This is the time… to be generous.
Kathy Engel, from her poem Inaugural

Kathy Engel

Kathy Engel speaks beautifully about generosity. She is a poet and has written a poem for our time called Inaugural; its opening line is quoted above. Engel is the co-founder of numerous organizations, including MADRE and Riptide Communications. She is the author of Banish The Tentative and Ruth’s Skirts, and teaches at New York University. She was interviewed by Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) which a web project “seeking to make the United States a more responsible global partner.” In the interview, Engel echoes many of the themes of this blog: the connections between personal generosity, our larger culture, and the environment. She also speaks of the opportunities that our current economic crisis provides. I encourage you to read the whole interview.

Here is Engel speaking about generosity and social justice in the current economic and environmental crises:

Generosity means letting go: risk, community, wholeness. Consumerism, greed, narcissism, and narrow-mindedness have exploded in our faces in the form of “economic crisis.” It’s a kind of economic autism. We know that most of the world, and so many in this country, have been living in economic crisis all along, while at the same time many in this country have blindly acquired and borrowed, acquired and borrowed, without a sense of connection to community or earth… We live in abundance and act out of a sense of scarcity. Even in this crisis we are surrounded by abundance, just not shared abundance.

Engels also connects generosity to environmentalism (for more on this see Environmentalism and Love):

Generosity is a necessity for a new way of living together, in families, in the workplace, in communities, across borders, on this planet. It also means thinking about what you need and about what other humans and animals need, what the earth and air needs. Living connected… We need to redefine ownership, the economics and possible largeness of mutual ownership versus the limitations of individual possession, in light of the stress of resources we have, as a species, created on the earth.

She even understands poetry as growing out of generosity:

Poetry is rooted in generosity. It is the window letting air in and the air itself, and everything complicated that one sees and experiences in the air when looking clearly.

Her poem Inaugural is an example of that window, beautiful as well as inspiring. It is well worth reading.

No one has ever become poor by giving.
- Anne Frank

Today is Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, a celebration that precedes the intentionally austere time of Christian Lent. Whatever your beliefs or traditions, during this cold and leafless period after the New Year and before the signs of spring, I hope you will consider being generous as well as simplifying or giving up certain things.

The 40-day Christian Lenten period prepares the believer through prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial, for Easter – the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many Christian traditions proscribe certain dietary restrictions during this time and even days of fasting, while others ask their followers to give up a certain well-loved food or activity of their choosing. Many Chrisitians are also called upon to give alms during this time. In Christian traditions, almsgiving, which is charitable giving to the poor often in an unplanned way, is distinguished from tithing, which is a calculated charitable gift that is often given to institutions (like churches).

Beyond the Christian traditions, this time of practicing simplicity, generosity and looking inward in the spare winter months is common in many cultures and religions, going back to hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies. In our modern, 24-hour, globalized culture, these customs are more challenging to practice except on intentional retreats or on purposefully relaxed vacations. However, generosity and alms giving are 2 things you can practice even in the midst of a relentless schedule.

For the next 40 days (that would be until April 5th) please consider being more generous as a winter practice. You might decide to pay close attention during this time to people you encounter that have financial needs, and try to give them something. This might be a person asking on the street, someone with a collection can at the supermarket, or anyone you meet who has lost their job. The opportunities are all around you every day if you are looking for them.

If you need a reminder, consider wearing a green string on your wrist for the next 40 days. After that, it may become part of how you normally navigate your world.

Giving is the new taking, and sharing is the new giving.
-trendwatching.com

'To be a greedy pig or a free cone, that’s the question' -trendwatching.com

trendwatching.com is an independent trend firm, based in Amsterdam, that relies on a network of 8,000+ spotters to find consumer trends and marketing ideas. They put out a free monthly trend briefing culled from the information they have gathered. This month their briefing is called Generation G: that would be G for ‘Generosity’ not G for ‘Greed’ and it gives evidence that generosity is a long-overdue ‘umbrella trend’ that pulls together various existing and new sub-trends in business. The information they present is substantial and is worth looking at, from a for-profit and nonprofit perspective. The real question here: Is this really generosity?

A series of previous postings on this blog also address the intersection of business and altruistic generosity. Some titles to look for are The Business of Generosity (Parts 1 -4), Is the Gift Economy Generous?, and Economic Systems and People in Poverty.

