…once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
- Seamus Heaney

Katherine Fulton at TED | www.leslieimage.com

What do current trends in philanthropy tell us about what we might expect in the future? Katherine Fulton is a speaker and author about philanthropy and social change. In her video lecture on TED, she envisions us – you and I – and all of us, as leaders in philanthropy to effect social change.

Fulton shows how philanthropy now is moving toward global reach and efforts, it is entrepreneurial, and is democratizing, where the average person has more power than at any time in the past. To show this, she gives 5 categories of experiments, each of which challenges an old assumption about philanthropy. In this list there are many organizations that you may want to look up; I have not hot-linked them for your ease in reading, however a web search will pop up any of them:

• Mass collaboration through sites like Wikipedia and WISER – World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility and the work of Paul Hawken who wrote the recent book, Blessed Unrest.

We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have we have Wikipedia… Suddenly big things can be done for love.
- Clay Shirky

• Online philanthropy marketplaces: Kiva, Global Giving, Network for Good, Donor Choose, Youth Give, Give India, and many others challenge the idea that organized philanthropy is only for the wealthy.
• Aggregated giving: Acumen fund, New Profit, New Schools Venture Fund, Venture Philanthropy Partners, and Global Fund for Women build philanthropy communities and challenge the assumption that each giver should have his/her own fund.
• Innovation Competitions: Efforts like X Prize place the problem at the center of the effort rather than the giver and the organization.
• Social investing: Organizations like Xigi.net refute the idea that business and philanthropy are separate and distinct. They are creating a way for businesses that have a financial bottom line can use a small portion of their economic clout to develop social capital markets.

Fulton then talks about the future:

Our ability to confront the problems that we face has not kept pace with our ability to create them. It is no exaggeration to say that we hold the future of our civilization in our hands as never before. We are going to need a new generation of citizen leaders willing to commit ourselves to growing and changing and learning as rapidly as possible.

Finally she offers us this way of imagining what we hope for:

I want you to imagine that this is a photograph of you, and I want you to think about the community that you want to be a part of creating, whatever that means to you. And I want you to imagine that it’s 100 years from now, and your grandchild, or great-grandchild, or niece or nephew or god-child, is looking at this photograph of you. What is the story you most want for them to tell?

Photo of you today as seen 100 years from now - imagine...

Here is the video of Katherine Fulton speaking at TED:

Brian McLaren

A colleague had a Brian McLaren quote as part of his electronic signature, and it seemed to point a different way toward generosity growing out of our current economic crisis. McLaren is an author of over 10 influential books on Christianity in our modern context, he is a speaker, and a pastor. Currently he is talking about using the economic recovery as a way to shed our free-spending habits like an addiction. Peter Singer is an Australian philosopher, professor and author who recently published The Life You Can Save, which calls affluent people to increase their effort to end poverty in other countries. In essence these men are talking about the same thing: reducing our consumerism for our own sakes as well as the sake of the whole world.

Here is the quote from Brian McLaren:

For many people, economic recovery means getting back to where we were a few months ago. That means recovering our consumptive, greedy, unrestrained, undisciplined, irresponsible, and ecologically and socially unsustainable way of life. I’d like to suggest another kind of recovery, drawing from the world of addiction. When an addict gets into recovery, he wants to move forward to a new way of life… a wiser way of life that takes into account his experience of addiction.  He realizes that his addiction to drugs was a symptom of other deeper issues and diseases in his life … unresolved pain or anger, the need to anesthetize painful emotions, lack of creativity in finding ways to feel happy and alive, unaddressed relational and spiritual deficits, lack of self-awareness, and so on.

Notice how McLaren is pointing to painful things we are trying to salve with our consumerism.

Peter Singer

And here is Peter Singer on the same topic:

If anything good comes out of this global financial crisis, it will be a reassessment of our basic values and priorities. We need to recognize that what really matters isn’t buying more and more consumer goods, but family, friends, and knowing that we are doing something worthwhile with our lives. Helping to reduce the appalling consequences of world poverty should be part of that reassessment.

Singer speaks to the joyous things we can work toward as we shed that addiction. They are nice bookends. Here, in a trailer for a film called The Examined Life, Singer talks (after Cornell West) about the ethics of our consumerism in light of the needs of our whole planet.

