Gift Hub

Fork Religion

From the Disrupt Europe 2013 Hackathon

Fork my religion, an interesting project with an intriguing name disrupting nothing less than religion, the team surprised with this project which starts with the premise that the belief systems are broken and proposes to fix this by allowing people to collaborate to create new belief systems that are suitable for the modern planet.

Not bad for programmers who had only 24 hours to code this breakthrough in crowd sourcing gods.

That Satire of High Impact Funders on the Road

Have you seen the anonymous insider satire of strategic foundation philanthropy? What strikes me about it is that the funder's theory of social change, his knowledge of his issue area (poverty), and his results are not discussed at all. What I would like to ask is this:

1. If this funder is a prime A-1 jerk, a miserable excuse for an over-educated, over-fed, pompous ass, and
2. If his theory of social change is sound, and he does philanthropy that gets results

What should be our overall assessment? Can we, should be, we praise  a strategic, high impact, grant-maker, whose funding dollar for dollar gets optimal results, even if he is a total jerk, cheating on his wife, living high, and generally being insufferable? Should we care that he lives like an absentee Cardinal, serving the poor through programs, while avoiding direct contact? Haven't most regimes, from church and state, or the hierarchies providing payday loans, or microfinance, or impact investing, don't they all operate to move wealth and power up, while doing whatever gets done to/for the poor?

Or, to put it otherwise, should it matter what we become in getting results in accordance with a theory, in accordance with metrics? And is that potential degradation of our humanity part of the results-barrage, one of the many foreseeable but unintended consequences, that ricochet about from any strategic action?

A final question: what kind of person would know so much about the pompous, bon vivantes doing this kind of ratiocinative philanthropy on behalf of the poor, and would publish an expose anonymously, thereby preserving access to the pompous-ass-living-high-strategic-grantmaker club? Moral portraits are done in paint that tends, I have noticed, to spatter upon the painter.  My own motivation in this post is (as you have noticed) is more envy than not: that nubile staffer at the bar - my word! When is the last time the pretty girls of any gender in Wealth Bondage returned my glance? I had no idea that strategic giving at scale would have such perks. Balanced score-card. Metrics.  I thought it was a dry subject! And here I am, a virtuous man, naked in a barrel, drinking bum wine alone.  In an old newspaper, I found a picture of a lovely society lady,  and major donor, and pasted her on the inside of my dumpster.  That is as close as I will get to love or money tonight. Where is the social justice? I love the donor, but she does not love me.

In Sausalito the Homeless Advisor to Wealth

Near the yatch club in Sausalito, between the Ben and Jerry's and a jewelry store,  lay a young African-American woman wrapped in a green blanket, leaning her back against the wall, a plastic cup by her side.  As I glanced at her she said, "May I help you find what you are looking for?" As I walked past, she said, "How may I be of service?" Clearly she was well trained, whether as a sales clerk or as a trusted advisor to wealthy families, I do not know.  In her good humor, will to serve, and optimism, I saw my best self, if only I could rise to it more often. 

Private Foundations Disrupting Public Goods

Less Government, more influence from concentrated private wealth.  This piece from Dissent and this one from Chronicle of Philanthropy.  Some of my progressive friends talk of Plutocrats and the dismal effect they have on democracy. Some of my professional friends consider themselves mentors to Dynasts and speak of the dynast's virtues and wisdom as what we should all admire, and perpetuate, so the wealth stays in few hands, and those hands hold the reins.  Whether concentrated wealth is good for all, I feel,  depends on the Dynast, really;  some are good, some not so good. The difference is the quality of Morals Tutoring they get from a young age.  Why my own morals tutorial program is stuck in neutral, with no clients, no revenue, and no prospects, I do not understand. Free advice on right and wrong may not be the best strategy, so I am raising my retainer to $100,000 per family per year. All aspects of wealth and wisdom, as well as virtue, public spiritedness, and spiritual excellence are included. Your morals improved or your money back!

Grace and Peace at the Margins

I have a Yale Div School educated friend, who as an ordained minister offers blessings, quite rightly, only to those who follow the prescribed rules of inclusion in his church and its traditions. He, even after many years of friendship, does not bestow blessings on me, not officially, even when I asked, partly playfully, partly hoping to be saved on the cheap. He demurred since his cure extends only to those who are committed to its requirements.  Yet, in a recent note, he signs off, "Grace and Peace."  This makes me think he could become a Secular Priest, with his holy orders on a kind of dimmer or on and off switch. With his true calling in the "off position," or turned up just enough to cast a faint religious ambiance, he could moonlight among the wealthy, offering not real blessings, but pieties, homilies, and generic lessons from a variety of world religions. He might be handsomely paid for helping high capacity clients sort their values cards, if they are too busy with more pressing business. And he could provide their children with moral mentoring, if the parents are otherwise engaged.  I believe my friend could use the money, and many families of all levels of wealth, could use a gentle counselor as wise and virtuous as he. 

