Gift Hub

The Apple as Input our Blindness as Output

God asked: "If the input is an Apple Tree in Eden, and there only two people to worry about, no complex systems, what will be the output and the outcome?"  From Paul Brest, Givewell, Guidestar, Markets for Good, Bridgespan, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and many grantee organizations, the answers streamed in. For any input each could calculate the output and outcome. They were able to do that because each had a Logic Model. 

Scored as F. The human race. But to be Redeemed. One sweet day, God willing.

From My Morals Tutorial Scrapbook

Me in better times. I had been brought in by the 85 year old Patriarch, Bill (Bull) Doggit, founder of the Premium Pork Belly Fortune, to assist Gen 3, his grandaughters,  Jennie and Josie.  The fate of the fortune, I was told, rested upon my ability to protect these charming heirs from predators and creditors while helping build their Three Capitals: Personal Virtue, Intellectual Acumen, and Social Graces. An outside auditor had concluded the girls were neither morally bankrupt nor treasure houses of Virtue, but modestly in the black, more or less empty vessels. As their mentor, I would increase their Virtue and decrease their Vices, to net out to a positive. In this way, Bull Doggit told me the family fortune would persist for another generation. "Only if these females grow their virtues," he said, "can we grow the family assets, rooted in my own virtues." Well, push soon came to shove, under a full moon. Bull almost killed me out behind the boathouse swinging an anchor. I escaped out to sea by clinging to an overturned canoe. That was my last real morals mentoring gig.  Live and learn.  Next time I want .5 percent of the family fortune annually with a five year guarantee.  For that kind of money I could learn to control my own impulsivity.

BoP Writers and Consumers of Moral Biographies of Great Families

Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) Consumers -- an entire worldview in a single phrase. The Great Chain of Being was once such a scheme. Today, all levels of society, and their place in the stratification of wealth and power, are legimimated by market means. Even the least among us can consume cheap stuff, according to our meager means, and make those above us richer, as they deserve to be richer, since they serve the poor this cheap stuff profitably. The world is just.

Another sign that the world is just are Flourishing Families. These are also known, in the wealth advisory trade, as Great Families. What makes a family great for a thousand years, or at least one hundred, is Virtue. (This is laid down as a primary postulate in the best books on this subject drawn from the most highly regarded Serving Professionals of All Genders. I have read these books by moonlight in my Dumpster, seeking the secret of personal Success under trying circumstances, including hunger, cold, and rubbing alcohol-induced dementia.) Great Families, with say a billion or more have financial capital, but also spiritual, social, intellectual Capitals. Thus, the virtuous make and keep wealth. Those without virtue either never make it big or dissipate wealth. Hence, again, the world is just.  I wish I could afford a highlighter to mark out the many passages making this essential point.

Another sign that the world is just is..... Well, for my own BoP status, I have only myself to blame.  High board scores, great schools, intellectual and social capital up the Ying/Yang, if only I had not gotten hooked on poetry. First it was stanzas. Then whole volumes. Soon I was reading The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy. How was I ever to climb out of that pit? By the time I was reading Paradise Regained, I was already reduced to writing moral biographies of Hedge Fund Billionaires for a penny a page. Flourishing Families Volume Three Hundred and Fourteen. I would keep the boilerplate and change the faces.  Virtue this, virtue that. But then I couldn't keep up the payments on the computer, much less pay the light bill. In my next incarnation, I will be born rich, and some schmuck with a liberal arts background will be writing my moral biography. What goes around comes around, if there is any justice in this world.  I am not complaining. You get what you deserve.

Senior Planning: The Legacy Conversation

 

Senior Planning: The Fear of Losing Control

Linked Comparable Metrics as a Pubic Good

"Render unto Caesar," said the grantee of a social justice organization (thirteen volunteers, one of whom was Judas) when asked about Metrics, "and unto God the things that are God's." What can be measured and managed, surveilled, and turned to Caesar's public and corporate purposes are conscripts, consumers, workers on the aqueduct, wage slaves, tax payers and tax collectors, and gladiators fighting to the death, to see who is best,  for the amusment of Patricians. What cannot be meausred is the power of the Widow's mite, and the mustard seed. These trivial gifts, and seeds of change, connected to no materialistic  or measurable logic model, are beneath the radar. Let them remain so. For the last shall be first, and the meek shall inhert. And that is not what Caesar's metrics are managing.

In the same vein, at a recent conference, I heard a rising star speak about creating the infrastructure to measure and manage the nonprofit sector. I wanted to ask his Board Scores, Class Rank, and whether or not he was Phi Beta Kappa, to see if he or I was smarter, and by how much, but I refrained. He was clearly smart enough to build a Taxonomy of Nonprofit Excellence, to disrupt, innovate, improve and manage the efforts of those nonprofts that grow to scale and to insure the Darwinian extinction (creative destruction) of those that do not. This will channel the most money to orgs that Do the Most Good. This is the Future of Good Enough.

I said to him, "For some of us the nonprofit world is a refuge from all that." He responded as the smartest graduate of the best schools today would: "Refuge!!!!" I said, "Sanctuary." He said, "Sanctuary????"

Render unto Caesar. And keep low, under the radar, until the wave of activity in the Colosseum, for the amusement of the Patricians runs its course.  The next indignity is the Christian Emperor, and the Holy Roman Empire, run like a Corporation, too big to Fail, with a double bottom line, and a huge secret bank. For the time being, as dangerous as the times are for the spirit to move among a few gathered here and there, it is still the best and most productive time.  There is no refuge. There is no sanctuary. Nothing to tax, manage or surveille.  Nothing is happening here.

Communicating with Seniors

CAP-Share: Lessons from Villanova

How gift planners at Villanova are using Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy to elicit donor motivation. When you have great "Brand," indeed a "brand" beyond and above all brands, why not speak from within it, aligned with it and in the spirit of it, when topic is life and death, the legacy a donor will leave? And, yes, to align the language, spirit, and ideals of the institution with the planned giving process is, as a fundraiser, a practical and effective strategy. Download CAP-Share-Issue-12.

NCF and idonate.com Partner to handle gifts of noncash assets online

National Christian Foundation and idonate.com are partnering doing some very interesting things that should be of interest (as a model) to anyone who cares about small to mid-sized organizations grouped around a central mission.  NCF is the hub for sophisticated planned gifts, including gifts like a farm, ranch, S-Corp stock, hard to value assets. They can make those deals happen on behalf of the small church with one good prospect for such gifts. They can hold the proceeds in a donor advised fund for the donor, or perhaps in a fund for the church itself, as an outsourced endowment. Where does indonate come in? That is a powerful tool for telling the story of the individual church online. And it eliticts and processes transactional gifts of noncash assets, such as a car or a cell phone. Then if a big gift surfaces, of say, the farm, the donor is then connected to NCF and a cadre of advisors to handle the gift properly. I attended an idonate presentation at Advisors in Philanthropy's national conference and was mightily impressed. I noticed that others were as well. One man, who is involved with the program I teach (CAP), told me that he is going to sponsor an idonate site for a church he works with. Then, they will turn to him for help on the larger, complex gifts that bubble up. Smart.

I did ask the presenter of idonate if they would work with organizations other than Christian. He said that they would unless the organization was at odds with their conscience or perspective. (Good answer, I think.)

So - where is Tides as hub for progressive orgs? Where is the idonate for the progressive grassroots orgs? How might all this tie in with Hildy Gottlieb and her bottom up grassroots approach to creating the future? 

Tax Reform, 2013, part 3