just get Tina Turner to do the vocals.

Comments

[Jerry Chasen]

Boy, is that a tune I can sing with you in harmony! As you know, Phil, I'm pretty clear that love has everything to do with philanthropy--love and the passions that people have for various causes and concerns, all of which are, i think, expressions of that love.

[Jerry Chasen]

hit send too soon---what love has to do with it, is that when the times are this scary, especially economically, tax motivations for giving are vastly less powerful. Connecting philanthropy to love and passions, however, not only grounds giving in a context that is far less susceptible to circumstance, but also (studies show) improves the emotional outlook of the donor, thus reducing the power of fear. great topic, Phil!

[Phil Cubeta]

Thank you, Jerry, for the encouragement. The things we do for love - philanthropy has to make the short list, along with art, play, music, marriage, family, patriotism.

[Christine Egger]

Encouragement from me, too, Phil. Very glad to know the talk is in the works. No harm in asking Tina for a 15-sec video endorsement, either, especially if she breaks into song :)

[Jeff Trexler]

If Tina Turner is unavailable, perhaps with a slight turn of phrase you could get Lorenzo St. DuBois! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZcamdyvRRc

[Phil Cubeta]

A friend sent me a link to Jack Kornfield, teacher of loving kindness.
http://www.jackkornfield.org/index/home What all this has to do, though, with social investing, I don't know. Maybe love is a capital expenditure in a wasting asset, subject to straight depreciation?

[Christine Egger]

Been reminded of this over the past few days --

most recently --
http://www.tacticalphilanthropy.com/2011/07/high-performing-philanthropy-to-what-end

which builds on this --
http://www.tacticalphilanthropy.com/2011/06/more-on-philanthropys-natural-state-of-underperformance

in that last post, I was only brave enough to refer to "at the heart of" (see last blog-post-length comment especially).

Yet more to do, yet more conversation-skills to develop, and more silo-weaving... Good thing I'm still relatively young (does nearly 45 count?)...

[Phil Cubeta]

The thing you react to, and I do as well, is the language and ethos of wealth bondage being imposed on upon a sector whose dynamic is rooted in other quite different traditions and skills. Sean is a manager. He itches to optimize. What kind of human are we producing? What kind of community? How zombie like are we? These are not questions that MBAs invite. Their way of life - which involves subordination and routinization of others - is imposed as Roman rule was imposed on tribal cultures. To what end? To the end of management control and to the warding off the of the inward emptiness of the whole exercise. How different all this would look if the proof texts were Horace's sermons and satires, or the Gospels, rather than Give Smart and other business inspired books on high performance grant making. Ultimately this is a matter of culture. The way to create managers is to test every student every year for obedience, attention to detail, and responsiveness to authority. Best to eliminate the great books as fluff. Then we can all sound like good Managers and Gaurdians of the Established Order, in our ranks and dominions.

[Christine Egger]

"Ultimately this is a matter of culture." Yes, this is the conclusion (or, at least, resting place) I came to, too. Can the culture of MBA's expand to accommodate efficiencies of love? Can the culture of the heart expand to accommodate efficiencies of business? I don't know. Some days, I feel like I'm contributing to some really important stretching-translating-communicating. Some days, it feels like it all snaps right back to opposite corners of the head and heart.

[Phil Cubeta]

Christine, I have you on a very short list of those who are building the field via social capital, social bonds, network weaving. On that list, you and Peter Dietz have pride of place in building social capital via social media. Philanthropedia too? How your work will continue, where it goes next, is of great interest to me personally. I kind of get where Sean is coming from. I don't have to follow it in detail, because I learned basic business and investment planning and can see how they might be imposed by argumentation or by forceful funders on the nonprofit sector. What I don't yet see is how we can build social capital as peer to peer human beings who are little specks of embodied god-stuff in a big cold material world ruled by logical positivists who never studied it as a rudimentary philosophy of life and sunk in their ignorance and enthusiasm, think of it (coercive materialism) as simply true. You can't argue with Caesar and his emissaries. They know how to rule of all Judea, all of Gaul, all of Egypt, all the world, how to extract tribute, deference, rent, and human resources and ship them up the line to Rome. How to increase and milk the productivity of all things. Render unto Caesar! Hail Caesar! And render unto God, or the holy spirit, or the muses and the graces what they require of us as well. In some, it would appear that holy spirit died, or was stillborn. To sin against the holy spirit is the one sin that cannot be forgiven. I interpret that to mean that when the spirit dies, or has been betrayed, it will not come again, except in judgment, as a wind or fire. Love is the gentlest of forces, and the most ruthless. It works its way through us and cares for us as little as for the seeds splitting open on a barren rock. It is enough for love that here and there one seed grows, and takes root, the mustard seed. I see you as that wild seed.