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Although he has never smoked, Rabbi Michael Lerner heard in late January that he has a relatively rare form of lung cancer. He was supposed to be operated on today but pre-tests indicated a possible heart-blockage. So probably tomorrow, Rabbi Lerner will be undergoing a procedure to open the blockage. Rabbi Lerner is the editor of Tikkun Magazine, Rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley, California, the chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and is a proponent of generosity as a way to fight poverty, end political & military aggression, and save the environment. He writes about his diagnosis in an article on OpEdNews.com answering the query of what people can do to support him. He asks for prays, so I hope you will join me now for a moment of prayer for him. Rabbi Lerner writes:

The first thing you can do is to pray for me, or if prayer is not your thing, you can use meditation, song, poetry, words, or actions to communicate to the universe your desire to support my recovery!

Under Rabbi Lerner’s leadership, the Network of Spiritual Progressives has proposed a Strategy of Generosity. Here is how they define their strategy:

The key to our alternative, what we call the Strategy of Generosity, is our commitment to reestablish trust and hope among the peoples of the world so that we might begin to reflect and act coherently on ending world poverty in our lifetimes and saving the global environment from the almost certain destruction it faces unless we reverse our policies and give highest priority to protecting the earth. Instead of asking “what serves the interests of American economic and political geo-power best?” we want a foreign policy that asks “What best serves all the people on this planet and best serves the survival of the planet itself?”

They are particularly focused on ending warfare by reorienting ourselves and our resources toward generosity:

The war on terrorism is not going to work. War and domination as instruments of homeland security are the wrong strategies. It is through caring for and generosity toward others that we can most successfully provide security for our families, our country, and ourselves. People in most countries may not yet be ready to give up their militaries, but we may be able to convince them that each nation’s military should stay inside the borders of its own country, and that every dollar spent on the military should be matched by another dollar to fund our alternative for homeland security: the Strategy of Generosity. We seek to achieve homeland security through overt caring about the well-being of everyone else on the planet.

How can this benefit you in your consideration of generosity?

• Know that there are national spiritual leaders who feel that generosity can have profound global effects – so your individual practice informs and adds to that vision.
• Find new ways to implement generosity in concert with national organizations by visiting the Spiritual Progressives web page and acting on the support steps they suggest.
• Exercise your generosity by sending prayers to Rabbi Michael Lerner, who is struggling with his health.

With characteristic generosity, Rabbi Lerner ends his message by offering gratitude and asking forgiveness. He deserves our prayers:

I thank God for all the opportunities I have been given to learn, to teach, and to serve, and ask forgiveness from you personally for the ways that I may have failed you or offended you in the past.

I was working recently with a group of people who were so stuck in the idea that they were financially poor, they were so fearful in their present (and imminent) financial situation, that it limited their vision. This tunnel vision made it impossible for them to see or appreciate the gifts that they had been given by people in the past, the beauty and abundance that surrounds them, and the incredible potential of the future. Not surprisingly, they were also so worried about their own state, and that of the institution that housed them, that they failed to see opportunities to support others, reach out to others, or invite others in. Unfortunately, according to some experts, this myopia will not only make them unhappy, but will do further harm our already struggling economy.

Carlos Hoevel

Carlos Hoevel is a professor of history and philosophy of economics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, who has been doing research on Blessed Antonio Rosmini, an 18th century Italian Roman Catholic priest and philosopher. Rosmini was one of the first Catholic thinkers to embrace the market economy and strongly believed that it couldn’t function without an ethical and moral foundation.

Antonio Rosmini

Hoevel was asked what Rosimini’s solution would be to the current crisis. His response was that, according to the Rosmini’s vision, what we most need now is not so much the endless injection of billions of dollars and euros into the economy and heavy government interference, but the urgent recovery of moral balance and moral content. What he is saying here is that changing how we treat each other will help our economy recover much more than infusing cash into the system and attempting to make everyone financially better off.

Arthur C. Brooks

Arthur C. Brooks, is the recently elected president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and author of Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America — and How We Can Get More of It. He says,

People who give away their time and money to established charities are far more likely than non-givers to act generously in informal ways as well. For example, one nationwide survey from 2002 tells us that monetary donors are nearly three times as likely as non-donors to give money informally to friends and strangers. People who give to charity at least once per year are twice as likely to donate blood as people who don’t give money. They are also significantly more likely to give food or money to a homeless person, or to give up their seat to someone on a bus.

