It is natural that the concept of generosity would be appropriated by people in business. One of the most direct references I have found is in Keith Ferrazzi’s book Never Eat Alone. The book is about networking; networking at perhaps the most evolved level, as a way of authentically connecting with people, but networking to get ahead in business nevertheless. It is generosity as giving and receiving out of “recognition of a mutual need.” Ferrazzi even has a Generosity group on his ambitious online Greenlight Community. There are 73 members, which makes it one of the largest groups in the network. That may be due to generosity being and underlying ethos to Ferrazzi’s ideas, included in the book’s first section The Mind-Set. Here is Keith Ferrazzi distinguishing generous networking from shmoozing:

Find more videos like this on Greenlight Community

Interestingly, the two other books, both by well known business authors and speakers are allegories. They are stories of business people who find mentors and go on journeys to learn about giving and receiving. Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager and Truett Cathy, founder and chairman of Chick-fil-A, Inc. co-wrote The Generosity Factor. It tells the story of a young broker who answers a notice in a business publication and ends up being mentored by an older executive, who schools him in building a life of significance rather than success. This book seems to have some elements of true altruism, due to its connection to Christian spirituality and its ideas about man’s relationship to his resources and God.

The Go-Giver was written by Bob Burg, the author of Endless Referrals, and John David Mann, who has co-written many business books. It is the tale of an ambitious young salesman who seeks advice from a well-known consultant. That mentor introduces the young man to a number of other businesspeople who teach him different lessons in going from a getter to a giver. This seems quite similar to Ferrazzi’s concepts, which are geared to greater and more authentic satisfaction but still hold out that brass ring of financial success in business.

These books are clearly well-intentioned and hope to steer ambitious business people to more authentic and lasting connections with their colleagues. However, juggling personal gain and generosity with colleagues is challenging in a for-profit work environment. After all, self-interest works; it keeps you looking for your personal advantage in any work situation, thus increasing your likelihood of success over other workers. Generosity by definition does not look for personal advantage; it is openhandedness and giving freely – with no strings attached to pull on later. And stepping out of for-profit culture into relationship with disadvantaged people and causes, beyond writing a donation check or attending a charity function, is even harder. These resources just might set some business people on the path to generosity. Once on it, who knows how far they might go?

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?

As the current economic picture is bad, and future predictions are dire as well, I have been wondering what would be useful to us now that we learned from the Depression and the 9/11 experience. After 9/11, we learned the tragic lessons about how vulnerable we are, especially in urban centers, about how permeable our security was and the trade-offs to tightening that security, and about how hatred can be made tragically manifest on our own soil.  We also learned lovely lessons about our shared identity, how to reach out and gather in community to support each other, learned how moved we can be by the stories of people we have never met, and about how brave, selfless, and without hesitation some people can be.

Although I was not around for the Depression, the media has been giving some coverage about that era. I also gained some personal lessons through my family about being thrifty and reducing waste, about being cooperative and neighborly, and about learning to do without.

Two articles in the Washington Post also addressed this last Sunday. One, Turns Out There’s Good News on Main St., was about “the new localism”, where economic factors are helping to strengthen family and community ties and forcing people to center their lives around where they live. In it, Joel Kotkin documents the trend of Americans changing their places of residence less frequently than in the 1970s. He shows how the change in women’s roles necessitates more extended family and community involvement to help raise kids, and that economic factors are increasing multi-generational family “clustering.” People are also buying more local foods, working, and finding amusement closer to home, stimulated in part by higher energy prices.

The on-line version of the article allows people to comment directly on the article. These comments are sometimes silly or snarky, but also point out some of the problems with this reframing of the economic climate’s repercussions. Some of them talk about how this viewpoint is from a middle- or upper-class urban perspective. They rightly comment that an increase in the incidence and depth of poverty, and the destruction of people’s security and dreams cannot be recast as a positive. People who are already underprivileged, in the cities cited in the article, are the most hard hit by this economy because they have not been getting by even before the crisis and have never been able to afford locally grown food at farmer’s markets. Others talk about how people who live in more rural and less affluent places live by these lessons already and do not need to learn them. Many commenters are justifiably offended by the article’s myopia.

