Stick with Mission in Tumultuous Political Times

While current claims that the USA has never been more divided may be a tad hyperbolic—the Viet Nam war era comes to mind—these certainly are polarized times, and they may become more polarized in the months and years ahead. Straddling political divides to support higher education philanthropy is difficult when the political fracture of the day is top of mind for colleagues and community members alike. Your own political feelings may careen from despondent (or triumphant) to angry in the course of a single tweet. That’s the way of the world right now.

My experience tells me that the best policy is to lead with mission in polarized times. And our mission is simple: helping students enrolled in higher education. When impolitic messages are expressed you can pivot with a statement like, “My concern is with our students, and one thing I know is they will need more resources, support, and superior education experiences to make it in this world.”

We are lucky to have a mission as inclusive as students in higher education because our mission is nearly universally respected by people of all political persuasions. That allows us a little breathing room in divided arenas as long as we keep the focus where it needs to be, on the mission we serve.

I know it can get complicated. I have spent many years of my life in the company of CEOs, wealthy donors, small business owners, and successful professionals. I have heard thousands of directly political assertions that I have had to either sidestep or respond to with well-crafted noncommittal statements of one sort or another. It can wear on a person. Yet, we cannot make assumptions about the political leanings of a prospective or active donor. Money comes in all political stripes.

With board members, we might learn to encourage a little more comity (not comedy, although it bit of levity might help) in awkward times. I have had the experience of working with boards that shared tacit political biases, and I don’t think that’s right. I think the need for board diversity alone argues against that. When I see a board that leans 90% toward an identified political party, that’s a problem.

People give where they feel their contributions make a difference—and they give, and serve, where they feel welcome. In sharply divided political times a board chair or president may need to—rarely, we hope—ask a group to table remarks or a discussion or continue it outside of any institutional context.

But foundation executive directors and development officers may sometimes need to respond to unprofessional remarks by stifling themselves in the interest of promoting overarching philanthropic goals. I am not talking about hate speech, overtly offensive racist or misogynist remarks here. Those need to be documented and reported to the proper institutional authorities, because they directly threaten the mission of the institution. Thankfully, those comments as heard in a professional context are rare in my experience.

In these highly charged times it can be excruciating to stifle oneself. It isn’t like we learned the fine points of rational discourse only to suffer the slings and arrows of brutish politics in silence. But work is work. We are paid to cultivate gifts to the institution to further its mission, and that must be our higher calling, at least for the 10 hours a day we are on duty.

Off duty, especially in a small town, can also be a minefield. And while we do not take the vows of political chastity journalists must adhere to, high profile political engagement carries its own career risks. That is not fair, but there it is.

It is assumed that development professionals will work with donors of divergent political views. Some of those will be strident. We need to lead with mission at all times in the face of charged political emotion. The more we can promote the comity of big-tent philanthropy, the better chance we have of preventing push from coming to shove in our professional lives. But sometimes it arrives anyway. Perhaps that is a topic for another day, one that comes under the header of crisis management.

In the meantime, we may be in for heightened political tensions for the long haul, so setting positive, well-framed precedents right now is imperative. And leading with mission is never a bad thing. It is a proud tradition; one that can serve to unify divided communities in difficult times. I wish my fellow practitioners the very best in that endeavor.

 

 

Sidebar:

“Comity,” according to Merriam-Webster

  • 1
a : friendly social atmosphere :  social harmony <group activities promoting comity> <bipartisan comity in the Senate>
b :  a loose widespread community based on common social institutions <the comity of civilization>
…
  • 2
: avoidance of proselytizing members of another religious denomination

 

“Stand for your mission,” is an image belonging to standforyourmission.org. Check it out.

What Philanthropy Can Learn from Kickstarter

My daughter, actress and singer Lenne Klingaman, is on the home stretch of a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign to fund her debut album.

Lenne's Kickstarter cover image

Small fish in a very big pond: Lenne’s Kickstarter cover image

It occurred to me from the moment we discussed the campaign (full disclosure: I am a co-producer), that it is similar, and radically dissimilar from a philanthropy-based campaign—so much so that I wasn’t even sure what I had to offer Lenne in this endeavor. And that was all to the good, because this was Lenne’s baby and she took full responsibility for its success or failure. The experience, still in progress with seven exciting days to go, serves to reinforce some precepts of development, and to upend others. So what were a few of these takeaways?