In other words, people who are generous are much more likely to act morally is a range of situations.  Brooks also says,

There is evidence that giving makes people happy. A number of studies have concluded that giving affects our brain chemistry. People who give often report feelings of euphoria, which psychologists have referred to as the ‘Helper’s High.’ They believe that charitable activity induces endorphins that produce a very mild version of the sensations people get from drugs like morphine and heroin.

So by being generous, we have an opportunity to be happier while we are acting more morally. If an 18th century philosopher can be believed, that may also be a way back to economic stability and growth.

Sasha Dichter is the Director of Business Development at Acumen Fund, a global non-profit venture capital fund that invests in enterprises that fight poverty in the developing world. He writes in his blog about how optimism and pessimism play a part in today’s financial markets. He tells an old joke to illustrate the subjectivity of a down-turn:

Two guys hear a bear outside their tent in the woods.  The first guy starts lacing up his Nikes, and the second guy says, ‘What are you doing?  There’s no way you can outrun a bear.’  The first guy says, ‘I don’t have to run faster than the bear; I just have to run faster than you.’

This is an illustration of the mercenary and opportunistic attitude that played a part in creating the current mess in the world economy. Dichter’s concern is about how donors and foundations will react to this downturn, whether they will react like the camper in sneakers and consider charity a disposable luxury or become more philanthropic because of the greater need of the most vulnerable among us.

Sasha Dichter

Dichter has a Manifesto on the same website, In Defense of Raising Money. It is worth reading for any fund raiser, any non-profit leader, and certainly for donors. In it he says that we may need a new word for fund raiser and says he,

… would rather be an evangelist, a storyteller, an educator, a translator, a table‐pounder, a guy on his soap box, a woman with a megaphone, a candidate for change.

And Dichter is, like many professional fund raisers, inspirational and optimistic. Back on his posting about the current economic downturn, he says,

From what I’ve seen so far, donors and foundations are taking their philanthropic commitments very seriously and doing what they can to step up and support the nonprofits they believe in. And that’s a good thing. It’s tantamount to running TOWARDS the bear and scaring him away.

Perhaps if we all pump up our cooperation and optimism to run towards the bear, it will benefit the people in the most need - and the bear may magically turn into back into a bull.

So let’s say you are interested in a global issue like world hunger. Perhaps you had a vacation in India and were dazzled by the beautiful sights, bright colors, delicious food, and welcoming people. But you were also deeply disturbed by the poverty and living conditions of some of the people there. You may have seen people that you thought were literally starving and did not know what to do about it. So you returned to your home in the United States and hoped to find a way to make a difference, through a donation or other means.

Like many people might, you sit at your computer, go to your favorite search engine, type the words World Hunger in the search box and click on Search Web. You will certainly get, at the top for the results page, a group of links to nonprofits or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that have paid for that top placement because their mission is to fight world hunger. Below that you will find links to reports on world hunger, publications, and perhaps a blog posting about hunger issues. You may choose to do some research on sites that are more academically, historically, or religiously based. Or you may go directly to the web site of one of the aid agencies that fights hunger.

When you visit this NGO site, what do you find? Well, I just did that and clicked on the first site in the top box of my screen; I will not give you their name.  I came to an organization home page that shows their logo, a small box with some statistics, and a large photo that dominates the page of a small, dirty child with pleading eyes and an empty bowl. A video immediately starts playing about a young child and the miserable conditions she lives in. It does not show her gaining assistance from the organization or anyone else; indeed she seems to live with her helpless siblings in isolated misery. The only navigation buttons on the page are ones where I can send this video to a group of my friends, and where I can donate money, one for a one-time gift and one for a monthly gift. Surprisingly, there are no navigation buttons anywhere on the site to tell me about this organization, who works for them, what countries they work in, how they distribute food, what their strategy is, and what kind of results they have. They only have their address (a PO box) and phone number.

Photo by Susan Hardman (not taken from NGO site)

With this organization, there is nothing for me to do or learn. My only choice for engagement or interaction is to give money electronically; no chance for human interaction, for building solidarity with people who are starving, for learning about hunger issues or contributing anything but my money. I am an intelligent, curious, well-educated, resourceful, energetic, able-bodied person who wants to make a difference and in this instance I am reduced to a nobody (who can use his charge card). Worse than that, the child in the picture and those in the video are reduced to ciphers, shallow representations of victims, with no resources in their families, communities, environments, no inherent potentialities. They are solely objects of pity.