The trendwatch.com briefing cites 3 drivers that are fueling this emerging generosity trend:

1. Recession and consumer disgust
2. Longing for institutions that care
3. For individuals, giving is already the new taking, and sharing is the new giving

We’re talking the collaborative / free / creation / crowdsourced / gift / sharing movement* that—especially online—has unlocked in entirely new ways the perennial need of individuals to be appreciated, to be loved, to feel part of the greater good, to contribute, to help… To basically find status and gratification in something other than consuming the most or the best.
-trendwatching.com

Then they go on to list 8 Ways for Corporations to Join Generation G:

1. CO-DONATE: innovative corporate donations programs (to charities)
2. ECO-GENEROSITY: beyond compensating for the environmental degradation they create, actually improving the environment
3. FREE LOVE: giving things away as a way to build customer relationships
4. BRAND BUTLERS: brands offering things to consumers that they need, and also allows them to promote the brand
5. PERKONOMICS: perks for the consumer from a brand  – that might be completely unrelated to the product
6. TRYVERTISING: allowing consumers to try the product free for a period of time
7. RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS (RAK): providing gifts to the consumer in a random/unpredictable way, employs chance
8. (F)RIGID NO MORE: businesses just being nicer and more accommodating to their customers

Joining GENERATION G as a company or a brand is not really optional,
it’s a fundamental requirement if you want to stay relevant
in societies that value generosity, sharing and collaboration.
-trendwatching.com

These 8 Ways have clever names, but they do describe interesting business models, patterns for business development, and marketing techniques. If you want to learn more, you should really go to the briefing itself. It is engaging and full of images and does actually delineate and document these different ways.
If you are interested in charitable giving or from a nonprofit perspective, what is important about this information?

• The first two items actually fund charities and if you are in a non-profit, you might gain assistance with your mission through this conduit.
• These are all methods of engagement that are adaptable to the nonprofit environment. Engagement is the key to building relationships with your contributors and constituents.
• If people are used to interacting in these ways, they expect to interact in these ways, so you might need to adjust your communications program to adapt to this trend.
• Along the same lines, your contributors and constituents will expect you to be less oriented toward transactions (you give me a donation, I will give you this tote bag), will expect you to show caring for them as well as your mission beneficiaries, and they will expect you to engage in sharing (that is, equitable and collective giving and taking from both sides). This last element, sharing, may be the most difficult for traditional nonprofits to conceptualize and implement.

One of the most inspiring things to me about this trend report is, I think they are right. trendwatch.com is guiding businesses to take advantage of a cultural shift that is taking place, and is evidenced in many different sectors, from the grandiose philanthropic world to intimate personal interactions. Although I am ambivalent about people’s impulse toward generosity being used for commercial gain (which may just be fueling a repackaging of greed), I am glad it is strong enough for the commercial world to want to reflect. And who knows, maybe it will grow a broader ethos of generosity.

The larger and more lasting trend is passionate, empowered individuals
(if not entire generations) being more willing and able
to give, to share, to collaborate; to be more ‘generous’ in many ways.
-trendwatching.com

VRM is about making better customers — on customers’ terms, and in better ways than any vendor makes available today. – Doc Searls

I believe that by giving contributors more ways to engage with nonprofits and more say over that engagement, that these contributors will be more generous with all of their resources (time, muscle, intelligence, connections, and money). These ways to engage include providing the contributors more access options for possible engagement, allowing them to manage and broaden these interactions according to their own preferences, and giving them more options in regulating their own privacy. Many earlier posts on this blog relate to these ideas. Designing for Generosity and What a Nonprofit Web Site Can Say are just a few. How can this work? Will this not leave nonprofits with no way to deepen relationships with their contributors? These are important questions that are being explore in the commercial (for-profit) world as well. This blog discusses one for-profit development area that may lead the way for non-profits in the future.

Because they are involved in rethinking the way business is done in the modern world, and they reference “generosity” regularly, I follow some web-based business thought leaders – like Doc Searls. One of the projects that Searls is involved with is the development of software that will help consumers manage their relationships with the set of vendors where they do business. Right now, companies use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to gather and use information about their customers: who buys from them, at what price, and through which outlets (on the web, at a store, catalogue or phone order, etc.). Charitable organizations have something similar in donor management systems and software. Searls and his group are working to create a reciprocal system – Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) – that engages the consumer in having more control over the “demand side” of commercial transactions.

