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Volume
Six, Number Four (April 2005)
"What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them
how."
–W.
Wordsworth, from "The Prelude"
NOTES FROM READERS
What you think
There are many on the list of cyber-subscribers of these Notes who I have never met. Such is the nature of the community that has grown up around Notes since I started five and a half years ago. A small circle of colleagues and friends have spread the word and gradually our subscriber list has grown some fivefold – not to mention all those who have Notes forwarded to them or who read them on the jgacounsel.com website. Occasionally, though, and with great joy, I meet in person those who have joined me in the community of reflective practitioners. Such was the case last week when I was at Edgewood College in Madison , Wisconsin for the inauguration of the college's new president. Coincidentally, my brother Dean is on the Edgewood faculty and has urged colleagues there to join our ranks. I was pleased to meet several of our Edgewood friends – and humbled to have them each introduced as “someone who reads your Notes.”
Not much chatter from you all after the last issue of Notes. One lovely note, though, from long-time subscriber Julie Alfred in Anchorage , Alaska, who wrote, “As usual, Notes reaches me at a time when I need to read and think about the particular topic(s) the most. It's magic!” Perhaps not magic, but a gift – for me and all of you.
Occasionally, I (or my colleagues) refer to items from previous issues of Notes. If you have not been a subscriber previously, and wish to review our conversations, past issues of Notes are available online at www.jgacounsel.com . The website version of Notes also includes helpful hyperlinks to sources for purchasing or subscribing to the various publications mentioned in Notes. I thank my friends at Johnson, Grossnickle & Associates for their many years of abiding support for our reflective practice.
REFLECT ON THIS
Extraordinary Conversations
There are times when a topic that is on my mind coincidentally (!) explodes on the scene in various contexts – publications, speeches, websites, etc. Such is the case recently with my abiding concern about the state of public discourse in our society. We have forgotten how to talk with each other about important and pressing topics, and the result is that we have lost the common ground we need to work together to change the world.
I have been thinking about this issue recently in relation to two projects. The first is a conference we are organizing here at the college for next fall. It is a conference that explores the relevance of Jane Addams' life and work for higher education. We have chosen as a theme for the conference (and for biennial conferences to follow) the phrase “Extraordinary Conversations,” which is our way of lifting up the myriad ways in which Addams engaged in conversations – at Hull-House in Chicago, with citizens of all stripes around the world, and on the stage of historical action in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We believe that her extraordinary conversations with the likes of Julia Lathrop, John Dewey, Theodore Roosevelt, WEB DuBois, and William Rainey Harper, not to mention countless other good people who shared her commitment to a stronger democracy, set the stage for intellectual and social movements that have shaped the world we know. Our conference will look both at the history of these conversations and at their continuing relevance for a variety of projects in our own time.
The second project I am involved in is an attempt to study and practice the gift of extraordinary conversations that I believe higher education institutions are uniquely situated to offer the wider society. At our best, colleges and universities believe in and practice civil conversations about deeply held ideas and values. We believe that it is possible to create a framework for conversation that follows certain rules, considers and respects different perspectives, and that leads to common purpose and action. My thesis is that it is possible to share our faith in such conversations with the wider community. My project involves an alliance of higher education institutions attempting to encourage extraordinary conversations in our community about such topics as education, poverty, the arts, and so forth.
With these two projects in mind, I have been struck by the many resources that have come across my desk the past couple of months. I commend them to you and welcome your thoughts about my projects. Here are some highlights of what I've found:
- In the winter 2004 issue of National Civic Review (93:4), there are a series of articles concerning participatory approaches to governance and the possibility of deliberative democracy. A helpful overview article by Abby Williamson and Archon Fung entitled “Public Deliberation: Where We Are and Where Can We Go?” describes the nascent research on the field of public deliberation. I found the six goals of public deliberation detailed in the article particularly intriguing:
- Efforts at public deliberation aim to change the quantity of participation in discussing social issues – that is, they are about getting more citizens to talk with each other;
- Public deliberation is also about quality – not all efforts to create public participation stand equal when it comes to openness, representation, and comprehensiveness;
- Public deliberation aims at conferring information, knowledge, or skills to those who participate – in other words, it is about education!
- Public deliberation is about accountability, strengthening the links between citizen wishes, and official action.
