#Giving Tuesday - From Good to Great!

#GivingTuesday is the ‘antidote’ to overspending, but shouldn't we be diluting the poison?

'Lovely Bird!'

Last Thursday was my first Thanksgiving in the States. I followed advice from US friends and colleagues and spent the day eating, drinking and watching football – it’s a holiday I will be happy to adopt long term!

However, considering it’s a time of year for reflection and gratitude, it’s ironic that this is totally overshadowed by the retail advertising onslaught surrounding Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The message to consumers is not 'be thankful for what you've got,' but 'go on a spending frenzy and fill your lives with a whole lot more stuff.'

I’m not the first person to notice this. In 2012, New York’s 92nd Street YMHA, a non-profit cultural and community center, launched #GivingTuesday, a campaign to create a day of giving at the beginning of the holiday season. #GivingTuesday is a platform and a moment in time for community organizations and non-profits to raise awareness and funds for their programs and projects.

One of thousands of emails that
overtook my inbox yesterday

"The 2012 debut of #GivingTuesday saw 2,500 partners signed on and a 53% hike in charitable donations over the same day the year prior." It’s not just individuals involved; companies are also making and matching donations, and facilitating and incentivizing employee volunteering.

On the one hand, I really like the concept of #GivingTuesday; it helps non-profits maximize revenue generation in the build-up to Christmas and, as Aaron Sherinian, Vice President for Communications and Public Relations at the United Nations Foundation puts it, break through the retail noise and "offer an opening day for people to talk more loudly about what they're doing." Philanthropy is such an important part of US culture that it seems right for it to be celebrated during the holiday period. As Co-founder Henry Timms, Deputy Executive Director of New York’s 92nd Street YMHA, explains "We have two days that are good for the economy. Here's a new day good for the soul."

However, there’s a part of me that can’t help but feel like the concept of #GivingTuesday simply perpetuates the 'offset mentality' – in other words, spend now and atone for it (in a slightly removed way) later. It’s even marketed as "the antidote to overspending this holiday season".

I would also question whether #GivingTuesday really engages existing donors or reaches anyone who does not already make donations. Going to the Facebook page, you are confronted with endless petitions for support from a multitude of non-profit partners. Just like the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, it’s hard to work out what is worthy of your money and what isn't, so if you don’t already have an organization or cause in mind then where do you start? Is #GivingTuesday missing the opportunity to engage existing donors in a meaningful way to build long-term, sustainable relationships, as well as reaching out to those who wouldn't normally think to support a non-profit?

To take it a step further - what if #GivingTuesday was not something separate? What if, retailers donated a small percentage of every purchase made on Black Friday or Cyber Monday to support a strategic non-profit partner and make a big impact on a challenging social issue, or better yet but even more wishful, pledged to invest in making their businesses better for consumers, employees, suppliers, and the wider world. That would be something worth celebrating!

The Way We Think About Charities and Companies is Dead Wrong

How out-of-date perceptions and expectations of NGOs and Companies are preventing progress

The title for this blog comes courtesy of Dan Pallotta and his thought-provoking Ted talk The way we think about charity is dead wrong from earlier this year. I finally got round to watching it the other week and it didn’t disappoint. Dan presents a very compelling argument, highlighting the fundamental contradiction between what we expect NGOs to achieve and what we allow them to achieve.  

In the same sitting, I watched Michael Porter’s recent Ted talk Why business can be good at solving social problems. This is a great introduction to the key principles and arguments of ‘Shared Valued’ and, again, it is a very compelling argument for changing our preconceptions of what companies are here to do.

The word that comes up again and again in these talks is scale, both in terms of the enormity of the social and environmental challenges we face, and the resources and capabilities required to solve them.

The problems we face in the world today, such as climate change, poverty, disease, are huge. Some of these challenges have been around for a number of years – in fact, as Michael Porter points out in his talk, it’s a bit embarrassing how little progress has been made considering how long we have been ‘tackling’ the problems.

And this is not going to change unless we rethink our approach.

Now you’ll have to forgive me, but to make my point, I’m going to turn to the wonders of PowerPoint shapes. In its simplest form (disclaimer), this is what is needed to get to transformative change:

When we think about solving social challenges, we commonly turn to NGOs but, in the way that they are set up today, they will struggle to move beyond incremental change:

As Dan Pallotta points out, whilst NGOs have specialist knowledge, expertise and a huge amount of passion, they lack resources – charitable giving has remained stuck at 2% of the GDP since the U.S. started measuring it in the 1970s (and, remember, this is the U.S. where philanthropy is big!). They also struggle to attract the best talent because they can’t compete with the remuneration packages offered by the corporate world, and the result is that they are unable to achieve the scale or reach that they really need to successfully tackle the social problems.

Think about the last time you gave money to charity? I imagine that you wanted every penny to go towards the beneficiaries, not to cover overheads. This is a real issue for NGOs – the expectation is that they are there to solve the world’s problems but without, God forbid, spending money on marketing, fundraising or salaries. Would you expect the same of a business?

