Inspired Dialogue

by Rita Thapa

I live in the context of a post-conflict transition.  Infrastructures are failing. Leadership is self-serving and commands no respect.  There is heightened corruption and impunity, and the maximum negative impact is on the most vulnerable – largely women.  I note that such an environment promotes self-interest in terms of personal security and does not advance community well-being.  Ironically this is also the time when safety nets are most needed.  Since women are the most persevering peace builders – they require support for the work they need to do in their communities and families.

Tewa continues to inform and engage its donors both local and external so that they can make ongoing gifts for the campaign.  An evaluation of this campaign will inform us if we are successful, to what extent, and why?  We’ll know by the end of 2013!

This is a difficult time for the world at large – and is therefore also a time for sincere reflections for each of us.  We live in an interdependent world.  We can respond in a relief mode, or we can strengthen where positive work is ongoing with an equity and justice lens.  This will take our dollars/rupees further faster and will help prevent as many disasters as is possible.  This is where and how I choose to give.

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Related Inspired Legacies resources:

• Take time to reflect on your giving with this exercise (.pdf)

by Susan Kirsch

As the speed of change accelerates, many people fall into fear, cynicism, and hopelessness. The fear grows from questions like, How will we ever restore social justice?  or How will we survive global warming? or How can I keep balance among the demands for physical, professional, social, economic, and spiritual well-being?”

To offset fear requires strengthening competence and courage. In other words, we need to help ourselves and the people we work with to toughen up.

I recently published Simply Go*d: Praise Poems Celebrating the Divine in Daily Life. The poems capture three key strategies that strengthen one’s capacity to meet personal and professional purpose.

The first strategy is to be aware of the mind’s incessant chatter and the words we use when we talk to others. Our thoughts and words shape our reality. To illustrate this point, I offer the poem Shape Your Thoughts, Embrace Your Dreams.

The mind welcomes Delusion as easily as it welcomes Delight.
Invite the mind to think of a juicy red apple

 and the mouth starts watering in response.

Instruct the mind, like a stern librarian wagging her finger,

“Never ever think of a red apple,”
and the power of imagination kicks in just the same.

So learn the lesson.
Shape your thoughts to embrace your fondest dreams.

The second strategy is to stay grounded in an awareness of choice in every moment. The poem Faith or Fear? illustrates this point.

The coin of life has two sides: one is faith, the other fear.
The dilemma of the Human being human is to live wisely with choice.
It’s not like flipping a coin and trusting blind luck to give you heads or tails.
The choice is in your nimble fingers and eager eye.
Pick up faith.
See it like a pool of pure water,

dive in to divine pleasure like you’re on a Hawaiian beach.

Focus on fear at your peril.
The sharks will rip you apart and the currents leave you

gasping in terror for your error.

The coin of life has two sides.
Focus on faith.

The third strategy is to take action. We can acknowledge that circumstances are demanding, frustrating, and sometimes seem hopeless. But neither we, nor the clients we work with, can stay stuck in bemoaning the status quo.  We must take thoughtful action, as expressed metaphorically in Palace of Possibilities, with the opportunity to “plant pink peonies.”

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by Russ Hall

I sense we are at a tipping point in aligning our interests, actions, and especially capital with the world we want to live in.  We may tip back, and not forward, but that’s another post.  Recent developments are encouraging.

Take Kiva.org or DonorsChoose as examples.  We are tapping into technology and new forms of social discourse to make known the individual needs that used to be aggregated, rolled into a ball so big that only the big could fathom addressing these needs.  The individual got lost or discouraged.  Now the need of an individual classroom or poverty level entrepreneur can be discovered, communicated, and matched with individuals who can see and be encouraged by their ability to engage.

Some problems are larger and more systemic, and not all needs lend themselves to this approach.  For those needs and solutions that are a match, though, the second and third order effects of tapping into donors and needs at this level have the potential to unleash a population that has not felt an ability to participate.  Individual donors, who might not have engaged, can now bring their attention, hearts, and even social networks to discover and address problems that are within their grasp.  Entrepreneurs, previously without access to capital, can change their lives and those around them by avoiding the usurious rates of local money lenders.  Human potential can be encouraged and fed.

