Transformational Giving

We’ve been writing all week this week about ethnic fundraising as a crucial question facing Transformational Giving (TG), since, unlike traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) which views ethnic fundraising as simply one potential vehicle among many to raise funds to cover the budget, TG takes as its purpose the coaching of champions into the fullness of Christ in relation to the cause God has given us to advance.

But since TG stresses that the champion is responsible for advancing the cause in his or her sphere of influence, and since more and more of us are a part of more and more homogeneous spheres of influence, we have to ask:

Who is going to reach the people who are not like us?

Do we need to add some kind of artificial corrective to TG that says, ‘Reach the people in your sphere of influence, but then also try to reach a few folks who aren’t like you so that your cause can fully spread’?

I never like to start making addendums to TG that way. It reminds me of the astronomer, Tyco Brahe, who preceded Copernicus. Despite the mounting evidence that the sun and stars didn’t revolve around the earth, Brahe insisted that not only did stars follow cycles around the earth, but that the unusual movements that made it seem like they didn’t were due to something called ‘epicycles’ and ‘epicycles upon epicycles’.

If your system requires epicycles, that ain’t good.

So, since TG is nothing other than an exposition of what the scripture teaches about being fully formed in the image of Christ, before we add any ethnic fundraising epicycles, let’s ask:

Does the Bible have anything to say about how and why causes spread beyond the immediate, homogeneous sphere of influence of champions?

The answer is clearly, emphatically:

Oh my. Yes.

Turns out the whole New Testament can be understand in light of this phenomenon. It is, in a very real way, a textbook and a description of exactly how and why Kingdom causes spread to people who are not like us.

• Halfway through Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel‘. By the end of the book he’s saying, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations‘. Is this a strategy change–an epicycle?
• The Apostle Paul portrays it as an intentional development. Writes three chapters about this, in fact: Romans 9-11. Even says things like Romans 1:16–’I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of salvation for everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile‘.
• Note the consistent approach Paul takes as he spreads the gospel. First he visits the synagogue and shares the message for as long as he can (see, among many examples, Acts 14:1, Acts 17:2, Acts 18:4). As he is rejected, he then turns to take the gospel to the Gentiles.

So what’s the lesson here as relates to reaching beyond our homogeneous sphere of influence?

It’s what we do next if and when own sphere of influence rejects us, which, as Paul points out in Romans 9-11, typically has God’s purpose beyond it in spreading the cause.

Permit me a personal example:

You’ll recall that my wife and I founded Seoul USA going on a decade ago. One division of Seoul USA is Voice of The Martyrs-Korea, tasked with spreading the message of the persecuted church to South Koreans the way that Voice of The Martyrs-US is tasked with spreading the message to Americans and Voice of The Martyrs-Canada is tasked with reaching Canadians.

But here’s the problem:

South Korean churches are cool to VOM-Korea because it is non-denominational, and its leader is a layperson, not a pastor. For South Koreans, there’s another term for a non-denominational ministry led by a layperson:

A cult.

So when the Seoul USA board met last week, we discussed a variety of alternatives:

• We could appoint a ‘pastor representative’ for each denomination
• We could declare a denomination for VOM-Korea
• We chould approach major pastors in an effort to win them over and have them pronounce us credible

This is a major issue, since 10 of the 11 largest churches in the world are located in Seoul, South Korea. That’s a lot of potential champions and partners!

Now, all of these ideas the board suggested are possible and in fact quite feasible. But Seoul USA’s stated purpose is to equip outcasts to reach other outcasts like themselves.

And that’s what VOM-US President Jim Dau, who is one of the Seoul USA board of directors, exhorted the board to remember. He then got all scriptural and pointed out how every open door that VOM/Korea has had has been to North Koreans.

Conclusion?

God is holding closed the door to South Korea at present while laying the welcome mat out in front of the North Korean door. Or, stated more directly: VOM/Korea can and should begin by reaching North Koreans in South Korea, not South Koreans.

This raised the question:

‘But South Koreans have all the money. North Koreans are broke! How will we raise money?’

I knew at that moment we were in the rarified air of TG.

To the Seoul USA board’s credit, they decided to approve Jim’s recommendation, trusting that if we follow God’s will for our organization, the Transformational Giving of North Koreans will do abundantly and exceedingly more than the quantifably juicier gifts from South Korean churches could ever do.

We’ll keep you updated and let you know how it all goes.