People give to people with a dream: So why do people give to fund other people’s passion projects? To be a part of a quest, I think. To identify and live, not vicariously, but in solidarity with people who dare to step out from conveyor-belt jobs and buck seemingly overwhelming economic odds to make something big happen in their professional or artistic lives. The product is the outcome, but the process, the journey, is almost the bigger draw. It’s a dream thing.

Confronting the odds draws support: Kickstarter has an ingenious system of requiring a goal, and if backers do not sign on in sufficient numbers, none of the credit card pledges can be redeemed. And it’s all very public. The potential for humiliation is there. There is even a Kickstarter analytics site that minces no words in its algorithmic judgments. For artists whose networks are composed of other artists, those are daunting terms. It forces people to think long and hard about their goals. It creates a real drama with nuanced developments in the early phase, the mid-campaign “flats”, and the dramatic run-up to the end, where Lenne is right now. That drama draws interest, and interest draws support.

Youth is a huge draw: As I witness the age difference between some of the larger donors and Lenne, I conclude that youth draws support. It’s a way to give something back and identify with earlier dreams and dramas of one’s life. Let’s keep in mind that for people living by their art, or working in certain types of jobs to support their art, this is real money. So backers, donors, investors—a bit of all three really—are making a difference that magnifies the impact of their gifts—and that is no small thing.

Lenne makes her case on on video in Nashville.

Lenne makes her case on video in Nashville.

Tell a personal story, and tell it with video: It amazing what you can do with an iPhone video camera these days. Lenne composed a narrative about going to Nashville to mix the album, and took the viewer on an adventure. The story was immediate, personal, and it was a real adventure. It was palpable. Her words, her inflections, her delight, the way she talked with her hands, were all immediate, compelling “pulls” in the narrative arc. I think we too often forget in philanthropy that the immediacy, the direct authenticity, of real people talking and being is what elicits empathetic action. Not organization-speak. And maybe, in the future, video is the only way to go. Direct mail, email—they pale in comparison. But what we say and how we do it, that is the crux of the issue. We perhaps should never again need to watch a stiff executive director bore us with the benefits of the new [Fill-in-theBlank] center.

Make the benefits personal: People who give a dollar maybe get a single song download, people who give more get an autographed record…vinyl! People who give even more get their name on the CD. People who more than that, for artists who tour, like Willie Porter, who raised $60,000 on a Kickstarter campaign, enter a raffle with very impressive odds to win a house concert by the artist. The Kickstarter artist thanks many, many donors in strikingly imaginative ways.

People know they’re making a difference: Small, discrete projects with identifiable goals make everyone a hero in the end. It’s not like giving to an amorphous Annual Fund goal, or even a graduating class goal. In Kickstarter’s universe the project doesn’t happen if you don’t give. It’s that immediate and direct—it’s cause and effect. I think in development we sometimes pull out last year’s script, rewrite a few paragraphs, and say please give to the scholarship fund. There’s no real there there. There is no tangible cause and effect. Perhaps we need to sponsor particular educations. Thinking more directly about the real end effect of donations is a powerful tool, and bureaucratic exhortations are no substitute for a compelling mission—in this case a personal mission.

Kickstarter cuts out the middleman—you: Many of these projects—and they are not crowdfunded, they are funded by individuals—are exactly the type that arts, technology, or innovation grants could fund—but don’t. Those grants require a brand name and mind-numbing applications for largesse that pales in comparison with what Willie Porter raises on his own and with no red tape. These dreams people come up with are mission-based in every sense of the word. And in Kickstarter’s logic, donor fatigue doesn’t exist. People give to projects—and yes, clearly, people—in which they believe. So it’s different than philanthropy—for the love of humankind—it’s personal, giving to an actual person, or band maybe. That’s different, yes. But the fundamental pitch is: if you want to see this promising project become a reality, you have to give. And it’s true, it’s not hype. And that’s not so far from the roots of philanthropy. The fact is, it’s a quiet revolution in the quest for inspiring donors to give of themselves for initiatives that matter; and I wonder, are we paying attention, not to new principles exactly, though that is to some extent true, but to direct applications of universal principles, aided by new technology, and grounded in our deepest, direct, person-to-person social impulses?

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www.kickstarter.com/projects/lenneklingaman/lenne-klingaman-the-heart-is-the-hunter