Model of VRM and CRM by Eve Maler in her blog Pushing String

What is intriguing to me is to think about how this VRM model might work for people who have relationships with various charitable organizations. First let’s explore their VRM ideas a bit.

Project VRM has a web page that explains the project and gives these principles:

• Relationships are voluntary.
• Customers are born free and independent of vendors.
• Customers control their own data. They can share data selectively and control the terms of its use.
• Customers are points of integration and origination for their own data.
• Customers can assert their own terms of engagement and service.
• Customers are free to express their demands and intentions outside any company’s control.

These can all be summed up in the statement Free customers are more valuable than captive ones.

Replace the word Customer in the list above with the word Contributor, and I think this list nicely expresses a better model for generosity in a contributor/nonprofit relationship. This is, as the VRM folks say it, user-centric. These concepts may sound somewhat radical, whether in the nonprofit or for-profit world. But consider that eBay and Farecast (cheap airline flight finder) already work in the direction of VRM – they allow the consumer to determine the item they want to buy at the price they want, independent of what the company may want them to buy. And on the nonprofit side, the organization The Hunger Project is moving close to this model by allowing contributors so many options for engagement and giving.

What would it be like if nonprofits could expend fewer resources on courting donors to greater engagement? What might a synergy between the combined energies of contributors, charitable organizations, and beneficiaries of their missions produce? Some of this energy is going to waste today because all of the onus on growing relationships lies with the charitable organizations. Especially in this down economy, where so many people are suffering, and the charitable organizations trying to serve them are short on resources, we cannot waste anyone’s energy.

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.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee…
- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

This is the 3rd of a series of posts about the Generosity Spiral. If you have not see the other two posts (The Generosity Spiral Part 1: Receiving and The Generosity Spiral Part 2: Giving), you may want to go back and look at those to have a better context for this posting.

The Generosity Spiral: Receiving and Giving

Click on the chart to have it expand for better viewing. It may be helpful to print it out as well so you have it while reading this post.

Depicted here are zones of receiving and giving in one conjoined spiral. This speaks to the living dynamic that connects giving and receiving; both are creative endeavors (neither is passive) and one can affect the other. Here are a few examples of this using the zone names from the Spiral:

If someone is moved to give to you in a Fully Engaged way (whatever they can in the way of skills, time, bodily effort, and possessions), if you receive it in Reciprocity (immediately attempting to give back in kind), then that giver’s efforts will probably be diminished. This dynamic obviously limits the creativity and openness of this encounter.

The dynamic of the giver or receiver can also work to grow the openness of the encounter.  If you receive offerings from someone With Love (with unconditional affection and focus), then even if the giver’s approach is normally Meager Giving (just enough to be recognized or avoid social pressure), that giver’s approach may soften and open to be more giving.  My hope is that you see in these examples the possibility and opportunity for transformation, for both yourself and other people, in your encounters with them.

You will notice that in the tighter parts of the spiral, that the paired labels – the attitudes and behaviors in giving and receiving are more mismatched. If one imagines a giving situation where someone is Giving to Impose with someone who is engaged in Needy Taking, the possibility for conflict in that situation is high. As the spiral gets broader and more open, there is more likelihood of clearer engagement and satisfaction for both parties with the paired labels. For example, if someone who is engaged in Purposeful Giving interacts with someone who is capable of Creative Receiving, the possibility of a productive encounter is high.

How can this be helpful to you? My hope is that, by looking at this model and making a more conscious choice in your actions and reactions, you will be able to give and receive in a more open and creative way.  I also hope that you will understand that giving and receiving are a dynamic that can go beyond being just transactional to be transformative. This means that if someone is approaching you in a Self-Interested way, by adopting a more generous approach, for instance in a Welcoming way, you will be modeling a more open-hearted approach that may be helpful to that person.

As I said in an earlier posting, the Generosity Spiral was created with individuals in mind. However, I believe it can also help charitable organizations to think about their own approaches. If you work for a nonprofit, church, or foundation, your orientation as a recipient (of charitable gifts and volunteer contributions) will affect how open and creative your contributors can be. Just as how you are as a giver (providing services in accordance with your mission) will affect how empowered your beneficiaries can be.

