Empathy and Philanthropy

A video that I just watched reminded me about something that I already know. I know that, when I experience empathy, I become equipped to do my life’s most important work. Likewise, empathy allows nonprofits to perform their most important work and to achieve maximal results.

I reflected on empathy after watching a talk posted at Chris Davenport’s blog, Movie Mondays. (Nowadays, we “watch” talks.) “Shifting the Focus from Fundraising to Philanthropy” was delivered by Andrea McManus, president of the Development Group, a Calgary-based philanthropic consulting firm, and former chair of the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ International Board of Directors. In her short video, McManus said a lot.

McManus distinguished philanthropy from development and fundraising. Philanthropy, in her view, is bigger and of greater ultimate import. Philanthropy is what nonprofits most need to focus on, even as they go about the necessary business of structuring their development program and asking for donations.

McManus defines development as the organizational apparatus intended to bring in funding. It consists of the various systems through which resources are obtained. It sets up strategies. Fundraising takes place when an organization acts on those strategies, when it executes its development program. Nonprofits do fundraising in order to carry out their basic functions; as such, it functions as a kind of engine within philanthropy.

Philanthropy, for McManus, is more inclusive—extending beyond donors, beyond volunteers, beyond organizations. It is the broad context within which all of these parties find inspiration, take action, and achieve results. Philanthropy is “how they invest their time and resources into making their world [and] their community a better place.”

McManus finds it unsurprising that many board members, volunteers, and staff members resist development work. This resistance occurs, McManus believes, because development work is generally presented as “fundraising” rather than as a part of “philanthropy.” When organizations emphasize fundraising, they restrict their enterprise to its internal, strategic components. Seeking and cultivating donors becomes seen as sordid and manipulative rather than idealistic and virtuous. This, in turn, burdens those who would attract donations. It causes them to see themselves as hucksters.

By focusing on fundraising, McManus contends, we cannot help but take a “tin-cup” approach. “It becomes about getting the next gift. It becomes about numbers and measurement.” It is about me and what you can do for me.

If an organization instead focuses its staff, board members, and volunteers on its philanthropic mission, then all will more eagerly take on the work of raising revenue. This is because all parties will recognize their connection to a larger effort occurring outside as well as inside the organization. Their power to achieve important, worthy goals will become apparent to them. As people who “contribut[e] their time and resources to the organization,” they are optimally positioned to “understand why other people would want to do that” same thing.

As McManus presents it, philanthropy is a broad, vital context in which humanity enriches itself. Within that context, all who participate look together to effectuate outcomes. They share goals. They pursue their goals as part of a team, whereas people focused merely on fundraising carry out their work in isolation.

***************************************************

Conceiving of our work as philanthropy seems well worth the effort. Why would we not want to feel wonderful about what we do? If, as the dictionary suggests, philanthropy signifies a love for humanity, an “altruistic concern for human welfare and advancement,” then to emphasize philanthropy is to place every aspect of organizational work in its most beneficent light. Those who ask for gifts out of philanthropic conviction will know that their work is magnanimous work. They will likely become more enthused about their task, and their enthusiasm could hardly but rub off on staff, board, and would-be donors. All parties would benefit.

Effective philanthropy, as I see it, depends on empathy. Philanthropic work “feels good” and succeeds when its performers are guided by a deep sense of empathy with all fellow contributors to their enterprise. Organizations need to cultivate empathy in their staff and board members to ensure that development be seen and executed as an honorable, indispensable part of the philanthropic endeavor. Staff and board members must come to empathize with would-be donors—to regard them as fellow philanthropists wishing to improve the human condition.

It is easy for an organization to see the field of potential donors as sources “out there,” ripe for the seduction and the taking. It is easy to see potential donors as objects to be manipulated into parting with their precious resources. But it is equally feasible—and infinitely more beneficial—for resource seekers to see potential donors as partners—or even, in a way, as extensions of themselves. To be sure, fundraisers must think strategically, coming up with a plan and executing it. But this merely marks fundraising as a specialty within the larger philanthropic endeavor. It does not make fundraising rude or invasive.

