Generosity experiment

December 9, 2009December 8, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 44 Comments

On the subway today, a man was asking for donations so he could buy food, sandwiches, deodorant, even hand sanitizer to give for free to homeless people. He had lived on the street two decades ago, he said, and now does this part time to give back, in addition to a part time job he holds.

I have absolutely no idea if this is true, but I was skeptical. I, along with everyone else in my car, got off the train without giving him any money. Right after I got off the train I knew I had done the wrong thing. It just didn’t feel right.

Most of the time I don’t give to people on the street. It seems to make sense, rationally, not to give most of of the time — and instead to give to great organizations that are doing things for the homeless. Perhaps, but it’s easy to take this too far.

Giving is an act of self-expression, and generosity is a practice. Each time I decide not to give, I’m reinforcing a way of acting – one that’s critical and analytical and judgmental.

You may not be like this at all. You may consistently act from the heart first and not the head. Good for you. More often than not, I don’t, though it’s something I’m working to change.

So I’ve been thinking that I need to try a generosity experiment: for a period of time, when I’m asked to give, to say yes. To everything. To emails and people on the street and friends raising money. Everyone. I think it will be good practice.

What do people think? Does this make sense? [sic]

P.S. More on this topic from the Freakonomics blog, where Barbara Ehrenreich is very clear that you always give to someone on the street who directly asks you.

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Burying a blunt instrument

December 8, 2009December 7, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

The other day a very thoughtful friend told me he’d like to pull together a list of recommended nonprofits for his co-workers as a way of raising visibility and funds, and he wanted my suggestions. We were talking about what the list should look like in terms of geographic focus, issue area, etc., and he said, almost as a throwaway line, “…and we should make sure none of them spends more than 10% on fundraising.”

He didn’t mean it this way, but it could have sounded like, “Let’s make sure none of them spend too much money doing what you do.”

So let’s dig a little deeper. What he’s essentially saying is, “let’s make sure the organizations aren’t wasting money,” and unfortunately “overhead spend” is the unbelievably blunt approximation we have of wasting money.

A great comment on my blog last week, in another post where I riffed on the overhead ratio test, put this point very well, concluding:

There are horror stories of huge sums burned by inefficient organisations. It isn’t bad guys, frauds or scammers. It’s just organisations that don’t do as good a job…In some cases almost all of the money donated goes into running the bureaucracy of the organization itself. In some cases, fundraising itself costs more then the activities it funds.

…How do you avoid donating to companies like this? Well, you might find that most great organizations have a 20/80 overhead/programs ratio…The problem with this is that it is incredibly crude. If all else is equal, a lower overhead is certainly good but all else is never equal…

I understand what you are saying. I agree. You’re right.

But what is the alternative?

It turns out that a number of “rating agencies” in the nonprofit space have banded together to answer this question, with the goal of creating a quick and easy way to rate the effectiveness of nonprofits. Tim Ogden, Editor-in-Chief of Philanthropy Action, recently issued a press release titled “The Worst (and Best) Way to Pick a Charity,” and the release was signed by the CEO’s of Guidestar and Charity Navigator, the two organizations that have arguably done the most to create the “10% overhead” rule of thumb in the nonprofit sector. Hats off to Tim for kicking this off, and to Bob Ottenhoff (CEO of Guidestar) and Ken Berger (CEO of Charity Navigator) for signing on to the release and for helping push this conversation forward.

Some thoughts on how this might play out:

1. Changing perceptions about this will be hard. Convincing someone that your new idea (product, story) is better than the one they currently believe in (purchased) is harder than selling them on a brand new idea (this is part of the reason the iPhone still beats the pants off of the Palm Pre – iPhone created the category, and the Pre is trying to be improvement on the iPhone). So getting people to let go of the overhead ratio myth will actually be harder than it was to convince them of the myth in the first place. For any real traction, this thing needs a breakthrough idea, message, and advocate. In fact, I bet you most people don’t even know where they first heard the overhead ratio number.

2. Effectiveness is the right goal, but will we ever get there? The push to replace the overhead rule of thumb with an effectiveness rating feels right, though I worry that executing on that promise will be elusive. There are lots of players pushing this forward, but I’d feel a lot more comfortable if the push were towards “here are the questions we want to ask” rather than “here are the answers.” I know the world wants a star rating for everything (including the food we buy at the supermarket), but can’t we do better?