In the mean time, take a closer look at the New Testament for coaching related to ethnic champion development. By following New Testament principles (and Pauline coaching principles) to their logical conclusion, you may end up with your very own Seoul USA experience, as God reorients your champion coaching program around an ethnicity so far out of your sphere of influence that it could only be God!

As we’ve previously discussed in this blog (and in greater detail in my Coach Your Champions book), P/E/O–or Participation/Engagement/Ownership–is the workhorse of Transformational Giving (TG). P/E/O is the process of coaching the champion to grow in the image of Christ by deepening the character and nature of their involvement in the cause in which God has given us to labor, by the power and advance preparation of God (a la Ephesians 2: 10) and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

P/E/O has a different goal than traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf). In P/E/O, giving is one of the results of discipleship…but the goal is ever increasing transformation into the likeness of Christ.

When you study most ttf models, there is a lack of vision as to what the ‘donor’ becomes as a result of the ‘cultivation’ process…other than a bigger and more frequent giver to the organization doing the cultivating.

That’s what’s so fascinating about Jessica Chao’s Continuum of Philanthropy model, which Diana S. Newman details in her brilliant book, Opening Doors: Pathways to Diverse Donors. Chao’s model is neither ttf nor self-consciously TG or Christian, but it’s plenty instructive.

Chao originally authored the model to demonstrate the three stages that Asian-American immigrants pass through on their way to philanthropic maturity.

• At the Survival stage, immigrants ’share resources–money, goods, skills, and information–with family members and peers. For most the struggle is to establish a home and some foothold on the economic ladder of opportunity.’ Note that from the very outset, generosity is neither a product of disposable income nor primarily conceived of in terms of cash donations or gifts to formal charitable organizations.
• Immigrants reach the Help stage once they’ve established a financially and emotionally stable platform in their new country. At this point–almost instinctually, says Chao–they feel a desire to give back, particularly to children and extended family members, but also to the wider ethnic community of which they’re a part.
• At some point, immigrants move beyond simply responding to need. They ‘begin to visualize the ideal community’. This quest takes them beyond their ethnic communities and organizations and drives them to connect with mainstream organizations–not for the purpose of supporting those organizations but rather for the purpose of supporting their vision of the ideal community by drawing the mainstream organization into their sphere of influence. (Echoes here of Transformational Giving principle #4: A champion connects with an organization for the purpose of enhancing their mutual impact on the cause, not only to support the organization’s impact on the cause.

Graphically, Chao’s S/H/I (Survival/Help/Invest) model looks like this (microscope not included):

While Chao’s model is quite a bit different than the P/E/O model, both have in common what Newman quotes Paul Schervish as calling ‘an inclination [for individuals] to be producers rather than simply supporters of philanthropic projects’. Schervish notes three motivations inherent in that orientation:

• Hyperagency, or ‘the ability to set one’s own agenda’;
• Identification, or ‘the donor’s ability to identify with the recipients of the contribution, both personally, and globally’; and
• Association, or ‘the social networks in which donors learn about the needs of others, both within and beyond their local communities’.

So as we seek to study the scriptural model for generosity and giving and philanthropy, it’s fair to ask, Which gets us closer to the biblical mindset: the Western majority ethnic population focus on the wealthy among us giving a portion of our excess through institutions, or the non-majority ethnic focus on personal philanthropy as a comprehensive process of maturity and growth (i.e., we’re talking more than money here) that’s characterized by hyperagency, identification, and association?

Judge for yourself as you consider the Apostle Paul’s description of the giving of the Macedonian churches in 2 Corinthians 8: 1-7 (noting that, fascinatingly, hyperagency, identification, and assocation figure prominently, as does the comprehensive nature of giving that goes far beyond money):

And now, brothers, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the saints. And they did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us in keeping with God’s will. So we urged Titus, since he had earlier made a beginning, to bring also to completion this act of grace on your part. But just as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

So where does all of this lead?

Well, we began the week asking the question, ‘If PEO involves us spreading the cause in our sphere of influence, how do we ever reach people who are not like us–people who are geographically, racially, culturally, and economically different?’

All week long, we’ve been looking to ethnic communities to lay the groundwork for the answer to that question. We’ll look forward to tying it all together tomorrow.

Diana S. Newman’s Opening Doors: Pathways to Diverse Donors is neither an expressly Christian book nor a text intentionally oriented toward Transformational Giving (TG). But it has to be among the most helpful books for TG practitioners to read as we attempt to reset our brains with definitions of philanthropy and generosity that take us beyond standard traditional/transaction fundraising (ttf) fare.