- Public deliberation is about justice, increasing inclusion of perspective, and allowing the underrepresented to have a voice; and,
- Public deliberation is about sustainability, changing over time the abiding role that deliberation plays in public decision-making.
- The fall 2004 issue of The Hedgehog Review (6:3) is devoted entirely to the topic of “Discourse and Democracy.” There are several fine articles and interviews, along with a very helpful bibliography. Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin, in the lead essay entitled “Deliberation in Democracy,” writes that “Democracy is a wager that reason, when exercised by multitudes or their representatives, however clumsily, however imperfectly, will succeed in eclipsing unreason . . . . Democracy had classical origins, but it made a special place for meetings in the round – promising the equal standing of citizens and equal transparency in all directions . . . . That is why speech was central to the democratic process. Speech was the route to reason . . . . Speech was also the means by which the people, or at least their duly elected representatives, would arrive at a collective interest that transcended private interests.” Gitlin goes on the criticize the various forces that have made such reasonable conversations more and more difficult – our political system, the media, a social system that is so complex that most of us find it difficult to engage at all. He argues that only if we can learn to talk together again – to deliberate in public – can we hope to sustain our democracy.
- Two recent issues of LiberalArtsOnline, the cyber-publication from the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College (www.liberalarts.wabash.edu), address the issue of debate vs. dialogue and its links to the work of liberal education in our society.
- In the March 2005 issue, Indiana University professor Richard Gunderman asks “ Is debate upstaging dialogue? In popular culture, the answer seems to be yes. When talk radio and cable news programs feature issues of the day, they increasingly seek out colorful individuals of diametrically opposed points of view. Why? Perhaps because conflict boosts viewership. In the ratings race, heat trumps light.” He then suggests that liberal education at its best promotes the currently counter-cultural role of dialogue. He reminds us that “Our word dialogue is derived from the ancient Greek dialogos , which in turn derives from the roots dia -, meaning through, and logos , meaning word or reason. A dialogue seeks truth by and through words.”
- In the April 2005 issue, James T. Knauer, professor at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, describes a project called the “Democracy Lab,” an online learning community that uses deliberative dialogue as a learning strategy that weds civic education with liberal learning. The project uses forum papers on various topics from the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forum (NIF) Institute to encourage the integration of the process of dialogue with the real-world issues addressed in the forum papers. Check out the website at www.teachingdemocracy.org.
- For both the Addams conference and the public discourse project, I am turning to a body of resources that I have found valuable over the years:
- Daniel Yankelovich's The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Cooperation (Simon and Schuster, 1999) offers a framework for encouraging dialogue;
- The work of the Project on Civic Reflection (based at Valparaiso University and led by Elizabeth Lynn) offers some outstanding resources for encouraging public reflection about common texts at its website www.civicreflection.org .
- Public Agenda, an organization founded in the mid-1970s by Yankelovich and Cyrus Vance, provides a model for citizen deliberation that we have used here in our community to facilitate public conversations about education. Visit the Public Agenda website at www.publicagenda.org for information about the model.
- I have long been a fan of Stephen Carter's Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy (Basic Books, 1998), which offers an analysis of and set of rules for civil life.
- The Fetzer Institute ( www.fetzer.org ) has a variety of resources for bringing people together to talk with each other. A related organization, The Collective Wisdom Initiative (website accessible from the Fetzer site) has some interesting research on convening groups and sustaining conversations.
- Margaret Wheatley has spent her life studying and practicing the work of encouraging conversation. I especially like Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future (Berrett-Koehler, 2002).
May all of our conversations aspire to the extraordinary.
The World House
I have explored the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. over the years, but had overlooked the powerful last chapter of his final book Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community?(Beacon Press, 1968) until I was reminded by Robert M. Franklin, ethics professor at Emory University (in Sightings, 3/31/05) of King's description of “The World House.”
In the chapter, King uses the metaphor of a dysfunctional family inheriting a house in which they must live together to describe his sense of the problems faced by humankind in our age. “We have inherited a large house, a great world house in which we have to live together – black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu – a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.”
Franklin suggests that King's metaphor is more urgent and relevant today than ever before and he draws three conclusions about what we must do to follow King's example and thought in regard to the world house:
- Practice our commitment to eradicating racism and its many subtle manifestations. We must each engage in a “diversity inventory” of our institutions and exercise our voice and votes where we find continuing discrimination.
