Gift Hub

The Future of Good among the Ruins

A deeply thoughtful post by Jon Husband surveys our institutional arrangments in business and government and concludes:

If several of the crises we know about continue to unfold on trajectory, it seems clear that we will be forced to adapt through developing human and cooperative capabilities on a smaller and more local scale, where things can be more manageable for individuals and groups bound by common values and interests.

 

Illusory Control

From Stanford, in the Department of Organizational Pychology, comes this  study by Nathaniel Fast.

Three experiments demonstrated that the experience of power leads to an illusion of personal control.  

In a related study the powerful over-estimate their own height. Links per comment here at Gifthub.

Lying up the Hierarchy for Grant Money

So much felt truth in this confession of a professional liar who produces the reports of the sort that The Future of Good and Evil seems routinely to require - objective, measurable, on time and on budget. Fudged data, fudged theories of change, fudged timelines, and fudged deference to bureaucratic authority. The fudge we have tasted from the "trusted intermediaries" of the dot.com bubble, and the trusted rating agencies in the housing bubble, and now in the new and improved social economy. The utter falsity of judging reality through the cells of spreadsheet, via reports dummied up from below. Get out of the office, folks, manage by walking around, look the hungry in the eye. You can manage what you do not measure via a spreadsheet.  You can manage what you personally observe as it unfolds in real time, if you are engaged at the point of attack, rather than punching up reports about reports in HQ.  Get active, as, say, Bill Sommerville, Colbur Wilbur and Fred Setterberg have suggested. Forfeit your pose of being a rear echelon bigshot. Lend a hand.  .

From the Dregs of Society a Theory of Change for Consideration by the Higher Ups

Sung, not spoken:

"What's the word? / Thunderbird / How's it sold? / Good and cold / What's the jive? / Bird's alive / What's the price? / Thirty twice."  

Or, in a more upscale setting, this from A.E. Houseman:

Malt does more than Milton can

To justify the ways of God to man

"The only person we can change is ourselves," I say, "so bottoms up!"   

 

Measuring and Managing Social Injustice

Steven Mayer, at JustPhilanthropy.org:

There’s a hopeful mantra going around in evaluation circles – endorsed by many – that “you get what you measure.”  Personally, I don’t believe it; I’ve been trying to measure social justice for years, and I can’t say I’ve seen more of it as a result.  That’s because I have no control over the rewards or punishments given for just or unjust behavior, a critical condition omitted from that would-be mantra.  

As for rewards to those who increase social justice, I did ask my boss and generous patron, she who rules us all, about how I could reward her if she were to raise the minimum wage here in Wealth Bondage, and she started laughing, "OMG! Maybe a thank you would be sufficient! Let me think! Maybe you and the other losers could send me a birthday card! I don't know, Phil. But you made my day. I needed a good laugh. Raise the minimum wage. God, that is good one. By the way  that Steven Mayer person you cite seems a sweet and very earnest young man. We need naifs like that around here. It gives us credibility. It shows we effing care. Tell him I am sending him grant to - get this - develop rewards and punishments for wealthy people to incentivize us to voluntarily give up power, privilege and wealth. He is right we do need metrics and punishments for the wealthy who do not share with the poor! Tell him that there is no rush, though. He can submit his report when hell freezes over."

A Beggar's Theory of Change

Every time I ask an ultra high net worth donor, "Buddy have you got dime?" they respond, "Do you have a proven theory of change?" As they roll up the window and drive away, I hollar, "Yes, I got a theory of change. Want to listen?" So here I am. Making change for a dollar and I ain't got a dime, or the dollar either. Making change for nothing with nothing. Well here comes another car. "Hey, Buddy, I got a theory if you got a dime."

Reporting on Results, or What a Difference Sobriety Makes

In a sincere effort to improve my understanding of metrics as applied to The Future of Good and Evil, I went to see The Happy Tutor, the wisest man I know who is accessible for the price of a single bottle of bum wine. "Tutor," I said, "every action sets into the world an infinite and incalculable cascade of consequences, some intended, some unintended, some beneficial, others harmful. Who gets to decide what counts as Results for reporting purposes?" To which my Tutor responded, "Did you bring me the wine? First wine, then answer. And the quality of the answer will be proportional to that of the wine." Sadly, Tutor drank the bottle off in a single pull and fell into a drunken stupor. All he said, over and over, tossing on the piles of garbage in his Dumpster was, "Those with the power to compell." I know that is not the right answer. That would be a total injustice! Next time I am going to ask someone who knows. There seem to be so many of them around. Market forces should soon bring the answer within my reach.