The nonprofit’s essential nature consists in its service to humanity. Staff work and board membership, at their core, are of a piece alongside donating and volunteer work. Service to humanity is their common ultimate purpose, and, in this, all contributors are stationed as valuable parts of the larger endeavor. Those who would serve can do so only by recognizing themselves together as one. And such recognition rests on feeling empathy—even toward those whose roles differ markedly from one’s own.

The idealistic nature of volunteering and giving thrives on human empathy, whereas it chokes on manipulation. Improving the human condition requires cultivating empathy between those with great capital and those without, even between those who would defend capitalism and those who would contest it. Empathy is necessary. Without it, human beings—too often egotistical and territorial—cannot collaborate selflessly on behalf of community, society, or humanity.

Empathy must extend beyond philanthropic collaborators. It must extend to all stakeholders, as all play meaningful roles within any philanthropic enterprise. Even the public at large plays a role by supporting or critiquing the enterprise, and/or by receiving benefits indirectly. The spirit of service is the spirit of empathy. No one who sees herself as separate from others can serve as a conduit for the spirit that moves us to service. Barricaded, she cannot act with a full heart and so cannot act with full effectiveness.

To focus on philanthropy, as McManus urges, an organization needs always to bear in mind its vision and mission. More than that, it needs to see its vision and mission as particular articulations of universal spiritual and ethical values. It cannot allow itself to get bogged down in operations and strategy, however unavoidable those concerns might be. Ideally, particular staff and board positions would be dedicated to keeping spiritual and ethical truths front and center. Devotion, service, and love of fellows provide the necessary context in which all nonprofit work takes place. When this fades from sight, the enterprise becomes imperiled.

Public Conversations, Public Impasse

Among the most important work done by not-for-profits is the sparking of and support for dialogue across difference. In a world rent by animosities between groups, nurturing the wellbeing of society requires helping people see that those unlike themselves are fully human and worthy at least of toleration. Toward this end, there are organizations offering dialogue workshops to leaders in the social, economic, religious, and political arenas. Similar programs are offered to citizens at large. Such efforts attempt to bring the individual into touch with her authentic desires and abilities, and to teach her to interact with other persons in an open, respectful manner. Promoters of this work rightly see it as an invaluable engine for social and political healing. Respecting the other—or at least not trying to silence or harm him—lays the foundation for bridges of cooperation. This work can equip leaders and those they influence to repair the nation’s torn social and political fabric.

Dialogue building is guided by two values that frequently inform nonprofits: pluralism and inclusivity. The people who do this work believe that as wide an array of voices as possible ought to be elicited, heard, and honored. To listen to the other is potentially to engage multiple perspectives. Whenever an institution, public or private, makes space for a range of personal histories and allegiances, it becomes more widely relevant, legitimate, and influential. Dialogue building based on pluralism and inclusivity aims to loosen the gridlock that impairs our society and polity. If we conclude that people different from us are worth engaging, then we can create institutions able perhaps to improve social conditions and even heal the world.

In and around my adopted hometown of Seattle, Washington, there are a handful of adventurous organizations attempting just this sort of dialogue building. Nowhere is more important work being done than in these organizations. Standing out among the values championed by them are pluralism and inclusivity, along with a related value, equality. These groups assume that, when included in discussion, individuals lacking power can attain voice, self-respect, and influence on parties more powerful than themselves. The sorts of people who don’t normally sway public policy or manage private enterprise might thereby acquire power. Institutions might perhaps begin to hear and respond to their voices.

One such Seattle-area organization insists that the “inclusion of all voices, especially those most often marginalized, is vital to creating healthy and just communities.” This group intends its work to diminish “power differences of role and position.” Another group declares that “the capacity to welcome and make space for diverse voices and multiple perspectives is critical . . . to the healing and wholeness needed in our world.” Citizens must learn “how to evoke and challenge each other without being judgmental, directive or invasive.” At workshops put on by a third organization, participants are encouraged “to humanize the ‘other,’” thereby “cut[ting] through barriers of defense and mistrust, enabling both those listened to and those listening to hear what they think, to change their opinions, and to make more informed decisions.” Still yet another group seeks to “make space at the table and engage people across all differences in the spirit of being better together.” 