This may be a wonderful and effective organization. However, through my first and only interaction with it, I have learned that it is patronizing to me and its beneficiaries. It is not interested in anything but my money and will take that through a cold white electronic form. Since it is not willing to tell me anything up front about how well it uses the resources it collects, I would assume that I will get no report of how my contributions have made any difference after they have been given. There is nothing on the site to indicate they are connected to any other organizations, ones that sanction nonprofits or even ones that guarantee secure financial transactions on websites. I wish them well but go to another site.

The example above is real and not exaggerated in the lack of information available on their site. However, it is an extreme example that illustrates an outmoded way of engaging people to help with a mission. The newer way is to be transparent, informative, engaging, have options for people to create their own interactions, and in the end allow people to use the richness of their gifts (and not just their money) to assist with a problem. I believe that people are looking for meaning, connectedness, to be recognized and to be useful. They are also aware of how much we have to give to something we care about. Some organizations understand this and are using the knowledge effectively.

The Hunger Project is a great example. Their home page is full of information, but is not cluttered. It depicts people, in photos and stories, working toward their own self-reliance. They have clear buttons leading to sub-pages describing who they are, what they do, and where they work. When you click on their Get Involved link, you come to a page that gives you options for a whole list of ways to give financially as well as options for corporate sponsorship, volunteering, support their business partners, attending or hosting events, traveling with them to their work sites to help, and working with them as an employee, an intern or a pro bono technical supporter. In other words, you can choose to interact with their mission solely through the web, at their offices, just with other supporters, or in the countries they serve. They actually mean it when they say get involved.

Photo from The Hunger Project site

The Hunger Project web page also has information available in different formats (including video), has a report of their results, and shows Hunger Project as being recognized by 3 rating organizations.  In other words, this organization gives me self-determination; just as it gives it to the people it serves. It also recognizes my individual preferences and ability to give various types of gifts; just as the people it serves have ways to contribute. It assumes that I will do research to make sure my gifts are used effectively. It even has a program for me to do direct face-to-face work with the people that it serves. This is not only an organization I would want to engage with, it serves as a great example to other organizations.

A question always looming over donor relationships is: how ready is the organization for lots of really passionate people to engage and invest with them, not just donate? How can they balance their strategic plans and methods with the influence of their contributors, be they donors, volunteers, or beneficiaries? I call this openness to non-staff contributors, organizational permeability. Hosting these non-staff members takes staff or volunteer time, which can be draining to needed resources. If those people are forceful and have significant amounts of money to donate, they will also want to help determine the goals and strategies of the organization. And, if unguided, these passionate givers may create “mission drift”, where the priorities of the organization alter to accommodate a particularly influential or generous donor.

I believe that deflecting the passion of these people and walling them off from true engagement is a waste of potential assets. It can turn away both their financial resources and everything else they may have to contribute. The clear alternative to this is to seek their involvement and guide them to an understanding of the organization’s planning and strategies. This can be achieved by giving contributors well crafted choices of communication formats and levels of engagement, which will reveal and develop their interests and capacities. Meanwhile, balancing the benefits of permeability and contributor engagement against the dangers of contributor demands and mission drift will need to be perennially considered and calibrated by nonprofit organizations.

[Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with The Hunger Project in any way and have never visited their web site before. Therefore, I cannot vouch for any of their work – beyond their web strategy and implementation, which is excellent. Check them out for yourself!]

There is a whole movement of social entrepreneurship now where people are using a market-based approach to help make significant change in the world, sometimes addressing the most intractable or desperate problems. Instead of creating change through volunteering or political action, these are enterprises with social programs as a core part of their business plan. It is kind of like building a charitable program with the funding source built in. This is significantly different from a for-profit business like Toyota, whose business is to sell cars, partnering in a social cause effort (sometimes called cause marketing).

One of the most famous, and financially successful of these philanthropic entrepreneurs is Jonathan Greenblatt, who worked on the X Prize and helped found Ethos Water. He has gone on to publish Good Magazine, which combines entertainment with social change and makes charitable donations as part of its business plan. You can check him out in an interview on the wonderful National Public Radio program Speaking of Faith. Ethos Water has grown so big it is now competing with some of the big bottled water producers. A portion of the income from every bottle purchased goes toward humanitarian water programs around the world. The X Prize Foundation gives large cash prizes to teams that look to achieve things like sending a robot to the moon, producing a super-efficient car, and finding ways to use personal genetic information to prevent disease. Their method inspires people to put millions of their own dollars into the development of these products, which multiplies the benefits gained. Greenblatt says that he now is working with the X Prize Foundation on using the model to address persistent poverty.

