Change

A brief soapbox about freedom and spirituality. Feel free to tune it out.

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For several years I’ve listed my “Religious Views” on Facebook as “Appreciate and wonder at the beauty all around us.” I have more precise views than that, but that’s basically what it boils down to for me. And since I believe there are a lot of different doorways into the same room, I haven’t felt the need to be any more specific. Surely there’s common ground for us somewhere, right?

Similarly, I’ve listed my “Political Views” as “Teach responsibility and then trust people.” I’ve got other axes to grind, and certain issues and candidates hold my attention more than others, but that phrase sums it up.

But oh my! If it were only that easy! This morning as I look at the news and the commentary surrounding it, I’m reading a lot of concern about recent events in North Carolina and Colorado, and on the other side of the coin, a lot of passionate justification for it. 

My own feeling is that the biggest obstacle to a better world isn’t evil — it’s apathy. It is in that spirit I write the following.

I’ve been on a spiritual journey for quite some time. My 40 days in the desert have lasted a lot longer than I thought they would, and have encountered some setbacks and wrong turns. Perhaps the best way to say it is that sometimes life events (like this and this) obscure your view at first, only to provide clarity later. Some of the experiences that have been the most confusing to me have later become the most enlightening.

And so, I feel like I’m close to reaching a spiritual destination. My journey hasn’t been a specifically religious one, but in the context of spirituality, one eventually decides to at least explore that avenue. As my dad liked to say, “Organized religion is the only kind.” True enough. Thus I’ve spent quite a bit of time lately exploring the connection between religion and spirituality, and what it means for me.

In that exploration, I’ve found a lot that has resonated with me. More than I thought I would, to be honest. And by the same token, I can’t find one single thing that justifies, in a moral sense, the authority of one group to subjugate another’s ability to let their hearts decide whom they love and how they do it. And I certainly don’t believe for one second that any group has the political authority to do it either. In terms of the hierarchy of things, I believe God works for good, and vice versa. And I believe the government works for us. 

We become quickly spoiled by what we have worked for, particularly when others do the work. That brand-new HDTV you waited a year to afford looks gorgeous when you first set it in the living room. Six months later, you can’t remember what you were so impressed with. And if you get the TV as a gift? Two months.

But we must resist that same complacency when it comes to issues of justice. It is all too easy to forget that less than 200 years ago, humans were bought and sold; objectified, manipulated, dehumanized. It is all too easy to dismiss that less than 100 years ago, women were not permitted to vote because others felt anatomy somehow dictated superiority. Less than 60 years ago, a whole generation of Jews was nearly wiped off the earth forever. And for those thinking “But that won’t happen anymore,” I direct you to exhibit A, Rwanda, and exhibit B, Kosovo. Which happened … in our lifetime.

Equality is not HDTV. It doesn’t have a shelf life. And it isn’t a product meant to be accessible only to those who can afford it, or who can mobilize enough resources to argue on behalf of it. 

From what I can see, the right to love and be loved is as fundamental as it gets. It transcends the will of any one political entity and any one religious dogma, and comes, in its entirety, from the Spirit that has breathed us all into existence. 

For values to be real, whether political or spiritual, they must apply to everyone. Otherwise you don’t have values — you have a members-only club. Freedom, love, justice, and equality do not require an application. 

In 40 years, our children will look back and wonder what all the fuss was all about; and hopefully, they will shake their heads at our ignorance, and hide their shock at our bigotry, the way we do when we consider slavery and genocide. 

But between now and then, you have to live with yourself. Are your “shared values” meant for you alone? Shouldn’t you share them with everyone?

When I read “God is love,” I don’t see an asterisk next to it. 

An Easter thought for you.

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Whether or not Easter is part of your spiritual tradition, it is part of mine — and so it is without expectation and with a full heart that I say, Happy Easter to you all. I’m wishing you a personal rebirth today in whatever form is most meaningful for you.

In particular, I’m wishing you a few moments of reflection and realization that your role is critical and unique; that it is never too late to influence our shared future, because that future always lies in front of us; and that despite our indulgence for cynicism and self-defeat, a better world is solidly within our grasp.

May today be the bud of at least one of those blossoms for you.

Kony 2012

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This video stands alone, although at the risk of undermining its power I’ll add a brief introduction. I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to meet the incredible team at Invisible Children. I was moved and inspired by their passion, the tactical nature of their ask, their undeniable progress towards their goal, the single-mindedness of their mission, and the spirit of the entire operation. 

I’m so proud to share this video and to count myself as a supporter of Kony 2012. Very, very worth watching.

A problem of the heart

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Allison Fine, one of a dozen or so excellent nonprofit experts I follow regularly, posted an article yesterday asking why it is that giving has been essentially flat for 40 years at 2% of GDP. The occasion of her post was the publication by Blackbaud of a whitepaper entitled Growing Philanthropy. It is a meaty report, with 32 recommendations for nonprofits about how to increase overall giving. There is a lot of substance there, and yet I fear its size will inspire more people put it on their “I should read this” pile than actually read it.