All of these programs draw on lessons learned in the 1960s and 1970s. Emboldened by the Civil Rights Movement, “identity groups” began to exert cultural and social influence. Women, Latinos, the disabled, and eventually gays and lesbians would champion “diversity”—a cause that took hold in academia, the arts, religion, and public education. Affirmative action plans, anti-discrimination statutes, and bilingual education programs reinforced this trend. The purposes behind it were twofold: to empower socially disadvantaged groups, and to broaden the composition of public and private institutions so that they more closely resembled America’s polyglot society.

The movement to increase diversity, or multiculturalism, falls short of its potential in an important way. For all the attention given to race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and physical ability, relatively little is given to ideology. The reality is that how people see the world largely determines how people identify themselves. Many people spend time and build community only with fellow liberals or conservatives; many surround themselves entirely with fellow conservative Christians or New Age spiritualists. Ideology shapes people’s conceptions of where they fit within society and polity. It cannot be ignored. An institution looking to be broadly representative of society as a whole must consider varying ideologies.

It isn’t surprising that the call to inclusivity rarely takes worldview into account. For one thing, the call is not sounded by religious or political conservatives nearly as often as by progressives. The right generally looks down on dialogue building as soft and mushy; it disparages pluralism as anathema to preserving theological and social order. This disdain for multiculturalism confirms for the left that the right is nothing other than an obstacle. Ironically, conservatives tend to oppose the sorts of dialogue building that could offer them opportunities to be heard within social sectors that they consider inhospitable to them.

Moreover, progressives generally see conservatives as a privileged group hardly needing or deserving the benefits of diversification. Correctly or not, progressives rarely perceive conservatives as socially or politically marginalized. To advocates of multiculturalism, conservatives’ place in society and polity in no way resembles the situation of those identity groups in whose name multiculturalism is typically evoked.

Still another factor helps account for the relative under-appreciation of worldview as a dimension within social identity. As cognitive linguist George Lakoff demonstrates, worldview comprises the framework inside which initiatives and programs are evaluated. Worldview is the unseen context. It is difficult for a person to grasp ideology when one can grasp it only within her own ideology. And, when it is acknowledged, it is generally considered a kind of intelligence that one either possesses or lacks. For conservatives and liberals alike, this intelligence is so crucial to their own and their friends’ analysis of the world—so primary—that they dare not problematize it. To unpack it and examine its impact, they fear, would only paralyze actors and thus obstruct meaningful change. It therefore remains outside the multicultural project. Worldview falls victim to its own importance.

All that I have seen, heard, and inferred suggests that even the best dialogue-fostering organizations underemphasize ideology as a dimension of identity. This is understandable. (Indeed, as a progressive myself, I consider the valuation of equality and pluralism as an intelligence needed to act effectively in the world.) But this is also lamentable. To repair America’s frayed civic fabric, we must afford conservatives buy-in to the process. The alternatives are enthusiastic political gridlock and social animosity.

If our goal truly is to help each citizen see the full humanity of the other, then we must not underemphasize worldview as a dimension of identity. Discourse cannot be broad if it does not reach across lines of political and religious worldview. Inclusive public conversation must welcome in all citizens, especially those who believe themselves marginalized or unpopular. Conservatives may appear to most scholars, teachers, activists, and reformers to be well connected and powerful, but what matters is how each of us experiences society and where we place ourselves within it. Conservatives, along with all other identity groups, remain relevant to dialogue building and peacemaking. Conservative worldview does not destroy one’s ability to contribute positively to grassroots democracy. 

In his slim, inspiring volume Twelve Steps toward Political Revelation, novelist Walter Mosley contends that efforts at true democratization require citizens to see past their differences. Mosley urges Americans to construct

an underground system of democracy against the surface lies of the special-interest [political] parties. . . . This will allow the black nationalist and the white supremacist to vote together for the rights of poor children to have medical care; the anti-abortionist and the pro-choice advocate to unite against the [Iraq] war. We have more in common than we are against each other. . . .