Is this generosity or is this just smart business – appealing to the altruism of its customers so it can make them feel good about consuming and sell more products? When people are financially successful and things grow to a larger scale this basic question gets harder and harder to answer. After all they are marketing to us to fund programs for people who do not have what we have. The entrepreneurs get a viable business and compensation for their work, we pay for a product and get it – along with the knowledge we are helping a worthy effort, and the beneficiaries get something they need: a win-win-win situation. However, the opportunity for personal gain at the expense of others, or the original values of the enterprise, must be rife.

One company I find charming in its directness and ebullience is Tom’s Shoes, started by Blake Mycoskie. Tom’s produces simple espadrille type shoes that are commonly warn in Argentina (called alpargatas). These are available in all type of fabrics, colors and patterns. For every pair of shoes you buy, Tom’s gives a pair of shoes to a needy person or child. Those people get the same basic shoe you do. Since 2006, they have given away 85,000 shoes in Argentina and South Africa. Having shoes to wear can fight significant health problems from cuts and infections in the developing world, where people often have to walk long distances to get water and other supplies. Tom’s also engages high school and college kids in a program to distribute the shoes (called a Shoe Drop) and to travel around the country talking to their peers about issues of poverty and promoting social entrepreneurship, and of course Tom’s Shoes.  From their web site, the whole enterprise looks like it is fueled by joy, which is not surprising given the benefits they are distributing. And I love that the consumer uses the same product as the beneficiaries. That connection emphasizes that we all have the same basic needs and just how small the world is now.

One of the definitions of generosity is: freely giving more than is necessary or expected. It certainly seems like these companies are doing that. Is bears watching what freely means to them as they grow and prosper.

One of the trepidations I have about charitable giving is that writing a check to a charity can actually distance me from the people I am concerned about. So if I am concerned about teen pregnancy, writing a check can actually put a barrier between me and girls who get pregnant before age 18.

How could that be? Well it may involve factors having to do with my internal conceptions. I may use charitable donation as a way to emphasize that I am different from those too-young women saying, look how different I am – I am even empowered to offer my financial resources, while they are needy.

Another way that simply donating might maintain the difference between me and them is by making me feel that I have answered my concern, quenched my care, by contributing. Problem solved; no need for further action.  Also if I feel that I have done my part, I may never learn more about who those young mothers-to-be are and may continue to walk around with my opinions, my misconceptions (pun intended!) and my biases intact. These may include that pregnant teens are all poor or from bad neighborhoods.

If the nonprofit where I send my donation uses stories about teens that are the most desperate, in an effort to motivate my financial giving, it may do nothing to help re-educate me. If they do not include a program to engage me, not just volunteering for them but engaging me with that population in some way, I may remain at a distance. And if it sends me a hat with the name of the organization on it or a tote bag with its slogan, I may be even more sure that I have made a big difference, and less motivated to actually get involved.

What I am getting at here is that if you are concerned about a specific population or problem, really concerned, then it behooves you to get personally involved. In that case, your financial contribution is just one of the things you should give along with your curiosity, your skills, muscle, time, energy, voice, etc. or at least a few of these.

And in the end, I believe you need to risk creating a relationship with those people or that issue. In relationship, you will really find out about at least one of those teen mothers-to-be and will understand her gifts, strengths, and potential as well as what she needs for support. As the same time, she might find out about you and your vulnerabilities, wants, and cares as well as the gifts you have to give.

So how do you do that? If you have local concerns, it should be pretty easy to volunteer at a local charity and get engaged in a way that you can get real with some of their beneficiaries. This might be feeding the hungry in your town, or tutoring young men in a local prison.

If you are concerned about people who are far from where you live, in Africa or Central America for instance, you still have some opportunities to establish real in-person relationships. One of those is through your personal travel. There is an article today in the New York Times about travel efforts and companies that have philanthropic components. There are also international volunteer opportunities; so that you can use your vacation time to go somewhere and work to support people who need it (you can do that domestically as well!). For this option, you may want to start with the United Nations Volunteer program, World Volunteer Web.

Finally, and this is probably the most challenging, is a Pilgrimage of Reverse Mission because it,

does not include constructing buildings or providing specialized medical services in impoverished areas. A ‘pilgrimage of reverse mission’ is about building relationships…

This is a program of a Christian organization called the Ministry of Money. They seek, through these journeys to help the travelers they host to,

• express our gratitude,
• acknowledge our responsibility,
• become agents of systemic change and reconciliation, and
• be responsive to new forms of discipleship.