3. The endgame is creating better stakeholders. Let’s learn from the field of socially responsible investing. A lot has gone into ratings of public companies, and the track record is decidedly mixed: attempts to make ratings more sophisticated have generally resulted in less transparency and objectivity.

The real power of these ratings comes not from the ratings themselves (with retail shareholders and consumers somehow knowing if companies are good or bad), it comes from shareholder activism – as information becomes more available, passionate followers create a dialogue with companies that can turn the dial on accountability. If ratings can create real dialogue (hopefully with much less acrimony than exists with public companies) we’ll make more real progress (and for this to happen, the raters have to be held accountable too…)

4. If you must talk about overhead ratios, ask about efficiency. Since I doubt that the myth of overhead spend is dying any time soon, why not in the meantime promote a marginally better measure: measure fundraising efficiency (how much does it cost to raise $1) rather than how much fundraising is done (fundraising as a % of total spend). I’m not sure I care if a nonprofit with a great mission spends 8% or 18% of its budget on raising funds – assuming they can spend the funds they raise wisely. But I do care if a nonprofit spends 4 cents to raise a dollar or 40 cents. While neither of these numbers tells me anything about the effectiveness of the nonprofit as a whole, all in all I’d rather make a bet on the one that’s more efficient.

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Magic

December 3, 2009July 26, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

Yesterday night, for the first time, my wife ordered me a pair of shoes on Zappos. This morning, she called me to say, “This is amazing. They just arrived! I don’t know how they do it.”

I know.

It’s magic.

Think about how incredible this is: with all the technology in the world, with all the jaded consumerism, with all the hype, Zappos did something so cool that it was worth picking up the phone and telling someone about. And they’re delivering shoes. Shoes!!!

If they can create magic with shoes, anything is possible. Anything.

With magic, you’ve got traction, momentum, joy, surprise. Without it, you’re just pushing a boulder up a hill.

So go on, take whatever you’re working on and insert some magic, create an ideavirus that will spread.

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Share, share, share

December 2, 2009December 1, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Here it is, Acumen Fund in 90 seconds.

You can make a HUGE difference by sharing this far and wide.

Blog, tweet, digg, stumbleupon, call a co-worker over to your computer, send a carrier pigeon…do whatever works for you, but be a megaphone.

Easy sharing options here.

And thank you for all that you do.

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Critics

December 1, 2009November 30, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

The NFL has it right. Commentators for pro football games are Hall of Fame players who have earned their stripes on the front lines, playing the game. Where else can you find people who have won championships talking about championships? This is why when Hall of Fame quarterback and Fox commentator Terry Bradshaw says that Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Farve is playing as well as anyone in the league – or when he says that it might be time to bench Carolina Panthers Quarterback Jake Delhomme – it means something. Terry’s been there. He’s done that.

These are the kinds of critics you dream of, those with front-line experience (and the war wounds to prove it). The provide context, give meaning, ask tough questions, and help shape the conversation.

But most of the time, good critics are hard to come by. Truth is, there aren’t many professions with an average retirement age of 35, so critics normally aren’t former stars who left on a high note. Instead, they are often professional commentators, in which case they inevitably walk a fine line between making sense of and asking tough questions about “the show” (the players, the artists, the politicians, the CEOs), and elevating their own stature for their own sake.

It’s hard to predict who will make a great critic, but a good rule of thumb is this: they always recognize that building, creating, dreaming, executing, and falling and getting up again are all exponentially harder than sitting on the sidelines, prognosticating.

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Bejeweled moves

November 25, 2009November 23, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Recently, before boarding a transatlantic flight, I caved to the impulse to buy an iPhone app, and $2.99 later I was the proud owner of Bejeweled 2, the only game in the app store that I’d ever heard of.

By way of background, I should share that two decades ago I was know to wile away many a college campus visit (and, subsequently, a reasonable portion of first semester freshman year), playing Tetris into the wee hours of the morning on Apple LC computers. I still have a soft spot for the mindless computer puzzler – though with drastically less time on my hands.

Bejeweled works as follows: your job is to make groupings of three or more jewels in a line; you can only move two adjacent jewels at a time; and for a move to be legal it must create a group of three.

It isn’t a great game, but it has one aspect that I find fascinating. The way the game is programmed, there is always a legal move to be made – which is surprising since they’re often hard to find and the rules governing the game are so simple. And this is the nut of what fascinates me: even knowing this, and even in the confines of a simple, 8×8 board, it’s easy to convince yourself that there are no moves to play.