- Eschew xenophobia of other religions. Seek tolerance and understanding of others' beliefs and traditions, and be resources for communities that need assistance in viewing all faith traditions as manifestations of a good and generous God.
- Demonstrate moral stewardship – especially those of us who are more affluent – so that our poor neighbors might have opportunities to transition to self sufficiency. Condemn those who exploit the poor at the expense of the poorest.
I needed this challenge and reminder of our core commitments in the world house we all inhabit.
PRACTICE THIS
Money Talk(s)
I have had the opportunity in recent years to lead workshops for senior fundraisers on best practices in prospect management. I always begin these workshops with a question: What does it feel like to be a prospect? The question inevitably leads to a rich conversation about how the label “prospect” undercuts the nobility of the work of philanthropy. Sometimes there are provocative suggestions about different ways to describe prospective donors, but often we are left mourning the poverty of our vocabulary.
The point of these conversations – that words matter in the work we do and that our vocabulary demands careful consideration – strikes me as particularly relevant for the work of philanthropic fundraising. The gifts that people offer to our mission-based organizations and causes reflect deep moral and personal commitments. These gifts are meaningful, valuable acts to help us live out our deepest aspirations. And yet the words we use to describe the world of fundraising – campaign, prospect, suspect, lybunt, sybunt, annual fund, major gift, direct mail, phonathon, planned gift, and so on – conjure up images of battle and bureaucracy more than love and mission.
The problem, of course, is not ours alone. At its most fundamental level, we must face the fact that the currency of our work is currency. And Americans do not have an easy time talking about money.
My thinking on this conundrum has been shaped over the years by a variety of wise teachers. Founder of the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, Robert Payton, once penned this understatement: “Most people don't like to ask other people for money.” And yet that is what we do – in fact that is the joyful work we are privileged to do.
In a fascinating article written almost 15 years ago and entitled “Metaphors Fund Raisers Live By: Language and Reality in Fund Raising,” Indiana University English professor Richard Turner points to the various metaphors and images prevalent in the world of fundraising. We use organic metaphors to reflect the living, breathing natures of our organizations. We use theological language, mechanistic images, and military metaphors – sometimes alone, often in confusing, mixed styles that reflect our lack of care for our language. Imagine the living, breathing organization headed into a campaign that will resurrect the good work of its branch office by pushing the philanthropic buttons of our community's generous citizens. What a jumbled mix of images and assumptions about the nature of our work!
Turner's broader point is that fundraisers need to be reflective about the assumptions and values that go into their choice of language. Language is how we construct our world, our profession, and our lives.
Another helpful perspective on this issue is offered by New York Law School professor Karen Gross in a recent article entitled “Learning Money's Language” (University Business, March 2005). Professor Gross makes the point that philanthropic leaders need to pay attention to the fact “that money is a language that everyone speaks. It is how we communicate our emotions and values—to ourselves and others.”
Gross suggest various strategies for learning the language of money. She emphasizes the importance of each of us having a clear sense of how we talk about money and the sources of our personal money language. Did your parents teach you the value of a dollar? Did you learn about paying bills and making gifts as you grew up? How do you and your spouse talk about money?
She then suggests that understanding the money stories of our donors is critical. How does the money story of a donor intersect with the needs and aspirations of your organization? That is the work of translating “foreign” languages into a common, shared vocabulary of support for your organization.
In my own research and practice over the past twenty years, I have sought ways to use meaningful language that is deeply imbedded in our society's history and culture, but that has become for various reasons misused or not used at all. Both Turner and Gross ask fundraising leaders to be reflective and careful about understanding the language we use. What they don't do is challenge us to find language – perhaps recover the words – that might bring renewed meaning and purpose to our important work.
Here are three such phrases and some thoughts on how they might help us to further inspire our noble work as philanthropic fundraisers:
Living out the philanthropic covenant. A covenant is a way of describing a promise-based relationship. The work of philanthropic fundraising is about securing and making promises. The web of promises between organizations and those who care about them and who support them reflects a philanthropic covenant.
Too often we allow our philanthropic relationships to be defined as transactional and purely economic. We fall into the trap of worrying only about the contracts, the present value, and such things, rather than celebrating and honoring the promises that situate the gift transaction in a much richer and more value-driven framework.