This is not a left or right question. Democracy is for all of us; for the voter, the child, the lonely prisoner, and those who live here without the benefit of citizenship; it is for black and white, young and old, educated and uneducated, lovers and haters. We must support a system based on our participation no matter where that participation leads.

For us to expand on grassroots efforts addressing our most intractable, life-threatening problems—proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, poisoning of the natural environment, denial of health-care services to much of our population—we must get people to see beyond their clashing cultural commitments and to locate their points of commonality. The reality is that few people treasure poverty, few love war, and few wish that medical services not be widely available. Support for free enterprise no more renders a person insensitive than support for the welfare state renders a person foolish. Conversations between the ideologically dissentient are difficult—and desperately important.

Repairing society and polity requires scrutinizing our particular worldview, not taking it for granted as a precondition for intelligent public participation.

Donor Spirituality

In order to solicit gifts and ensure the most generous donations possible, nonprofits aim to make potential donors feel welcomed and valued. Toward that end, development workers often encourage funders to talk with them about their most deeply held values. Will organizations most likely understand this accommodation of donors strictly as a means of attracting generous gifts? Or, will accommodating the personal visions and missions expressed by donors come to be seen as a good that is worth advancing in itself? How eager will most nonprofits be to serve as conduits for women and men of means wishing to speak as well as give? Will most nonprofits worry that indulging donors’ deep self-expression might risk compromising the organization’s primary mission?

Clearly, organizations need individual funders. Funders also need organizations. As advocates for relationship-based development point out, donating gives people the chance to fulfill themselves spiritually, to enact their highest vision. In providing such opportunities, a not-for-profit does far more than indulge the whims of its benefactors. Helping donors fulfill themselves spiritually is as crucial as any other work done by the organization because it enables donors to become their best selves. It heightens their moral and ethical motives. It increases their energy. It expands their capacity to trust. It redoubles their confidence in the organization’s mission. It serves them and the organization. Organizations must commit themselves to carrying out this work with passion, confidence, and love.

Benefactors’ spiritual fulfillment may seem irrelevant to the many social activists who prioritize grassroots empowerment over donor empowerment. Although empowering donors is a worthy pursuit, it will inevitably be scoffed at by some organizational staffers, especially those with a progressive bent. To convince skeptical staff members, proponents of donor empowerment would need to demonstrate a link between donors’ spiritual and ethical fulfillment and the organization’s instigation of meaningful social change. Indeed, proponents would need to show that people of means are attentive and open to ideas generated by and for less affluent stakeholders.

John Bloom, Vice President for Organizational Culture at RSF (Rudolf Steiner Foundation) Social Finance, makes a compelling case that organizations should prioritize the self-actualization of their funders. Any such commitment, according to Bloom, tends to fall victim to organizations’ inadequate support for fundraising. Bloom laments, as an example, what he sees as a “wealth-resistant” attitude and an anti-development bias plaguing Waldorf schools. Faculty, in particular, look down on development work as sordid—as foreign to the institution’s high ideals. Their objection, Bloom suggests, is that development accommodates and celebrates a group hardly deserving of the school’s foremost attention: wealthy, powerful individuals. Because of their wealth resistance, Waldorf schools dedicate insufficient resources to development. Indeed, they sometimes leave advancement work to volunteers.

Bloom contends that such wealth resistance harms the institution. It does so not only by diminishing the institution’s capacity to raise money, but also by limiting the service work that the institution does on behalf of the wider community. When fundraisers are not supported from within, they cannot serve as conduits for donors’ self-expression. The institution is then inhibited from serving one of its most important, core constituencies. Donors need and deserve better.

Bloom maintains that development workers need to be fully equipped to build trusting relationships with donors—relationships that nurture communication about donors’ intended spiritual and social activism. If those relationships suffer, then so does the activism of donors. And so does the public, which would benefit from their activism.

