Fightin' Philanthropists

It's been too long since last I posted, and as a result there's too much to download into the blog... same problem I had two weeks ago. But here's the best quote I've come across in the last two weeks:

"'Giving is not about a calculation of what you are buying [...] It is about participation in a fight.'"

This comes from the New York Times Magazine of March 9, specifically the article "What Makes People Give," which is a profile of two economists, John List and Dean Karlan, and their work on the psychological basis of giving. The quotation is Karlan's. David Leonhardt, the article's author, goes on to say, "[Your gift] is about you as much as it [is] about the effect of your gift."

This all ties together with the various memes we've been tracking about the importance of storytelling in fundraising, the importance of understanding your nonprofit's mission as a kind of crusade. And still, this is more easily done for those fighting hunger and homelessness than those making art. After all, what are artists fighting? Complacency? The numbness brought on by relentless commerce and work and daily life? It's a tougher sell...

William Wordsworth laid out the disease and the cure two hundred years ago:

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. [ 1806. ]

...and now I go back to work, before I start firing Gerard Manley Hopkins at you.