In some locations, the solution can become a problem itself, breeding a new form of bondage, or some approaches can be poorly done, leading to sub par results and a taint on the field, but let’s not abandon approaches with promise in their relative infancy.  Worse, let’s not catch donor A.D.D., turning to the next shiny approach, just as the promising approaches are maturing and delivering fruit.

As we embark on this brave, new year, resolving to change where needed, let’s “wring out” what hasn’t worked so well, and commit or recommit to those efforts with promise.   Technology is not a panacea, but it can enable us to accomplish things that were either uneconomic previously, or we couldn’t even envision.

Related Inspired Legacies resources:

• Analyze the Characteristics of the Groups You Support (.pdf)
• Take time to Reflect on those groups (.pdf) and your relationship to them.

by Melanie Hamburger

Money means power. We’re ambivalent about it – the money and its influence. Yet last year, individuals in the U.S. donated $212 billion to nonprofits. Philanthropy is big business.

Women, in particular, are ambivalent about wealth and the power it brings. While women make the majority of spending decisions in a household, we do so very differently than men. We focus on the people and relationships involved, more than the transaction itself.

Philanthropy feels very different than a financial transaction, yet that’s what it is. We aspire, we decide, we give.

Women control 33% of wealth in North America, so let’s assume that women made $70 billion of the gifts last year. The thoughtful, intelligent women who gathered at a recent Catalytic Women forum on effective philanthropy shared a common concern: the difficulty of saying “no” to a nonprofit once we’ve made a gift.

Donors can be an effective market mechanism for the nonprofit sector, directing resources to the best programs. But to do it well, we need to get better at saying no.
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by Shilpa Jain

How do we get at the roots of the economic, ecological, educational systems in crisis, to fundamentally transform things inside and out?  To arrive at that thriving, just, healthy and balanced world that we are so committed to, what will it take?

In my experience as an activist, a donor, and a fundraiser, it happens by supporting those who are aiming to change the field.  Those who are asking the deeper questions about alignment among our spirits, our relationships and our actions; those who are building new, practical and tangible economic and political models; those who are physically creating the ‘alternatives’ through their organizational and life practices; those who are cross-pollinating stories to provide more inspiration.  Really, they are those who are aiming to integrate their work so thoroughly into their communities that they ultimately works themselves out of a job.

For almost a decade, I worked with a peoples’ movement in India that is dedicated to radically rethinking education and development. Shikshantar strove to expand its work in communities and simultaneously bring its budget down every year (starting at about $40,000 in 1998, and reducing by $1000-$2000 every year to date).  How is that possible?  Because Shikshantar focused on building up the currency of relationships.  The core team would spend time with individuals and communities, encouraging them to share their passions, devote their energies, volunteer their time, take organizing leadership, donate their homes and verandas, share their leftover materials, etc. etc., so that each project would be deeply rooted in real people and reaffirm their collective power, resources and wisdom.  In these ways, Shikshantar helped to nurture the gift economy, community learning, citizen engagement, and fundamental systemic change.

Donors, I believe, are faced with a golden opportunity in these times.  They can help shift the landscape by investing in organizations and movements that are getting at the roots of the crises — essentially, disconnection — and actively building the world we want through their efforts.  For example, investing in healing collectives helps to nurture the local economy and fundamentally transform healthcare.  Investing in learning communities and experiments is an opportunity to tip us towards deeper soul wisdom, creativity, and relevant education.  The same can be said for investing in food system transformation and alternative economic paradigms.  The point is to go for the source, for the efforts that aim at connection and integration.  With that kind of intentionality and focus, there is no doubt that legacies created will be anything less than totally inspiring!

Related Inspired Legacies resources:

• Time, Talents, and Treasures worksheet (.pdf)

by Radha Stern

The donor experience is evolving.  We want to be investors, we want to do more for the organizations we care about and we want to feel part of the “greater goodness.”  Some of us want to write checks and that is it.  My hope is that this latter group becomes the minority.  People love to feel part of something.  And, that is when the magic happens.