It is also rather academic, and as such while I think it adds to the dialogue I’m not sure it describes the whole solution, or even identifies the entire problem. The problem cannot just be solved with best practices and organizational efficiency. We need passionate calls to action to the many who are not yet involved, and passionate encouragement for further engagement to those that already are.

Taking a step back for a moment, the concept that giving is consistent as a percentage of GDP is a Big Idea in capital letters. Once you get your head around it, you realize you have found one of the core dynamics shaping the entire nonprofit system. It is surprising not only for its 40-year consistency, but more notably for the fact that most nonprofit leaders seem to be completely unaware of it. I am constantly struck but how few nonprofit executives, development professionals, and marketers will acknowledge that giving is pegged to GDP. The few who do know seem to think (or hope) that their own organizations exist outside of this reality. 

Giving USA has been tracking this for years and years. About five years ago – prior to banking explosions but well into early signs of recession – I wrote several position papers on this topic for our clients at Event 360. If giving is constant as a percentage of GDP, it stands to reason that dollar giving will go up in times of growth – and unfortunately, will decline in times of recession. That is exactly what happened, of course; but even organizations which saw the recession coming were unprepared for the drop in giving. 

The more pressing question, as Allison points out, is not “does the dynamic exist” but “why does it exist, and how can we change it?” My own experience with very large peer-to-peer programs has probably colored my view – but I will say that we consistently find it is easier to get people who are already giving to give more than it is to get people who haven’t done anything to make the first gift. My sense is that this same truism operates at a system-wide level in the whole nonprofit space. 

More to the point, after twenty years in the space I’m not sure that we’ve gotten any better at getting the large numbers of people who do not donate a thing to get involved. And before I go further: My last sentence references another Big Idea that those of us who live and breathe charity tend to forget. We are surrounded by giving and so we forget that large numbers of people do not give at all. A Harris Interactive poll conducted late last year found that only 12% of people admit to not giving at all. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad! But ominously, the same poll found that only about a quarter of people felt “some responsibility to improve the world they live in.” Wow. (Further, we tend to forget that of individuals who do give, over a third of that giving come from and goes to religious organizations – the only organizations I’ve run across which have integrated a recurring, weekly, in-person, experiential ask into their mission. They ask in the pews, every Sunday.)

In any case, my point is that I think we’ve gotten a lot better at activating those who are charitable, but not any better at inspiring new charitableness. When one-quarter is literally carrying the weight of the world, we’ve got a big challenge on our hands. Improving effectiveness with social media, making better investment decisions, providing better training, and sharing workable solutions are all important. But this is a problem of the heart as much as the head. We need to make giving more accessible and less tedious, and as amazing as it may sound, we need to do more to not only emphasize this cause or that but to convey the obligation, transcendence, and joy of giving itself.

The Business of Multiplication

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It is fairly presumptuous of me to assume I have anything to add to the vast number of poignant 9/11 commentaries you’ve probably seen this weekend. But I do think I have something to add about my favorite topic, which is why the the world needs you and the work you do.

As I’ve listened, watched, and read a variety of 9/11 tributes today, I’ve been struck by how each person’s experience of that day is so similar and yet so particular. We each experienced the grief, and fear, and confusion. But we each experienced it in our own way. The person who sat on the phone trying to reach a loved one. The person who drove crosstown to help. The person who enlisted. The person who watched dusted figures walk by. The person who gave out free food and water. The same streak of light through fifty million prisms.

My memories, like yours, are likely special only to me. My uniqueness involves the impending birth of my son Matthew. He had his dad’s love of drama even then, already ten days overdue. Waiting to make an entrance. That morning found me at home in Los Angeles getting ready to take Jeanie to the hospital. She was to be induced. As we woke to pack the bags for the hospital, we turned on the television and our lives changed in the same way yours did. In the ways everyone’s did.

The morning was a flurry of phone calls. Calls with family, and friends, and of course, the family and friends I worked with — many of whom I still work with ten years later. Did Murph stay overnight or did he go direct? Did anyone know what freaking flight he was on? Was Conigs downtown? Can anyone reach her? Was the team from Canada accounted for?

When Jeanie and I finally made it to the hospital, we looked at our O.B. and said simply, “We are not inducing today. We will not have our son born today.”

And yet, the most troubling and redemptive characteristic of life is its imminence. It won’t wait. Life is always just about to be. And so on the 12th we were back at the hospital, unable to exert any more influence on Matthew’s timing. We sat and watched CNN and wondered, at least a bit, what kind of parents we were to be if we were selfish enough to bring a child into a world like this.

And you know the rest, or at least your part of it. It is not historical self-indulgence to assert that the last ten years have been fundamentally different than those that came before. We have seen, in a real way, a decade of division. Towers split in half. Families torn apart. A world brought briefly together, and then too, a world splintered.

We became used to separating things. Our shoes and belts at the airport. Our loved ones sent to other places. Our inward thoughts from our spoken opinions. It became a decade of divisions in geopolitics, and then domestic politics, and then in business and economics too, as the math we learned years earlier seemed to stop working. The reds and the blues; the right and the left. More disturbingly, the haves and the have-nots. The us and the them.

