giving : mackenzian

September 14, 2016 By Keisha McKenzie

Why the greatest good can lose out to potato salad

A telescope looks over Paris — Photo credit: John Towner

I shared a MarketWatch article on charitable giving yesterday. The writers explain how much donors give based on emotional connection rather than whether our gifts are a “great deal” financially.

They also make another point that goes to the psychology we bring to our efforts to help others.

As internet-based crowdfunding started booming last decade, I wondered why some kinds of fundraising campaigns do so well—2014’s potato salad campaign is one example—but others, focused on vulnerable people, sputter. Campaigns designed to punish one group by giving to another (what I call hate-giving) stir up donors, at least for a while. Meanwhile, less glossy causes that do slow transformative work can struggle to meet expenses.

Here’s one reason why:

Many people donate to help single, identifiable victims, which tend to elicit strong emotions. But statistical victims—those far away and out of sight—don’t evoke the same emotions and levels of support. If instead of concentrating so much on identifiable victims, people supported the thousands of statistical victims around the world, they would likely save many more lives.” —Jonathan Berman, Alixandra Barasch, Emma Levine, and Deborah Small

So people will choose a nearby, visible, individual beneficiary over a removed, inaccessible, group beneficiary.

If this is how our brains work, complex causes can’t sell themselves. They need faces, stories, ambassadors, people who will stand in for the complex and the abstract, people who can connect emotionally with those with the ability and will to support.

Meme and story projects tap into this drive to connect. Tell your story campaigns boost everything from immigrant mobilization to women’s health and climate change impacts on the Pacific.

And if those stories are engaging or arresting, even if for something as mundane as the satisfaction of a hearty potato salad, people will give.

How could this idea can help you decide which causes you give to and which you invite others to fund?

September 14, 2016 By Keisha McKenzie

Investments and charitable giving

Investing and charitable giving are two different ways for someone with resources to contribute to an organization or cause.

I’ve conflated them in the past, but recently read an article advising people not to.

In Market Watch, Berman, Barasch, Levine, and Small explain that people give when they feel emotionally connected to a cause, not necessarily because they’ve demonstrated that the cause will turn a profit or be financially productive. Nonprofit watchdogs like Guidestar and GiveWell (mentioned in the article) allow organizations to share much more about program outcomes and financial reports. Yet all that extra information may not change anything about how donors actually give.

On the one hand, no one wants their charitable donations to go to waste, and effectiveness information could help people avoid low-impact charities.

On the other hand, ‘going with the numbers’ may not align with the causes people are drawn to support, and those causes are often what motivates people to give in the first place.

For instance, many feel a deep commitment towards their local community. Yet eliminating suffering in the developing world is often much cheaper and can help many more people for the same price.”

According to these writers, donors don’t seem too concerned about the impact of their dollar when they’ve already emotionally bonded with the organization they’re giving to.

So perhaps fiscal transparency is like a seatbelt: it only matters to the people on board when something important has already gone wrong.

Read more: “Why we resist treating charities like investments,” MarketWatch (8/22/2016).

June 30, 2016 By Keisha McKenzie

Power beyond the org chart

An organizational chart is somewhat like a designer’s blueprint: it tells you how leaders expect information, authority, and people to flow. It doesn’t tell you how information, authority, or people actually do move around the system.

An organizational chart also focuses on the personnel who keep a system running day-to-day. It doesn’t include the people in the system’s wider network: the people it serves, the people it addresses in external communications, and the people who fund its work as customers, investors, or donors.

When we interpret an organization exclusively in terms of its chart and the administrators and staff inscribed on it, we miss a lot. And when we frame people’s possible institutional contributions only in terms of their impact on hirings, firings, demotions, and promotions, we’re radically underestimating their value to the whole.

Most donations to charitable organizations come not from foundations or benevolent corporations but from individual people. In the U.S., foundations gave $57 billion last year, and corporations gave $18 billion, but individuals gave $268 billion. Individual people, many of them earning less than $50,000 per year, gave 71% of all donated dollars in 2015. And, because so many organizations are still structured as pyramids, most of those donors weren’t part of the staff or boards of the organizations they gave to.

There’s power beyond the org chart. People on the org chart are wise when we recognize, engage, and enable our communities’ power rather than imagine that all mission progress depends on us. And people off the chart need to recognize our ability to empower the organizations and causes we’re giving to, no matter whether we’re sharing our raw dollars or simply volunteering our skills and time.

Our value isn’t dependent on our institutional role. This insight is especially critical for people who participate in and give to religious organizations. Religious organizations receive over 30% of all charitable contributions, but, unlike most 501(c)(3) organizations, aren’t legally required to report on how they use the investments that donors make.

With no legal accountability requirements to compel organizations, religious donors are at the mercy of treasurers and leadership teams that choose to share fiscal and programmatic information. Of course, transparency is best consensual! But when organizations treat information and decision-making access as the currency of power, donors can’t easily make good decisions about when or how to contribute.

If you’re a decision-maker: Look beyond your staff and the sources that have traditionally supported you. Not only do you need to engage the energy of the wider world, you’re already part of that wider world and need to watch that you’re not blocking community relationships.

If you’re giving from outside the org chart: Remember that you’re part of the flow of resources. Ask the staff of the organizations and initiatives you care about for information you need to choose how you add value. You’re essential! Remember that.