The answer to that last question is no, however our expectation of companies is equally strange. A company has resources, talent, scale and reach but, in the majority of cases, these inputs are focused on generating profits rather than, and in some cases to the detriment of, solving social and environmental problems.

 What if…

·         Companies focused their energy on finding ways to sustain growth and profits through playing a role in helping solve some of the world’s big problems?

·         NGOs could invest in talent, fundraising and marketing and scale to the size where they could really make a different to the world’s big problems?

·         Companies and NGOs collaborated – bringing together different strengths and skills – to tackle the world’s big problems?

None of these ‘what ifs’ are impossible, in fact, some of them are starting to happen already. Look at the Gates Foundation, which is investing in talent, research and innovation. What is crucial is that we rethink our age-old perceptions and expectations of companies and NGOs. As a society, we need to allow these institutions the permission to evolve and change to meet the challenges of our world today. That is when we will see transformative change.

The Power of a Shower

I was lucky enough to take a vacation in California last week. My last stop was San Francisco, which is a place I love. The steep streets, the trams, the ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge; it's a beautiful city! However, there's another side to it, which people don't often think about; the 6,500 homeless people living on the streets. As I explored Downtown San Francisco, I have to admit that I was shocked by the number of homeless people I saw and the stark reality of the conditions that many of these people are forced to endure.

Upon returning to Boston, you can imagine my interest when my colleague emailed me today with this video made by a new organization in San Francisco called Lava Mae.

Lava Mae (the name comes from the Spanish for 'wash me', 'lavame'') is a nonprofit organization, which aims to provide showers for the homeless community in San Francisco. Most of us take our daily showers for granted, but the basic act of washing and keeping clean is a real issue for the homeless. For example, in San Francisco, there are only 8 facilities with 1 or 2 stalls each, where people living on the streets can go to take a shower. That's a total of only 16 showers! And you thought you had a long wait for the bathroom in the morning...

I'll never take you for granted again!

Lava Mae is working to tackle the problem by providing mobile shower units, which can travel round the city and reach the homeless where they are. They are working in collaboration with a number of other organizations already supporting and providing services for the homeless population in the city, leveraging existing knowledge and expertise to make the initiative a success.

You'd be forgiven for questioning whether homeless people really need showers? Of course, ultimately, they need shelter, regular meals, employment, access to education, medical help, counselling, the list is long. However, the reality is there is no quick fix and the act of providing regular showers does so much more than simply enabling them to keep clean. It restores a sense of dignity, confidence and self worth, all of which are a vital for anyone trying to survive and escape life on the streets.

Changing Philanthropy As We Know It

Since writing my last blog Challenging the Status Quo, an op-ed in the New York Times by Peter Buffett,

better known as ‘the son of Warren Buffett’, was bought to my attention. The article, published at the end of July, is a provocative piece which calls for a ‘new operating system’ for philanthropy and criticizes the current system or, as he describes it, the ‘perpetual poverty machine’.

Strangely appropriate (just imagine the extra 't')

According to Peter Buffett, who heads us the billion dollar NoVo Foundation, which he set up with support from his father, despite the fact that inequality is still on the rise, philanthropy has burgeoned into a ‘massive business’ and has become the ‘it vehicle to level the playing field’. He laments the prevalence of ‘"conscience laundering" — feeling better about accumulating more than any one person could possibly need to live on by sprinkling a little around as an act of charity’.

Whilst, as Ruth McCambridge puts it in her recent article for Non Profit Quarterly, ‘his strokes are so broad that they are nothing short of flat-footed’, he does raise some really important questions about whether philanthropy is as effective as it can be in tackling key social issues; whether it is really solving problems or simply propping itself up to maintain the status quo.

The end of philanthropic giving as we know it?

It has been interesting to see the response to the op-ed remarks, which, as you can imagine, came in thick and fast. The majority have picked up on his inaccurate assertions about the growth of philanthropy in the U.S. According to Tom Watson, Journalist and Contributor to the Forbes Site, ‘philanthropy today represents roughly two percent of GDP – and has been stagnant at that level since roughly 1970’. Phil Bucanan, President for the Center of Effective Philanthropy, also questions his ‘sweeping generalizations’ about the motivations of philanthropists; in other words, that they ‘give back’ in order to be able to ‘sleep better at night’.

However, most of the responses have seen some value in Buffett's challenge. There is recognition that the current system could be improved - simultaneously making sure that those who depend on nonprofit social services are not abandoned - and a clear aspiration to explore new, more creative ways to achieve ‘greater prosperity for all’.

Whether provocative or refreshing, the op-ed from Peter Buffett is important insofar as it has re-stoked the debate. What is most important is that individuals and organizations continue to innovate, challenge and disrupt so perhaps the more provocative the better!