The Parable of the Social Venture Farmer

The social entrepreneur, flying over in his helicopter, owns the farm land as far as the eye can see. What had been family farms have been merged, the homes torn down, the barns replaced by few larger more efficient barns, the farmers hired back as hired hands, or now working in a box store, or fighting in Iraq, or in rehab. The livestock is raised in small pens, and never sees daylight from birth to death. Fertilizer and pig shit flows down the river to the ocean blooming with algae, in a dead zone.

We have increased productivity 35%, and profit 27%. We have also increased the GDP of the community as whole by 11%, as the village stores became national chains, and the farmers went to work in the polymer plant. By cutting prices as well as cost, and increasing production, more hungry people will be fed. We have fewer employees who are better paid and better educated. By all measures they rate us as an excellent employer. We have achieved our targets for people, planet, and profit. Farms on all sides are falling to us. Our growth is projected to make us sole owner of 3,000 square miles in the next three years. But the real joy to me is the good I am doing as a Social Entrepreneur and a Leader. You know sometimes, good things do happen for good people. I owe it all to my professors in Business School. I am deeply grateful for the vision they have given me and the heart I have for the greater good. As payback I was going to give money to some church, but I am not all that religious. Besides investing in my agribusiness is the best possible return I can give to God, country, and whatever for the greater good.

The sophistry here is in measuring only three bottom lines, all managed, all profitable, and neglecting the many thousands of cascading negatives that can only be appreciated by one, on the ground, whose humanity is fully and directly engaged, and for that matter, one whose humanity as been nurtured, fostered, and cultivated within the economy of love. Stunted people create stunted solutions. In this parable, it is not only the veal calf whose life is half lived.

What your Money Means and how to Use it Well

I have just read Frank Hanna's 2008 book and am in a much better mood that usual. He is a successful entrepreneur who by his mid-thirties had amassed a fortune, having IPO'd his company. He is also openly a devout Catholic, who has taken Catholic social teaching to heart. He has also acquired a range of philosophical and literary reference that includes figures as diverse, but as consistent in outlook, as Cicero, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose, Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, and Emerson. He is also deeply endebted to New Yorker cartoons involving wealthy curmugeons opining on poverty from comfortable chairs in private clubs. Frank has many home truths about wealth, detachment from materialism, calling, duty, family giving, giving while living, and the ultimate destination of all our worldly pelf. In addition, he has a relentlessly strategic intellect. Having asked himself how much he should give, now or later, here is the precise formula he arrives at.

Each year we should contribute to the common good whichever is greater:

1. 10% of the increase in net worth
2. 10% of the value of what we have consumed in living expenses for the year, or
3. An amount equal to our net worth divided by the number of years we can reasonably be expected to live.

Frank is writing as a capitalist with a conscience for others in that position. Not all will, of course, follow Frank's model, but seeing Frank wrestle with his own sense of what he owes himself, his family, his business, his fellow man, and his God, and seeing him move from that to specifics is inspiring.  "Planning for Impact," "Giving Smart," "Getting Results" - so much today is written in that purely businesslike language we forget why give at all - what in the name of all that is holy would motivate a wealthy, successful, person to give a damn in the first place? That mystery is seldom discussed, and can only be addressed through (I think) eloquent quotation from living traditions (religious, literary, philosophical, or spiritual) backed by personal example. Frank Hanna achieves that standard. Has won many philanthropy awards, but the book and his example of conscientious reflection leading to action may be his biggest contribution.

The Social Entrepreneur Empowerment Series

What if you could combine the love, integrity, vision, and leadership of Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Martin Luther King, Jr. with the entrepreneurial business savvy of Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Oprah Winfrey? What if you could download their wisdom into yourself? Imagine the bigger game you could play!What if you could have the wonder-working power of Jesus Christ on his best day and the buttocks of Kim Kardashian? Download the power. You can raise the dead, make a buck, and be loved for your own sweet self. I am finally seeing the benefit of the newer ways of looking at social good. Whereas in the past you could be virtuous and often self sacrificing, today you can be self aggrandizing and also saintly. I am staggered that it took us so long to see this. This webinar should help. Actually, it sounds like a good series, with truly accomplished speakers, but will our rising generation of social entrepreneurs be well served by this phantasmal over-overselling? What if the remix and download gives us the butt of Mother Theresa and the love, integrity, vision, and leadership of Kim Kardashian?