In In Tough Times, Rethinking Wealth, Donna St. George writes about  middle-class families shifting their perspective and

asking themselves about life’s larger priorities — about what is important and why, and about the kind of sacrifice and hardship that was deeply woven into the lives of their parents and grandparents, the generation of the Great Depression and World War II.

She writes about people becoming more centered on the things that matter, delaying gratification and reconsidering what is best for them. This economic situation demands people be more spiritually concerned, less materialistic, and value things more that are without monetarily value, things like

people and relationships, and it’s love and your faith and your neighbors and the people you take care of.

Kerri Wright Platais is interviewed for the story and talked about her father during the depression, how In his lifetime,

it was patriotic not to spend money but to produce our own food and take care of our neighbors and look out for people.

Two things about living during hard times popped up repeatedly in the article. One was a spiritual growth, which had multiple references and two clergy comments. Another was the idea that having less to spend on ourselves helps us focus more on the needs of others.

Again, the comments called for more consideration for people who have so little that living without luxuries is not a reasonable dialogue. And that the thoughtless and excessive spending of recent times by privileged people is an abomination in the face of poverty anyway. Commenters either felt that this economy is not as bad as it has been depicted, or warned of an impending and extreme reduction in personal resources for everyone at all levels.

There is a distinct flavor of class division between the articles themselves and the people who comment on them, which points to the lack of media consideration and outlets for people in lower income brackets. However, I do support the ideas of changing the way we live to fit our current situation, including giving up unnecessary spending. I also believe that living more locally and investing in our families and communities is a good thing. And any opportunity for spiritual deepening is wonderful. Mostly, I am happy to hear people finding an economic downturn to be an ideal time to focus on the needs of others.

What seems to missing here is the bridge between the articles’ authors and interviewees, and the people commenting on them. Actually, privileged and urban people might learn from something valuable from more rural people and those who live in poverty. If middle-class communities and underprivileged communities were not isolated from each other, they could find a way to participate in the same community of care and find the spiritual deepening they seek. For people with more resources, who are evaluating their choices and expenditures, their core concern might not be about delayed gratification and reducing purchases, it might be about better understanding their privilege and using it to help benefit people who otherwise would not get by. Both sides of this socio-economic line would benefit from some investment in community justice, in extended relationships, in love, and in faith. These may be the lessons that were learned during the Depression and after 9/11. It is time to harvest that wisdom and learn them again.

I, like many people, am fearful about money now. For some people it is an abstract concern about the world economy; for many people like me, is it an immediate concern about paying the monthly bills or keeping a job. Everyone seems to be feeling the underlying anxiety for our future.  So what can you do, aside from worry, hoard as much as you can, obsessively watch the news, and try to understand the thicket of economic system detail – which will just clench your fists and make you more anxious?

Well I hope this blog helps a little, since it focuses on moving toward an open heart and open hands. I do not want to sounds naive or avoidant but since the current news is bad and the future predictions are grim, it might be worthwhile to seek some strategies other than becoming immobilized with fear.

Here are two rather wonderful blog postings that do this. The first was sent by a friend and details a lot of economic theory in simple language. If you are feeling lost in economic technicalities, Charles Eisenstein’s writing might help. Charles is a thinker and seeker whose whole book, The Ascent of Humanity, is available on his web page. Rather than trying to desperately clutch at our financial resources he recommends a complete shift in perspective and activities.

Here is how Charles puts it:

In the face of the impending crisis, people often ask what they can do to protect themselves. “Buy gold? Stockpile canned goods? Build a fortified compound in a remote area? What should I do?” I would like to suggest a different kind of question: “What is the most beautiful thing I can do?”