It is about being present with people who are the poorest of the poor to create meaningful relationships with them. Sounds challenging and risky? Yes it certainly looks like it. Even if you are not able to take that big step, find a way to establish a relationship with someone who belongs to a social group you are concerned about deeply. It will teach you so much more about them and about yourself. You will help just by your being truly present with them. And you will have a clearer idea of how much and what other ways you can give generously to them.

Lately I have been trying hard to provide inspiration and give some rest from the fear and anxiety our economic crash is causing. I seldom go for the tear-jerker story because heroic opportunities seldom present themselves and you can make most situations measurably better without doing something outrageous. I believe we can all be generous every day.

However, sometimes stories demonstrate that your generosity can have an affect many times greater than what it costs you to give. That is true of Darin Hughes’ story from The Buffalo News. While doing an energy audit at someone’s house he saw a homemade flyer by a woman who was looking for a service dog and van for her brother who is a quadriplegic. Buddy was,

…living alone in a very small apartment that is not completely wheelchair accessible. As a quadriplegic, his health is always an issue and he suffers daily from severe muscle spasms that shake his body hard enough to cause nausea and headaches. Add to this financial trouble and difficulty negotiating state assistance programs.

As if loneliness and financial trouble were not enough, Buddy also lost his transportation, an aging handicap van that had been in for repair more than it had been on the road. Stuck in a small apartment, he was losing the will to live.

A few months after hearing that Darin had taken the brochure, Buddy’s sister got a call from him. She assumed that Darin wanted to give something for the fundraiser she had scheduled. But when she met him, after only a brief conversation, Darin gave her the gift of keys to a van for Buddy. After that he also gave Buddy a part time job so that he had some meaningful activity and qualified for a state assistance program.  Buddy’s sister says that the job has given him a feeling of worth, a sense of accomplishment and a will to live.
and

This tremendous gift has become a new lease on life for Buddy — and for those of us who love him, there can be no greater gift.

It is impossible to know how easy or hard it was for Darin to give away a van. It is also difficult to say what this gift, and now his relationship with Buddy, means to Darrin. But clearly he heard about someone who really needed help, he took it upon himself to provide what was needed, and he continued to offer support. At any level of giving, that makes people like Darin a hero.

Although unemployment is rising sharply and businesses are struggling, no one knows as yet how badly average people are going to be affected by the economic downturn and how long it will last. Many people are tightening their belts because they have to or just in case. While I would definitely not recommend putting yourself in financial jeopardy by donating beyond your means right now, I would encourage you to keep giving what you can charitably. Remember that in hard times, disadvantaged people suffer disproportionately and nonprofits struggle with tighter finances to meet their missions. Your support is needed more than ever to help us all through this.

If you cannot increase your giving, you should think about supplementing it now with some non-monetary donations. Trent Hamm, on his helpful blog The Simple Dollar, gives some great tips for giving real contributions that do not involve giving money. People are concerned about having to choose between paying their bills and contributing to urgent causes. Here is Trent’s answer:

My response to that is simple: give what you have. No one expects or wants you to put yourself in a deep personal crisis to give. Instead, give of those things which you have in abundance and wait until your financial life is in order to contribute money. Instead, contribute of yourself in other ways.

He gives some good ideas about volunteering such as making and distributing food, giving your time, skills, and expertise. Two suggestions I particularly like are to Give Your Patience, where you would purposefully volunteer to do menial jobs for an organization, and to Give Your Compassion, which Trent relates to volunteering at a hospice organization. I think you could give your compassion in any number of volunteer situations, from spending time with elderly people in a nursing home, to volunteering at a Boys & Girls club.

I just like his framing of a humane quality, a virtue, as a gift that you can donate and be of service to other people.  Here are some other virtues that might be given as donations: courage, wisdom, justice, moderation, faith, or hope. I suppose most volunteers are giving these things all the time but probably would not express it in those terms. I wonder what response you would get when offering volunteer opportunities categorized by virtue; if you are patient you might do X, if you are hopeful you might do Y. Most people have enough self-knowledge I think to know which of these qualities most describes them, so maybe this would be a good volunteer matching tool.

Of course another cardinal virtue is charity, or what I would call generosity. In that case, what jobs would be matched to someone who was predominantly generous?