I have watched the whole baby boomer wave create significant encore careers, a wealth of knowledge and positive energy that could truly change our world landscape.  There are now over 400 people who have been acknowledged by Civic Ventures; sponsor of The Purpose Prize funded by forward thinking foundations such as John Templeton, Atlantic Philanthropies, AARP and Legacy Works.  Four thousand have applied for this honor and the energizer bunny is still going!
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by Rita Thapa

Based in Nepal, Tewa — the Nepal women’s fund — continues to work hard to raise money for its grant-making programme, from hundreds of Nepali donors.  Its database reveals that there is a very small donor retention rate (7 – 15%).  Yet, its membership, hundreds of volunteers, and staff work diligently throughout the year to raise on average 2.5 million Nepali rupees annually.  But for Nepal, and probably throughout the region, this is no small feat – especially since the money is raised explicitly for “women’s empowerment!”

Tewa continues to raise money externally and internally for the completion of its infrastructure and for its operational costs.  Initially, I did not go to aid agencies within Nepal because I felt the credit of “doing Tewa” needs to lie with feminist funds and philanthropists or other foundations with social justice lens.  But Nepal’s civil war and the post-war transitions and the deteriorating global economic environment have been an ongoing challenge.

This April we initiated the “Sampanna Campaign” to raise US $ 900,000 by the end of 2013 – to build our remaining infrastructure (dormitory, single room facility, and remaining landscaping), and we received US $ 100,000 promptly from an individual donor who was making such a large gift for the first time!  This gift was the result of a trust relationship and the culmination of a visit by the donor, where she met with our board, staff, volunteers and grantees.  To help us kick off Sampanna, she offered $80,000.  She was so moved by her cumulative experience with Tewa that she immediately sais “yes!” when I asked her to round it up to $100,000.

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by Phil Cubeta

The advisors with whom I work, and their clients, are mostly conservative, family oriented, “value voters.”  To even raise the topic of income inequality, or social justice is risky.  Occupy Wall Street has created an opening.  What Tracy is trying to do with this blog, I think, is disproportionately important at this critical moment.  The public conversations in the media or among professional advisors are deaf, dumb, and blind to social justice. The conversations that matter on these topics are private.  I blog about it, and receive emails to the effect, “Boy are you brave! I love your irreverence, and you tell so many truths. Don’t let anyone know I read you.” By blogging together, in what amounts to a fishbowl, others will see and hear and will realize that this is not so dangerous.  We are self-censored.

The Maieutic method is the Socratic method. Socrates’s mom was a midwife in Greece. He was saying that he took after his mother and followed her in the family business. He helped the most powerful men in Athens, and the most belligerent, to give birth to their better self.  In the process the old self may die away.  Of course Socrates was eventually given a taste of his own medicine, and died in agony induced by hemlock, as pay back for questioning the gods, and the established order.

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by Debbie Johnson

The needs of nonprofits to serve a hurting community have rarely been higher.  Fortunately, at least for human service issues, donors have really stepped up to provide for basic needs (food banks, healthcare, workforce issues, homelessness, etc.).  Though, as a word to the wise, in some cases funds are being diverted from other causes, the ramifications of which may show up in the future.

A good example of this situation is money which is currently being redirected or cut from women’s health services which will likely cause women to forego annual exams, only to discover their disease in a much more advanced state and therefore more expensive and difficult to treat, no less possibly a worse outcome.  I’m sure you each have your own examples.

Notwithstanding the ever-present tug of too many nonprofits that all need funding, we are encouraging our donors to be more organized and intentional about their giving — to develop a strategic giving plan to guide their donations.  Just as a good strategy does, we lead donors to narrow their focus on the important few causes they are passionate about (versus trying to be all things to all people) and then carefully investing a variety of resources — money, volunteer time, in-kind products or services, specialized expertise, etc. — for maximum impact.  Deciding how to measure expected results from their investments is also important.

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