He recommends investing in our interconnectedness: doing what we can to keep our natural and social resources out of the monetary system by working cooperatively through gifts, reciprocity, self-sufficiency, and community sharing with our friends and neighbors.  He says,

Think of it this way: if you already do not depend on money for some portion of life’s necessities and pleasures, then the collapse of money will pose much less of a harsh transition for you.

Another useful posting was by Gretchen Craft Rubin, who is a writer working on a book called The Happiness Project. On her blog of the same name, she recommends that if you are feeling anxious and powerless, that “there is a way that you can both help people living in poverty and help yourself feel happier: Give to other people.”

She says that, “although we assume that we act because of the way we feel, often we feel because of the way we act” and recommends that we act generously when we feel poor.

When you tell yourself that you can’t afford to give, you increase your feelings of panic and danger. If you find ways to give, you will show yourself that you have enough and more, that you can be generous, that you recognize that others have needs more pressing than your own – and that will make you feel better.

One way or the other we all have to get through this time and whatever economic climate is coming down the pike. We might as well support each other and do something beautiful.

Who is not feeling anxious right now about the economy and our personal finances? Since our personal finances affect our sense of security and freedom, that anxiety quickly spreads all over our lives. The Fetzer Institute Campaign for Love and Forgiveness has a blog and put a posting about this on Tuesday. Although the posting is rather long, it was so positive in these negative times that I post it entirely here:

Are you feeling financially sapped and worried about the future? You’re not alone. The ongoing financial crisis and growing uncertainty have rolled through our collective conscience like a tsunami. So suggesting we practice generosity may seem counterintuitive. Generosity, however, takes many forms that don’t require an infusion of cash, but still pay wonderful dividends. Consider sharing a smile, opening a door for someone, having friends over for dinner, visiting an elderly friend or relative, picking up trash on the sidewalk so someone else doesn’t have to, offering a compliment, or a good thought or a prayer. Being generous in creative ways might just make you feel a little better and may even start spreading a more sustainable kind of wealth.

This reminded me of a real gem that Fetzer put out a number of years ago called Living the Generous Life: Reflections on Giving and Receiving. This lovely publication, available in full on the web without charge, shares my idea of generosity as a key to deep personal satisfaction and a pathway to changing the world. It grew out of a Fetzer Institute funded project that looked into the nature of generosity as seen through the traditional stories of cultures all over the world. It also created a cross-cultural anthology of stories that address generosity and a web site called Learning to Give. I will write about those another time but for now hope you will calm and refresh yourself in these frightening times by looking at Living the Generous Life.

Why do people give their financial resources to charity? As you might imagine research on the topic shows that donor motivation is extremely complex.  Paul Schervish of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy is probably the best known sociology researcher into donor motivation. However, economists also study why people give. What these researchers are essentially looking into is why people give, assuming that we do not give just because we feel want the needy person to have it – there must be some personal benefit we will gain in the giving.

In 1989, James Andreoni theorized that people did not give out of pure altruism. In economics, altruism describes giving that is not dependent on social conditions or norms, and expresses a preference for other people’s material or psychic benefit. Andreoni considered this pure altruism and tested the notion that giving produces a pleasurable feeling he called the warm glow. This warm glow gave a motive for giving that focused on the experience of the donor rather than the benefit of the recipient.

More recently, James Konow, of Loyola Marymount University theorized and found empirically that giving was usually a result of both altruism and emotions (warm glow), that led to the fulfillment of social norms. However he found that these emotional predictors of giving behavior could be associated with bad as well as good feelings.

The economist William T. Harbaugh of the University of Oregon talks specifically about warm glow and prestige, as two reasons donors give. The prestige comes through signaling income and gaining social approval. He recommends that charities use giving categories because these brackets fulfill the prestige desires of donors.

So why do you give your financial resources away to charity – to nonprofits, churches, to people you know, or to people on the street? Is it out of pure altruism, really expecting nothing in return? Is it to gain social prestige, to fulfill a social norm? Do you give becuase you feel good or you feel bad? Or do you give to get that warm glow, knowing you have done the right thing? This is worth us all thinking about.