By linking receiving to giving on this spiral, I also hope that the illustrations of these dynamics will show that givers are recipients and recipients are givers within the same interaction. Organizations who understand this have more ability to engage at deeper levels and grow those relationships.

Please see the earlier postings (below) for the thinkers and sources I gratefully drew upon to create this Generosity Spiral model.

Take-Aways:

• When giving something, the way you give it will affect the richness of that interaction.
• When receiving something, you can deny or deepen the joy and satisfaction of the giver by how you receive it.
• As a giver, you are also receiving, so how you give can affect your own satisfaction in the encounter.
• As a receiver, you are also a giver, so you can affect the givers satisfaction in the encounter.
• As a charitable organization, how we receive contributions (of all kinds) can affect the size and nature of future gifts.
• As a charitable organization, how we provide support to our beneficiaries can determine their ability to be self-supporting and to act as contributors.

It’s not that you’ve got to be generous, but you get to be.
It’s not haranguing or threatening; IT’S LIBERATION.
- Dr. Martin E. Marty

In the last post I pictured and gave an explanation for the Generosity Receiving Spiral. Giving and receiving are dynamically linked. I chose to start with the Receiving Spiral because we start life as recipients before we can consciously give anything intentionally so I think of it occurring first in our lives. Also, receiving can stimulate an impulse to give, so can be a precedent. This post includes an image and explanation of the Receiving Spiral’s partner, the Generosity Giving Spiral.

The notes on the last post about the Receiving Spiral also apply to the Giving Spiral. Here are some additional notes that also apply to both spirals:

• This model is not in the strictest sense a development model because one does not necessarily start at one point and move towards an adjacent point, nor is it directional; neither extreme of the spiral is suitable or even desirable for everyone. I believe that generosity can be developed, however the path is always unique to each individual.
• How you identify the way you act as a giver or recipient as identified in this model will depend on any number of external circumstances as well as developmental factors.
• This model was primarily intended to be applied to the states and actions of an individual, however it might also be useful for a group or organization to determine what generosity zone they usually inhabit and decide if that is their ideal zone.

The Generosity Spiral: Giving

Click on the chart to have it expand for better viewing.

Each zone could use some explanation:

• Giving to impose (values/ideas/beliefs): These gifts inherently carry with them values, ideas, or beliefs that are not native to the recipients and not chosen by them.
• Wastefulness (giving what is not needed/asked for): This is a gift that does not benefit the recipient because it is not needed or is not what was asked for; it is therefore wasted.
• Self-interested giving (giving to get): These are transactional gifts that provoke or require an exchange relationship; they can exist along with more altruistic forms of giving.
• Reactive giving (only when asked): This is giving only in response to a direct request and implies a lack of commitment to the cause that is being addressed through the gift.
• Meager giving (just enough): This is a gift that is freely given but just enough to be recognized as a donor (donation of record) or to avoid social embarrassment for not giving.
• Responsive giving (giving to an emerging need): This is a gift that results from a concern about an unusual situation (disaster relief or political victimization) or a new and growing problem (sudden growth of a debilitating disease or social ill).
• Purposeful giving (with meaning/as mission): This is giving that addresses a need that is deeply meaningful for the contributor; it may enact her or his beliefs or personal mission in life. This often implies a longer term commitment to support these efforts.
• Fully engaged giving (resources and self): In this giving, the contributor gives whatever resources they can - money, skill, time, bodily effort, and possessions to make a difference.
• Affectionate giving (giving with familial love) In this giving, the recipient is given the same love, care, and attention that a loved one would be given if she/he were in need, whether or not the recipient is a loved one.
• Enduring giving (through and beyond the lifespan): This type of giving transcends time with a commitment to carry on good works for the duration of one’s life and ensuring that it can continue after one has died.
• Selfless giving (giving what you need yourself): With this giving the contributor gives something that she/he actually needs (not “wants” but needs). This implies giving that results in the giver having a serious need, yet the gift is freely given anyway.
• Ultimate giving (giving your life): This could be figuratively giving one’s life, as certain religious figures do, or literally giving one’s life for a cause or another person.

I have examples of giving within each zone, and will post those later if needed, based on the feedback that I get.

In creating this, I gratefully referred to the work of Marcel Mauss, who wrote The Gift, to Julie Salamon, who wrote Rambam’s Ladder, a personal reflection on Maimonides’ Ladder (a traditionally Jewish conception of levels of giving), Lucinda Vardey & John Dalla Costa in their book Being Generous, and the Roman Catholic theologian John C. Haughey, SJ. All of these thinkers are worth investigating.