Being stewards of public resources. The language of stewardship is not foreign to the world of fundraising, but often the word is used to describe a fairly limited set of donor relations activities and responsibilities. What if, instead, we recalled that the genesis of the concept of stewardship is linked to the role of stewards as managers of someone else's household. In other words, stewardship is the work of tending to gifts that we have not earned and that we do not own – and yet we still bear great responsibility.
As stewards, fundraisers are accountable for not only the specific gifts made to their organizations, but also to the wider claims of the public trust and public good that demand our attention and care – and which sometimes challenge us to rise above institutional loyalties to serve a greater good.
Accepting the vocation of public service. The language of vocation or a calling is perhaps most often associated with religious communities, but I think it also has great relevance for our work as philanthropic fundraisers. When we understand our work as a calling, we will focus foremost on the integrity of our work as it connects to personal values, institutional mission, and the public good. Yes, it also is a career and a living – but above all, it is a life.
To accept the call to serve the public doesn't mean that we need to pursue elected office. It does mean that we need to understand how all good professionals – in any field, but especially in ours – need to accept the obligation and the privilege of making our world a healthier, safer, richer and more meaningful place.
Language is how we construct our world. Money does talk. Philanthropy abides. Do we have the vision and courage to find the vocabulary to build a truly philanthropic world?
Civic responsibility
A fine essay entitled “Civic Responsibility: Are charities abdicating their role?” by Bob Smucker (NonProfit Times, April 1, 2005 ) struck a nerve with me. I have had the opportunity in my current position to become much more active in lobbying city, state, and federal officials. I see it as my professional and civic responsibility to advocate for social goods that go unfulfilled and unfunded. Many of our colleagues are uncomfortable in this role. Smucker tells us why they are wrong!
He describes recent statistics about government spending and specifically the impact of the lack of state and federal spending on such critical social ills as poverty, child abuse, affordable housing, health insurance and other indicators of social well-being. Smucker suggests that philanthropic organizations and professionals in our country are uniquely situated to recognize the disparity between the haves and have-nots and to recognize how that disparity is perpetuated by federal and state budgets. He asks “Why have citizens' voices been so muted in speaking out on this matter? . . . . Perhaps our highly acclaimed independent sector has provided an excuse for both citizens and lawmakers to look the other way when the issue comes up of supporting appropriations that provide for adequate social expenditures. No doubt the perception of many citizens, as well as government officials is that charity can fill the gaps for cuts in human services. That simply isn't possible.”
Smucker points out that it would take philanthropic giving at more than six times our current rate to replace government funding of social expenditures.
He urges action on the part of nonprofit organizations. We are on the front lines. We know what works and what does not. We see and feel the impact on lives of myriad social ills. We must enter aggressively into the public policy arena. We must encourage public engagement and conversation about these critical issues so that a vision of a just social order might emerge. We have access to influential individuals and communities through our mission-based work. We must urge them to join with us to lobby and advocate for social change – for government action that is appropriate and right.
What do you think?
PAY ATTENTION TO THIS
Resources for your reflective practice
If the history of philanthropy is your cup of tea, there is a fine new extended essay by University of Chicago dean John W. Boyer entitled The Persistence to Keep Everlastingly At It: Fund-Raising and Philanthropy at Chicago in the Twentieth Century (Occasional Papers on Higher Education, XIII, 2004). Let me know if you would like to see it and I can send the contact information.
I am (slowly) enjoying a new edition of The Federalist – a text so critical to understanding the character of the United States . Edited with introduction and commentary by J. R. Pole, it is published by Hackett Publishing (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 2005).
I've just received Dark Age Ahead, philosopher of cities Jane Jacobs' latest (Random House, 2004). More in the next issue of Notes.
Sometimes
The Welsh poet, Shannagh Pugh, offers this powerful reminder of the promise of hope. I read this poem as an invocation at a dinner with Dr. Oscar Arias Sanchez, former president of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, whose life and work the poem seems to honor.
“Sometimes”
Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they are born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
May it happen for you!
Subscription information
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Topics for the next issue (June 2005)
- City life
- Thanksgiving: Some thoughts on service above self
(c) Paul Pribbenow, 2005
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