Newman draws a distinction between institutional philanthropy (which she defines as ‘philanthropy governed by an organization’s formal policies and procedures’) and personal philanthropy (which consists of ‘the charitable activities of individuals in direct response to immediate needs’). She notes that when most people think of giving and donations and philanthropy, they’re thinking of ‘relatively wealthy individuals giving gifts of money to favored nonprofit institutions (in which they often serve as board members or advisors)’.

Hard to get more ttf than that.

And, sadly, this sometimes causes philanthropic experts to opine about cultures that have no traditions of philanthropy. Erk.

To the contrary, Newman identifies the vibrant traditions of personal philanthropy that remain strongly evident in non-majority ethnic populations today.

James Joseph, former president of the Council on Foundations, writes that in the annals of American philanthropy, ‘the real heroes were the ordinary people who, with meager resources, accomplished extraordinary deeds. Mired in poverty, racked by frequent epidemics, and oppressed by vicious racism, the poor reached out to the poor, sharing what little they had with each other’.

(I fancy a Hebrews 11 echo in there.)

More gold from Newman:

‘Philanthropy in the Native sense means the tradition of sharing and honoring’, writes Rebecca Adamson, president of First Nations Development Institute, ‘which is generally not a question of altruism or charity but of mutual responsibility. In this worldview, both giver and recipient benefit from the gift [emphasis mine, as I happily note the resonance with this previous post on Korea].

Think of it like this:

What would a tradition of philanthropy and generosity look like in a culture that did not predicate philanthropy and generosity as a function of disposable income?

We’d almost be on biblical footing if we could take that fork in the road. And many non-majority ethnic populations provide us with the opportunity to take that fork, since they embody robust traditions of personal philanthropy that are different not only in degree but in kind from our majority philanthropic traditions.

(And lest we protest that ttf predicates philantropy and generosity this way, let’s recall how ttf is oriented toward institutional philanthropy and thus ranks donors on the basis of their capacity, recency, frequency, personal assets, corporate assets, and all things green. And–dare I say it? I haven’t seen a whole lot of the poorest 20% of the US public in the Christian ’stewardship’ gatherings either, despite the fact as we established yesterday that they’re already twice as far along the path to generous giving as their wealthy counterparts…)

Tomorrow: An ethnic PEO chart from a 1999 Council of Foundations presentation by an Asian American fundraiser gives us new insight into Participation, Engagement, and Ownership.

As we were noting in yesterday’s post, Angela Eikenberry makes the following claim:

[A]ffluent communities tend to be more generous than distressed communities in which there are wider variations in income and racial/ethnic populations…

It’s a fascinating statement. I certainly don’t want to stretch it any further than Eikenberry intended, so I am going to assume the most conservative possible interpretation of the statement and still take issue with it.

In my view, the most conversative interpretation possible would be that affluent communities tend to be more generous than distressed communities, and that in these distressed communities income and racial/ethnic segregation make fundraising more complicated.

Fair enough, I hope. And yet I want to suggest that while Eikenberry’s statement makes perfect sense (and even quantifiable sense) in a traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf) framework, it is actually highly inaccurate in a Transformational Giving (TG) context.

The accuracy turns on what we mean by ‘generosity’. If we measure generosity in terms of total dollars given, it would be difficult to dispute that affluent communities give more dollars than distressed communities. But if we measure generosity in terms of percentage of income given to charity, the totality of research demonstrates that the less you have, the more you give.

Consider the May 2009 McClatchy Group survey, which concludes that the 20% of Americans with the least income give double the percentage that the richest 20% do–about 4.3 percent as opposed to 2.1 percent.  (Make sure to click the link to read the story about the one homeless guy who buys the other homeless guy a Big Mac.)

Commenting on the survey, Josh Smith offers this great narrative gloss:

This report confirms the opinion I formed during years of collecting canned goods as a Boy Scout. While walking through neighborhoods on chilly fall mornings, it was quite obvious that families who themselves would be considered in need by many, donated bags of canned goods bursting at the seams. While there were also some full bags in the more “well to do” areas of town, the generosity that flowed from low and lower-middle class homes was hard not to notice, even for a 13-year-old.

What we’re really looking at is the vast dichotomy between how ttf and TG define generosity and philanthropy. What’s fascinating–and what I discovered personally when I I taught TG in Korea recently–is that many of the non-majority ethnicities in the US and many of the non-Euro populations abroad have concepts of generosity and philanthropy that are far more compatible with TG than the US’ majority ethnicity.