What do you think? Is this model useful to you? Make a comment and let me know your reactions. My next post will show the zones of Receiving and Giving in one spiral.

How do people become more conscious and intentional about their generosity? I wondered what might assist them on their path. That got me to thinking – what is the generosity path? Are there sign posts that might be useful to folks to establish where they are or find their way from where they are to where they may want to go? Growing out of these questions, I created a 2-part Generosity Spiral: a receiving spiral and a giving spiral that go together. I will post them one at a time and then together: the Receiving Spiral is pictured first, in this post, because we start life as recipients before we can consciously give anything intentionally. Some notes about it:

• It is a spiral shape to give both a sense of moving inward and outward from the self and also to imply a returning, which often happens as people deepen their understanding and practice in a certain area.
• The model was intended for self-examination with the idea that the consideration itself is more valuable than whatever the model conveys.
• The labels refer to zones of generosity and not absolute points. In addition one does not necessarily start in one zone and move towards an adjacent zone, nor is it directional; no one zone on the spiral is suitable or even desirable for everyone.
• It is likely that you are in one generosity zone in one part of your life (at work for instance) and in another zone in another part of your life (your family life for instance). There are any number of zones you could inhabit at any given moment, however you may have patterns and preferences for certain “comfort” zones.

The Generosity Spiral: Receiving

Click on the chart to have it expand for better viewing.

Each zone could use some explanation:

• Needy taking (manipulation): Using some kind of force (psychological, emotional, intellectual, physical) which results in a gift that was not freely given.
• Non-acceptance (giving deflected or negated): A reaction that nullifies or does not acknowledge the gift.
• Accepting with status (making better or not as good as the giver): In the interaction, the giver is either made to feel inferior or superior to the recipient – not a peer.
• Formal accepting (in accordance with manners): Follows the manners required of the situation but does not go beyond that.
• Accepting within reciprocity (limited by ability to give back): Elicits an immediate attempt to “give back” in equal measure without regard to the particulars of the gifting situation. This also may allow the recipient to receive as only much as they might be able to give back.
• Flexible receiving (according to people and circumstances): Can vary in response to specific people and circumstance. Not a set response to all gifts.
• Creative receiving (builds engagement): Builds true engagement with the giver. It requires an ability to use the gift giving event as an opportunity to build a new level of relationship with that person.
• Welcoming (receiving and giving belonging): Being truly present for someone (“receiving” them) and/or accepting the gift as an expression of their true self. This level of reception can make the person feel a sense of belonging with you or in the community you both inhabit.
• Receiving with love (unconditional attention): Carries with it affection that is palpable to the recipient. It gives focus to the recipient in a way that can make her/ him feel loved.
• Receiving across time (honors past and future generations): Not bounded by time so that generations who have died or are yet to be born are honored for what they have given, or will give to us.
• Selfless receiving (of both destructive and beneficial gifts): Sometimes what is given is uncomfortable of even harmful to the recipient, yet it is accepted with love.
• Spiritual receiving (of gifts from unknowable origin – in the scientific sense): This is a response to the gifts we receive that no other human (living, dead, or not yet living) has given us, yet we benefit from them. They might be gifts as fleeting as a glimpse of a rainbow or as profound as much needed rain to save our subsistence crop. They are given to us by whatever source you believe in: Mother Nature, the energy of the universe, God (with whatever names), the spirit within us, etc. If there is recognition of these gifts and gratitude for them, they can potentially create the groundwork for spiritual belief.

I have examples of receiving within each zone, and will post those later if needed, based on the feedback that I get.

In creating this, I gratefully referred to the work of Eric Erickson, Abraham Maslow, and the Spiral Dynamics model developed by Clare W. Graves, Ph.D. This spiral model was spread by Don Beck and Chris Cowan in their business management book Spiral Dynamics, and further popularized by writer Ken Wilbur. You will notice that Graves’ spiral is larger at the top, like a tornado. I chose to make the Generosity Spiral larger at the bottom to convey that the broader parts of the spiral also relate to a something deeper, more profound.

What do you think? Is this model useful to you? Make a comment and let me know how this relates to your experience of receiving.