In the old days, priests would bless the fishing ships in the harbor. Today, maybe a priest-person could bless the bankers and brokers in their cubicles and the financial advisors and the tax and legal groups. My friend, I assume, might balk, since he would probably consider it a betrayal of all that is holy. Damned among the damned, with no downside, I will do it on speculation. My lessons are easy, the message motivational. As the sun shines on saint and sinner alike, so I bless whomever you put in front of me. I have got one of those long handled collection baskets, and after the sermon I will be passing through aisle. If you can't stand a secular priest, God help you with a real one.

A Tax Planner and a Former Priest

Yesterday I met Bill, a world class tax expert who says he is now a secular priest to wealthy families. Today,  I met Bob met a former priest from an impoverished parish who is now in planned giving; he says he is a tax expert.  I told both of them they're crazy. They told me I am. As this world goes, we are all probably right.

Congress and Dynastic Wealth - Dysfunctional Market for Good

As it becomes clear how dynastic families connect to government, and how political parties are fronts for an intra-elite competition whose "votes" and "free speech" are dollars, it seems to me all the more important that we secular priests make values cards available for sorting among as many wealthy families as we can reach. We might also include a price list. What it costs to buy a social movement, a Supreme Court judge, an election, the Congress.  In the process we might trigger an auction, with ever escalating prices. For our country to be sold so cheaply does no one credit.

Market and Spirit as Concentric Circles - which within which?

If you draw a big circle, and call it "the market," and in that circle you put social organizing funded by a few rich people, PACs,  triple bottom line businesses, government iself, and toss in nonprofits too, including houses of worship and colleges, and all of arts and letters, then you have either an ignorant, poorly educated, crass person's error in mapping our shared life together, or an accurate picture of how things are today: Wealth Bondage.  The alternative set of circles starts with the holy spirit, or whatever serves as the  eternal womb or ground of being  in which swim the earth, moon and stars, and, upon the earth, among those creatures who creep and crawl, the half-evolved beast we call human. That creature organizes into families, tribes, companies, networks, clubs, hierarchies, traditions, PACs, cliques, parties, gangs, armies, countries, cults, brand followers, owners, investors, consumers, managers, and the abandond and disenfranchised, all  of whose efforts collectively fill the first circle, of the market broadly understood where all exists to be built, managed, sold, patented, surveyed, fenced, metered, consumed as product or service, and ultimately discarded as waste. When the holy spirit moves, the world of the first well-managed circle becomes as "indistinct as water is in water," (from Antony's suicide speech in "Antony and Cleopatra"). The holy spirit, however, is not the only spirit whose face moves upon the waters.  What spirit limned the first circle above and holds it steady as if real?

US Trust Survey of The Disconnect in the Client Advisor Conversation of Phillanthropy

Download US_Trust_Study_of_the_Philanthropic_Conversation_2013

Eye opening study commissioned through Claire Costello, at US Trust on the advisor donor disconnect when it comes to conducting the conversation of philanthropy. Study was done with The Philanthropic Initiative who have long been leaders in this area. In fact, I first met Claire well over a decade ago at a TPI convening of gift planners and advisors.  The work goes on! Little by little.

We may not be making much progress in educating advisors, but we are sure doing a better job documenting the tragic-comic mis-match between what advisors think donors want, and what donors really want, and between what advisors think they provide and how well clients think it is provided.

Underneath it all, we have the failure to collaborate among the intuitive liberal arts types who are at ease with the conversation of purpose (often these people work in fundraising, but, sadly, mostly make pitches rather than talking purpose) and the technical types, who dominate the advisor ranks, and  who prefer facts and figures.  When fundraisers start asking strategic, mission centered life questions, they (in my experience) flat whip the advisors at this game for reasons that go to core. You want to discuss life and death and love and community, even what is sacred with you and your family, your sense of calling, with who? You want to have soul conversation with a banker at XYZ bank, with an advisor at a brokerage, or insurance company? Or, with someone in your house of worshp or college or arts organizatrion who shares a commitment to same God, canon, or text and tradition?  Yet on both sides, you would think that tax, tools, and techniques was the point of discussing philanthropy (aka "planned giving.")  Claire has spent her career working to change this; me too.  Congrats to US Trust and TPI for nailing this important topic in terms that are now shockingly vivid. 

In my work in teaching advisors and fundraisers how purpose and meaning connect in proper planning, I am getting calls and emails almost daily from fundraisers who are now talking purpose and are now garnering the big dollars as part of a purpose driven planning process in collaboration with the client's advisors. Step up to that conversation and you step into 6-8 figure gifts, with the highest capacity donors who just aren't getting it done with advisors alone.  And won't be next year either or 100 years from now until we can anoint the bankers and brokers and salespersons and CPAs and attorneys and family wealth therapists as Secular Priests, and to me that sounds like dystopia, or the world run mad.  The last shall be first. Fundraiser! Step forward, and step up. You have dedicated your life to what matters more than money.  Speak to wealthy donors from that, so that they finally will have an open ear, and on ground sacred to them, within a tradition that was instituted for this way back when idols were considered something to be avoided as temptations, or shattered as blasphemy, rather than worshipped as brands.  

Founding a movement based on love

Ideal size for a last supper or Jeffersonian dinner - is it 12 or 13?