So where we’re headed this week in our ethnic fundraising excursion is that one of the best reasons for us to find ways to reach out to ethnicities beyond our own generally homogeneous spheres of influence…is that other ethnicities can offer us insights into TG that exceed what we can find in our own culture.

Tomorrow I’ll be sharing some of those insights from a 2002 book that ought to be on every TG coach’s bookshelf, whether or not you ever intend to venture outside of your own ethnic group.

It’s only fair that since we ended last week with a timely warning against traditional/transactional fundraising (TTF) that we begin this week with a caution for practitioners of Transformational Giving (TG), related, interestingly, to the question of TG and ethnic communities.

I think the subject is on my mind today because in our church this morning the pastor was praying his July 4th weekend prayer, in which he praised God for building a community ‘with no regard for ethnicity’. I of course understood what he meant, but it gave me pause for thought in that my wife (who is originally from Korea) was the only non-Caucasian individual in the room.

In Eikenberry’s Giving Circles, the praises of which I have been extolling for over a week now,  she throws down the gauntlet with a provocative quote about most charities also having no regard for ethnicity, or geography, or residential segregation by income:

[B]ecause the voluntary sector is so decentralized and locally focused, it does not have the capacity to reallocate resources from affluent to distressed communities. This is a significant problem when one considers that about 90 percent of charitable contributions are raised and spent locally, affluent communities tend to be more generous than distressed communities in which there are wider variations in income and racial/ethnic populations, and there has been an increasing residential segregation of Americans by income over the past forty years.

I want to take issue with Eikenberry’s assertion that affluent communities tend to be more generous than distressed communities, but all in good time. First, however, I want to rephrase and reframe her quote so as to sharpen up a very legitimate challenge to Transformational Giving, namely:

TG Principle #6 states:

The champion, not the organization, is called to be the primary means of advancing the cause within the champion’s sphere of influence.

A corollary to that principle is the very provocative strategy (which Mission Increase Foundation will be teaching in August/September in its extremely popular Marketing Your Ministry free workshop/lab sequence; sign up now)  that recruitment of new champions is the responsibility of the champion, not the nonprofit organization.

So sharpen up the question this way:

• If champions are recruiting new champions, and
• If champions are recruiting those new champions in their sphere of influence; and
• If champions’ spheres of influence are becoming generally more homogeneous in income, ethnicity, and virtually ever other measurable social characteristic (churches, for example, are becoming even more segregated by age), then
• How can causes ever move beyond people who are like us?

TTF’ers (traditional transactional fundraisers) don’t get vexed by this question because ethnic donors are just one particular (and highly optional) pathway among many to meeting their organization’s budget needs.

TGers (practitioners of Transformational Giving) ought to be very vexed by this question, because our goal is to coach, by the power of the Holy Spirit and the advance preparation of God (cf. Ephesians 2:10), God’s people to grow up into the full image of Christ. If this question isn’t giving us a Romans 10:15 moment, could it be that we all have a little ttf in us after all?

So this week we turn to the subject of ethnicity and coaching champions. The subject is so vast that if we can even outline the contours of the discussion–talk about who’s talking about it and what they’re saying and what it has to do with discipling people in the image of Christ–then it will be a week well spent.

Still savoring Eikenberry’s Giving Circles…especially the parts that aren’t about Giving Circles.

Best quote in the book:

‘As early as 1828, Rev. William Ellery Channing wrote about the hazards posed to democracy by volunteer associations (read: nonprofits) because they accumulate power in a few hands:

In a large institution, a few men rule, a few do everything; and if the institution happens to be directed to objects about which conflict and controversy exist, a few are able to excite in the mass strong and bitter passions, and by these to obtain an immediate ascendancy….They are the kind of irregular government created within our Constitutional government. Let them be watched closely.

We’re watching!

Reading Angela Eikenberry’s absolutely fantastic Giving Circles: Philanthropy, Voluntary Association, and Democracy.

There’s a great deal to share in coming days about Giving Circles, but I wanted to first take notice of a thought that she shares that has prime relevance to Transformational Giving.

Writes Eikenberry:

Giving and volunteering are often viewed as individualistic, heroic efforts, based on individual choice; there is typically little incentive or even ability for individuals to look at more comprehensive efforts for fundamental, long-term change.

In TG terms, we’d say (as we contended last week) that most giving and volunteering is P-level, that is, based on Participation in projects (and supporting an institution can actually count as a project, by the way).