The practice of playing, then, is as a chance to remind yourself that, no matter what you see, there’s always a move for you to make. You get to see yourself talk yourself out of what is possible, time and time again, until you finally learn that you can always make a move.

Feels a lot like life to me: seeing the board, seeing the moves you think you can make, not seeing anything that’s possible, and telling yourself – even though you know the opposite to be true – that there’s nothing that you can do.

There’s always a move to make. There’s always something you can do to make yourself better, to move forward, to make a change. Always. No matter what.

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1 in 100

November 24, 2009November 23, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

At a dinner recently, guests were asked to go around the table and share what was on their mind. One guest said,

“I often imagine myself on a platform, waiting for a train, with 100 other people. And I think that I am the most fortunate of those 100 people, which makes me feel blessed and also gives me a tremendous sense of responsibility of what to do with that good fortune.”

At first when I heard this, I thought the good fortune she described was economic, which would make sense given the distribution of wealth globally: you only have to earn $49,000 to be in the richest 1% of the world’s population.

The facts on income alone are sobering. But I think there’s more to it, and it gets you past the 1% mark to the 0.1% mark or even the 0.01% mark – the knowledge that you are an agent of change, that the tools are available today in a way that they never were before that allow you to take all that you have been given and make an enormous impact on the world.

There has never been a moment in history when a single person can do more.

The knowledge of this simple fact, and the impetus to back it up, is the real 1 in 100 revelation.

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The next day test

November 20, 2009November 19, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I gave a speech the other day that was fine. I said what I wanted to say, made the points that I wanted to make.

But fine, I fear, is forgotten. Fine isn’t remembered when a person walks out of the room. Fine is checking the box.

I think I went wrong in the preparation: spending so much time focusing on what I wanted to say, while forgetting to think about what I wanted to happen: what I wanted the audience members to do, to feel, to remember, to repeat to the next person. And not just 5 minutes later, but the next day or the next week.

People don’t remember lists and plans. They remember the narrative, especially a narrative in which they are the central actor, and it’s clear what action they are meant to take. They also remember what they can feel: a personal connection, humor, a spark, even an image.

“What am I going to say?” or “What points am I trying to get across?” seem like the right questions to ask when drafting a speech.

But “What do I want someone to remember?” and “What do I want someone to do?” are much more important.

Next time…

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Charter for Compassion

November 13, 2009November 12, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Beautiful fulfillment of Karen Armstrong’s TED wish.

You can get more information and sign and share the charter here.

Original passion

November 12, 2009November 12, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

I recently came back from a weeklong trip to Europe and was swapping stories with my wife about the week. She admitted what I already knew, that my five-year-old son has started to really notice my absence when I travel for work.

“But,” she said, “It’s actually really easy to explain to him why you’re away. I say to him that Daddy is out helping get money to help pay for things like safe water to drink or a safe place for a mommy to have her baby for people who need it. And he understands that and it makes sense to him.”

First, I was overwhelmed by this kind of support from my family.

Second, I noticed that, even to me, this is not exactly how my week felt.

Of course I was talking about the work that Acumen Fund does and explaining to people why supporting Acumen Fund helps bring about large-scale change to persistent social problem. But, even for me, it is easy to get caught up in the process of it all and lose track of that very simple, very important, very basic connection.

A friend of mine who serves on a number of nonprofit boards recently told me that, in her opinion, there’s no better way to tap into your original passion for a cause than to sit in front of someone else and ask them to support that cause financially. It forces you to get to the root of why you think that cause matters, to share that original passion with someone else, and to invite someone else to have the same sense of exhilaration and purpose that you feel in being part of that organization – that cause – every day.

Somehow, in the midst everything it takes to do the work – getting introduced to the right people, meeting with them, sharing your story – you can get so caught up in the process that the original purpose gets out of focus.

It helps to remember, every day, “this is why I do this.”

Yes, the act we’re engaging in is raising money, but the thing that’s really happening is that another person has safe water to drink, or a proper place to give birth, or a more productive farm, or a vaccine for a life-threatening disease, or a school that will provide them with opportunity in their lives…and all of this thanks in part to the work you’re doing.

If we can tap into that original passion – in ourselves and in others – I’m sure we can unleash a different kind of energy, and I’m sure that we can overcome all our fears about putting ourselves out there and asking people to walk our path with us.

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Sasha Dichter's Blog

Generosity experiment

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Burying a blunt instrument

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Magic

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Share, share, share

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Critics

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Bejeweled moves

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1 in 100

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The next day test

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Charter for Compassion

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Original passion

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