Embrace the speed of philathropy

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

St Francis of Assisi, 1181 – 1226.

“Suddenly doing the impossible”, as St Francis of Assisi reports is possible, does not mean St Francis is suggesting the impossible can happen quickly. Speaking to the issue of expecting results quickly as it relates to “millennials” (people born after 1995), author, marketer and communicator Simon Sinek noted this in an interview on YouTube:

Everything you want you can have instantly… everything you want… instant gratification except for job satisfaction and strength of relationships. There ain’t no app for that! They are slow, meandering, messy processes… What this young generation needs to learn is patience. Some things that really, really matter – like love or job fulfillment, joy, love of life, self-confidence, a skill set, any of these things, all of these things, take time… the overall journey is arduous and long and difficult, and if you don’t ask for help and learn that skill set, then you will fall off the mountain.

I think my grandmother would have liked Simon Sinek.

The Now Thinking Dilemma

In my study of ten charities, I found that many aspects of this quick-fix short-term gratification culture had made its way into the non-profit sector. Such a quick-fix culture is diametrically opposed and massively detrimental to the culture needed to cultivate philanthropy. Because philanthropy is led by the speed of the donor, not the speed nor urgency of the nonprofit to whom they donate.

The reason philanthropy moves at the speed it does is based on a reason that has been a challenge for humanity since the time of Adam; the forming of trust.

However, of the seven non-profits in my study that did not focus on fundraising from generosity transactions from philanthropic givers, cash flow budgeting remained based on just getting through the next financial year with little or no financial planning for philanthropic income growth in the years beyond that. Also, it was common to encounter in those nonprofits that unlocking individual generosity over time was also being intercepted when nonprofits thought that building generous relationships took more time than those non-profits thought was available to them.

Runs on the board

I have been criticised in some nonprofit fundraising roles for not achieving much in the time I worked for them. A famously annoying business concept that often feeds into such criticisms is the perceived need when entering a new role to “get some runs on the board”. That means that a person in a new fund development role is expected to rapidly provide onlookers with some increased revenue if that person is to gain any credibility in their new role. It is all part of the mindset that implies that a fundraiser is expected to quickly make money appear by whatever means. If they don’t make that money pop up soon enough to satisfy an impatient board, the implication is that they are no good at their job.

In the 2012 ground-breaking study called “Underdeveloped: A National Study of Challenges Facing Nonprofit Fundraising”, a telling comment was made about this attitude towards a person entering into a new fundraising development director’s position:

My first week, one of the artistic staff said to me, ‘I’m so glad you’re here. We need video recorders…’ as though I could just run out and get whatever is needed – a $50 item or a $50,000 grant. I’m the person who will ride in on the white horse and save the day.

All such short-term thinking feeds into a destructive vicious cycle of undermining the necessary work to produce sustainable, stable, long-term and profitable income from generosity transactions.

In my study of ten New Zealand non-profits, I witnessed this vicious cycle undermining seven of them to the point where one had to downsize considerably, three are teetering on the edge of failing and another had to close its doors. And that is a tragedy because their society-improving missions were sabotaged by missing out on Citizen Generosity primarily because of leadership impatience. The resulting constant state of crisis management was initiated by a culture of short-termism devoid of an understanding of the speed of philanthropy.

But the good news is this: just like all the problems intruding on Cracking Generosity that I address in my book of the same name, this one is not new. There are remedies to such short-termism that others have proven to be effective and that any nonprofit can copy. You can get a foretaste of how to bring the needed change by clicking below. Its free.