Why?

Because absent coaching champions to grow in maturity in Christ in relation to the cause, projects are about all we can interest people in.

Continues Eikenberry:

Poppendeick suggests the general popularity of giving and volunteering can perhaps best be explained by their function as a moral safety valve to relieve the discomfort people feel when they are confronted with privation and suffering amid general comfort and abundance…. Poppendeick believes emergency food programs serve as an illusion of effective community action, lulling the public into complacency: canned food drives give people a warm, fuzzy feeling but do not cause them to think about why people continue to be in need.

One of the characteristics of a good Signature Participation Project (SPP) is synecdoche. That is, by participating in the project, a champion gets a taste of the cause as a whole.

In Eikenberry’s writing we see the impossible-to-overstate importance of synecdoche well-done:

• If your SPP gives people a warm, fuzzy feeling but does not cause them to think about and begin to be drawn into the deeper cause;
• If it serves as a moral safety valve to relieve discomfort related to the cause;
• If it creates the illusion of effective action but does not fundamentally impact the cause;

…then we’re pulling a Matthew 23:15b and could be causing our cause to recede further in the distance than when we’ve first begun.

Strangely enough, there are few things more dangerous to a ministry than self-replicating Participants.

Reading Matt Bates’ brilliant post yesterday on how to PEOize short-term missions was doubly fascinating for me since I was actually leading a short-term missions team in Korea (focused on NK defectors) when I read the post.

A PEO opportunity to add to the ones Matt mentioned relative to short-term missions is one in which short-term mission trippers regularly engage with very little prompting, namely, blogging while on the mission trip.

It is of course possible for you to have mission trippers blog on your organizational website, but it is far better for trippers to blog on their own existing sites, since the goal of Transformational Giving is to coach a champion on how to spread the cause in his or her sphere of influence.

The other alternative is for trippers to blog on single purpose blogs created specifically for the sake of keeping the trippers’ champions up to date on what’s happening on the trip.

In the case of this trip to Seoul, there were two blogs maintained by trip participants, and both were quite well written. Seoul USA board chairman Stephen Garner wrote this blog, and participants from Southwest Hills Baptist Church in Beaverton, Oregon wrote this one.

As we debriefed the trip last night prior to our departure today, one of the things I realized was how, even though these two blogs are really well done, we missed the opportunity to use them to maximum PEO coaching value.

In retrospect, there’s a number of things I would have done differently related to these blogs that I plan to do differently next time:

1. Prior to the trip, I would have talked to the team about the ministry of blogging and how it could and should be a crucial part of what they do while on the trip, given that that’s the time that folks are actually reading these blogs. I would have given them a crash course in how to use the blog to spread the cause in their sphere of influence during their time on the field.
2. I would have literally blocked out a half hour time block each day for people to update their blog daily, and I would have better facilitated their computer connections. The obvious next step once you’ve enabled someone to see the ministry coaching value of blogging during the trip…is giving them the time to carry out that ministry. I realize as I read the blog posts from the Seoul USA mission trippers that they had to try to squeeze in time to blog late at night and early in the morning, and sometimes even that wasn’t possible.
3. I would have given them suggested themes or topics on which to blog. Mission trippers don’t naturally gravitate towards the kind of writing themes that coach the champions in their sphere of influence. Instead, they understandably gravitate toward the ‘Here’s what I did today’ style of blogging, which, while generally enjoyable and appreciated by families back home, misses a tremendous PEO opportunity.
4. I would have provided the team with several Flip videocameras to enable them to take video during the idea and upload it to their blog. Flip videocameras are ridiculously cheap these days, and the power of same-day video can’t be overstated.
5. I would have provided links to the mission trippers’ blogs from the Seoul USA blog and corporate websites, and I would have invited the trippers to provide links to the Seoul USA sites.
6. I would also equip the trippers to seed into their during-trip blog posts the recruitment call Matt Bates discusses in his post from yesterday. What better time to recruit than from the field?

Certainly not all trips admit of blogging in the ways I’ve suggested above, but more do than don’t. I’m kicking myself for thinking of all this now that the trip is over but reminding myself that TG is typically only learned in hindsight.

The Mission Increase Foundation Giving and Training Officers will be firing up a new daily blog beginning July 13–my birthday. A second TG blog–that’s a great birthday gift!

Each GTO will write a post a week. To give you a little idea what you’ll be seeing on that new blog (I’ll get you the address as soon as I get it), here’s a piece from LAX Regional GTO Matt Bates on applying Transformational Giving to short-term missions teams. Absolutely brilliant piece!