Insofar as a nonprofit serves its donors, it helps enable a key democratic function. Donors generally are educated individuals of means. Frequently, they are well traveled. Their affluence may provide them vast opportunity to acquire the insight and tools crucial for far-reaching leadership. By nurturing and even catalyzing their leadership, the nonprofit acts as an NGO of sorts, a civil-society organ enacting a kind of leadership more flexible and innovative than what public officials can provide. In an age when the state is often dismissed as unresponsive to the citizenry, there exists a heightened need for ethical and enlightened civic activism. A nonprofit can help fill this need, not only through its provision of vital services but also through its support for experienced leaders leveraging their resources to serve the common good.

An organizational staff, including teachers, would be most likely to champion the empowerment of donors if the donor-activists were guided by ideals akin to those expressly informing the work of the organization. Such a match might at times exist. In the case of Waldorf schools, donors seeking to advance the faculty’s liberal mission might attract the faculty’s support. But even those donors would face a formidable hurdle. As Bloom points out, Waldorf faculty are resistant both to wealth and “to the people who have it.” To the faculty, donors represent a privileged class likely unattuned to the needs and values of ordinary people. Faculty—the soldiers on the ground—doubt whether the higher-ups really “get it.”

My point here is not to argue either that wealthy donors make good leaders or that they do not. My point is that nonprofits will sometimes remain unwilling to give development specialists all the backing they need to build relationships conducive to realizing donors’ full range of desires.

Undoubtedly, some wealthy philanthropists question the efficacy of empowering non-elites. Such an attitude may well reveal itself and thereby paint philanthropists generally in a light unattractive to many nonprofit workers. Organizational “foot soldiers” may become confirmed in their belief that elites influence the institution differently from how the foot soldiers themselves would wish. They may conclude that efforts to serve donors’ personal “development” will clash with the institution’s stated function, especially when that function is to meet the needs and wishes of society’s less fortunate.

Even liberal philanthropists—consciously or unconsciously—may subscribe to the conception of stewardship put forth by Andrew Carnegie in his 1889 essay, “Wealth.” Carnegie saw personal fortune as the product of virtue. Men (always men) of means had the exclusive ability as well as the opportunity to create a good society. It was incumbent on them to use their fortunes to fund whatever causes they considered worthy. Simply to disperse money among poorer citizens would be to throw money down a black hole; money could nurture society’s wellbeing only when it was invested purposefully and wisely by those who accumulated it. Men of privilege were uniquely suited, and specially obligated, to lead.

Is it reasonable for an organization’s foot soldiers to mistrust donors who think as Carnegie did? Do generous elitists threaten broad-based democracy? Are progressive staffers destined to support the cultivation of wealthy donors only as a sordid means to a necessary end?

To avoid such a clash in interests, it is incumbent on foot soldiers and wealthy donors alike to challenge their preconceptions about class interests and their impact on staff or donor behavior. And this asks all parties to step back, remember the high calling of nonprofit work, and allow themselves to trust that all involved parties will bring wisdom to the process.

Staff, board, and donors already care enough to do this. All are guided by more than benevolent motives and more than the wish to realize themselves ethically and spiritually. All parties take the organization’s mission seriously. Why else would they care enough to mistrust in the first place? Caring parties are likely to care about the organization’s success at carrying out its mission. Such success depends on all contributors rising up and becoming their best selves—on their moral, emotional, and intellectual growth. Contributors’ trust in their fellow contributors is necessary if the organization is to achieve its highest goals.

Perhaps this requires a leap of faith by those who remain skeptical. No matter. Leaps of faith are central to contribution. All parties arrive at the work with the desire and the capacity to trust and dream, and it is these faculties that must expand. Staff and board need to risk trusting that even the wealthiest of donors will seek to empower the organization’s constituents. Donors must, even for a moment, believe that the poor, uneducated, and frequently untrained recipients of their beneficence are capable of developing in all kinds of necessary ways. Trust in the human capacity to love and grow needs to inform everyone’s contribution.

As we take on the world’s most important work, let us challenge one another to become our very best selves.