There are many groups of people, many talented and dedicated groups of people, working to overcome these divisions. And despite my penchant for cynicism, I have immense respect and gratitude for the women and men of the military, the political community, and the government. I think by and large they are doing their best to solve the vast array of problems that a decade of division has laid at the doorstep.

Yet these people can only do so much. There is only so much that can be accomplished when the prime directive is to stop the loss. “Minimize the damage” can only take us so far. At some point, the momentum has to be reversed.

That’s where you come in. You may not recognize it, but you are in the business of multiplication.

In event fundraising, the multiplication works in a mathematical way I can prove: One participant brings 50 or 60 donors. It is in datasets; I can see how it works.

But the multiplication is more powerful than that. I have seen it in the way one walker brings five family members to cheer her on. In the way laughter spreads across a camp. In the way a small email encouragement is passed on to dozens of friends. In the way one shoe raised ripples across a crowd 1,500 times.

Whatever your profession — teacher, attorney, firefighter, bus driver, pilot, consultant — I will bet that when you reflect on the myriad of interactions you have each moment of your day, you will find there is multiplication at the core of what you do. Every single day of every single week.

The most profound reason my last decade has been different than the ten years before it has nothing to do with 9/11 at all — nothing to do with terrorism, or anti-terrorism, or financial collapse, or political discontent. It has to do with a wonderful boy named Matthew. When I look back on how my life has changed, I can say that he changed it more than any of that, in a huge, positive, profound way; that he multiplied my love and care and hope and optimism fifty thousand times more than anything that happened to divide it. Love is the ultimate force multiplier.

We are indeed still at war, and mainly we are at war with ourselves. Are we strong enough to look forward and create a better world? To take the risks and make the commitment to a more powerful future, a future that is the right future to create even though we may not be here to enjoy all of it? To sacrifice ourselves for a cleaner earth, a more tolerant community, a more equitable country, and a more peaceful world?

Answering the questions to create this world will require an abundance of character, and mainly it will take hope, love, and hard work. When I really open my eyes to look at the people around me, I see all three evidenced in dramatic quantities — and it makes me proud of the “what” you do, and excited for the decade of multiplication we together will help to create.

Watching you, I am ready for the next decade. It is onwards and upwards from here.

And finally: Happy birthday to the fourth of my force multipliers, Danny, who turns three this very day. 

Zeitoun

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Yesterday I traveled home from a fairly long trip to Washington, DC for the 2011 NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference. The conference itself was three days, but we added on several days of team meetings and so when it was all said and done, it made for a six-day trip. That’s a long time to be gone in any person’s book, or at least, a long time to be gone for a trip that doesn’t involve a beach. 

In any case, the conference was fantastic, but by Saturday night the Event 360 folks and I were feeling a bit punchy and spent the better part of the evening shuffling around Dupont Circle. There are far worse places to spend a Saturday evening, particularly an evening involving a Supermoon, and we had a lot of fun stopping in various places around the neighborhood and trying to decide if the moon was larger after all. 

One highlight was the fabulous Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe & Grill, which I’d heard about but never set foot in. It took all of ten minutes for me to be juggling a pile of six books — I’m not so much a reader as a book acquirer; I seem to have far more books than time to read, and since my recent disavowal of the Kindle (a post for another time), I’m piling up pages quickly. Luckily one of my Event 360 Voices of Reason talked me down to three books, one of which was Zeiton by Dave Eggers. 

For years I’ve had a copy of  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which has been recommended to me by so many people that a while ago I began actively resisting suggestions to read it. Not that I don’t trust all the recommendations; I suppose I just have enough of an anti-establishment streak that the more I hear the less I want to go along. (Or am I just stubborn?) Plus, I understand the theme involves the death of parents, and I’ve had enough of that for the last several years, thank you very much.

In any case, I know of Eggers and the book looked interesting. A true story, it involves two of my many hot buttons: Hurricaine Katrina and civil liberties, or the lack thereof; and more broadly, the reason you might want to adopt a healthy anti-establishment streak yourself. So yesterday afternoon, tired from the week and with thoughts of nonprofits, technology, and making a difference mulling around my head, I boarded my plane home and turned to page one.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Harrowing, haunting, and ultimately hopeful, the book in simple but heroic, subtle but compelling turns tells a vast story on a small canvas, like a faded postcard from a distant trip you might frame and hang in your guest bedroom, a tiny reminder of a much larger experience you can’t fully explain. You will find yourself wondering how and why this could happen here, in America, only a few years ago, and then — if there’s any hope for us — find yourself angry and troubled that you haven’t heard more about it. 

The absurdity of bureaucracy, the mechanized degradation of personality, and the progressive devaluation of individuality are all important themes in the story. But unlike me, Eggers is a powerful writer, and doesn’t need to specifically call out those themes at all. They tap themselves on the head and step forward for you. 

It is a story of vast consequence told with almost no pretense. It will leave you with many questions, and yet also with a reminder of the power we each carry within us. Worth reading.