Had a site visit with a missions agency today and brainstormed a fundraising idea that could potentially double as a P to E step.

Like many missions agencies, this one sends short-term teams from the states to sites in the field where they have an ongoing presence with local Christians.

My idea is to reframe the commitment of the short-term missionaries from the very start to include the time required for the usual training, preparation and going, plus (at minimum) an additional year after the team returns from the field.

In this post year, the team would pray/recruit/write/give within their sphere of influence for the cause of world missions as it relates to the particular site where they themselves went. 

The missions organization in turn would commit to discipling the short-termers in the post year, leveraging all they know and understand about how the short-term trip is not an end, but an important step in the journey to full maturity in the cause.  The missions agency would be attempting to move the team from a collection of Ps to a collection of Es.

The giving component in the post year would include a monthly pledge from each member of the short-term team, plus a commitment to get five-ten others in each member’s sphere (starting with the folks who sponsored their own short-term mission) to match their gift.  For example, if a team member committed to giving $50 a month, and got 5 others to give $50 a month, that’s $300 a month or $3,600 in a year.  10% of whatever the team raises could be set aside for scholarship funds to send the next team to the same site, and 15% could go to the missions agency for overhead.  75% would go directly to the site they worked at to continue and advance the ministry on the ground there.

This is a much different conceptual fundraising and ministry model than most missions agencies currently employ.  What they typically try to do is get all the names of the short-term missionaries (’alumni’) and their supporters, then get all of them to give to the missions agency once the short-term trip is over.  The trouble is that the aunt who supported her nephew to go to Moldova doesn’t care anything about the missions agency—she cares about her nephew—so she is annoyed that the missions agency is contacting her with solicitations.  In the model I propose, the nephew challenges the aunt to match his own giving in the post year, and the missions agency challenges the nephew to teach his aunt to care about Moldova.

The missions agency would also develop the praying/recruiting/writing/relating components with goals and objectives for each area. 

It’s also important that in the post year, the missions agency keeps the people in the teams that went to the field, establishes team goals, and tracks performances of team vs. team. 

Can’t wait for this second daily blog on Transformational Giving beginning next week. I’ll keep you posted!

I was just working with the Mission Increase Foundation team to adjust our training schedule to add a workshop/lab sequence at the end of 2010, should the Lord tarry, on Giving Circles.

Giving Circles are the exponentially growing phenomenon in which groups of folks get together to pull their money and their experience in order to make more impactful gifts to charity.

This has the scent of a Transformational Giving movement in that it’s champion-led. But I think I think Giving Circles are traditional/transactional fundraising’s (ttf’s) John the Baptist moment.

In Matthew 11:11, Jesus says:

I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

I think I think Giving Circles is ttf grasping at TG. They certainly point the way, what with donors (and I’m using that word on purpose here) being proactive rather than reactive, but they’re built on the ttf foundation of nonprofits serving as actors and individuals serving as supporters.

The fact that Giving Circles group people together and give them information and enable them to establish goals and evaluative mechanisms does make them more effective donors.

But at the end of the day, they’re still donors, albeit more effective ones.

Allison Fine posits a future direction for Giving Circles that I would say has a nice TG cast to it in a post she (fittingly) entitles ‘A New Relationship With Donors’:

Giving circles are generally oganized by friends to give to a variety of causes, leaving the cause in the passive position of hoping to be supported.  What if causes organized giving circles to support their cause — and other causes. I know, really scary to think about organizing your own donors to possible give to other organizations, but, hey, that’s what people do. What if you took all of your donors in one zip code, regardless of how much they gave and helped them to organize a get together at someone’s house to talk about the cause. Maybe they don’t even talk about giving the first time they meet. Maybe they just to talk about the cause, what it means, what it does, how it could do better, etc. They could come back onto your Facebook page or on Twitter and share what they learned, what they thought and dreamed for the cause. And then the second meeting they begin to talk about giving to the cause.

In TG, of course, we would contend that the champion should not only be equipped to dream about the cause, learn about the cause, and give to the cause but also to do the cause. In TG, I think I think Giving Circles will be reconceived as Discipleship Circles, where champions coach each other, under the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit, toward comprehensive maturity in Christ in relation to the cause.

Interestingly, there’s another name for that kind of modified Giving Circle:

Church.

What church is today is rather far off from that mark, of course. But as we talked about earlier this week, what is TG itself if not a church renewal movement?