Motivating Generosity (The Home Edition)

 

It Starts With You

You are responsible for the world that you live in. It is not government’s responsibility. It is not your school’s or your social club’s or your church’s or your neighbor’s or your fellow citizen’s. It is yours, utterly and singularly yours.
- August Wilson

May we be committed to personally carrying out the actions that create a more just world.         - Sojourners

This is not about blaming the victim for their plight. Indeed, there is a movement that explains poverty and despair as a form of karma or cosmic justice. Among Christians this would be predetermination.(Not all Christians believe this.) It would be expressed as, "You get what you deserve." This is about the individual taking responsibility for making the world a better place, a personal responsibility.

Maybe this passage from Genesis helps explain. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 

- Genesis 2:15 (NIV)

Waiting for others to be generous in your place, may mean we're all going to wait. Besides, we cannot control the actions of others, only our own actions. 

Perhaps, the example we set will motivate other toward generosity. How can we become more generous? I found "Ten little ways we can become more generous". by Joshua Becker. Here's what he suggests:

Consider the benefits of generosity. Generous people report being happier, healthier, and more satisfied with life than those who don’t give. Generosity produces within us a sense that we are capable of making a difference in the world.

Embrace gratitude. Make a short list of the things in your life for which you are grateful. The most important step you can take to become more generous is to spend more time thinking about what you already possess and less time thinking about what you don’t.

 Start really small. If you’ve never given away money, start by giving away $1. No matter what dollar amount you choose, jump right in with something small. You can afford it… and that little push can help build momentum in your life towards generosity.

Divert one specific expense. For a set period of time (try 29 days), divert one specific expense to a charity of your choosing. You may choose to bring a lunch to work, ride your bike to work once/week, or give up Starbucks on Mondays (wait, make that Thursday). Calculate the money you’ll save and then redirect it to a specific charity/cause. 

Fund a cause based on your passions. There are countless charities/causes that need your support. And some of them are directly in-line with your most compelling passions.

 Find a person you believe in. If you find that you are more easily motivated and shaped by the people in your life rather than organizations/causes, use that tendency as motivation instead.

Spend time with people in need. One of the most effective antidotes for non-generosity is to make space in your life for those who actually need your help. After all, it is a very small step to go from knowing somebody in need to helping somebody in need. Rubbing shoulders with the poor just may change your impression of them forever.

Spend time with a generous person. 

Live a more minimalist life. Intentionally decide to own less. Oh sure, living a minimalist life won’t automatically make you a more generous person, but it will provide the space necessary to make it possible.

Motivating Generosity

  

“Generosity: The habit of giving freely without expecting anything in return.” Anonymous

In public media, we always talk about generous support (Thank you for your generous support), but what motivates people to be generous? 

Reaching back to an article from 2016 published in Greater Good Magazine, I found motivators behind giving to help people who are suffering. The article by SHARON BEGLEY, "What Motivates You to Be Generous?" focused on a 2016 study on compassion meditation and generosity by researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 

Here are some of the key points highlighted by Begley

• In general, in compassion meditation, you focus on suffering individuals, then groups of suffering people, then all of suffering humanity. In each case, you express the wish that they be free from suffering. 
• Researchers found that greater distress predicted greater generosity. But so did these factors: thinking the person was blameless, believing a donation would actually help, and feeling warmth toward the sufferer. 
• Generosity does not seem to be an instinctive, default behavior. It is a learned behavior. 
• Generosity wanes if people perceive the world as full of threats and looming scarcity rather than of abundance and security—one of the individual traits most predictive of individual generosity.
• Perhaps the strongest message from the science of generosity is that the more adversity someone has experienced, the more compassion she feels and the more generous she’s likely to be. 

The application here is for the consequence of famine, fire and other catastrophes.  Then, what could be applied to public media fundraising? Nothing we do comes even close to the tragedies and suffering after an earthquake or hurricane.  

 

Try This

After convincing potential donors of  your unique value proposition:

• Convince them the donation will actually help.
• Appeal to their loyalty toward your institution and your content.
• Stay away from messages of doom and scarcity.

Notice the quote. There's nothing in there that implies the donor wants a coffee mug, tote bag or t-shirt.

(The tote bag and t-shirt, on the other hand, are great advertising, increasing awareness of your brand.)

Trump's Seeds of Doubt

He keeps us looking in the wrong direction.

There are two major crisis unfolding at once. They're related. COVID 19 is spreading at an alarming rate and the economy will tank because of it.

Where's our leadership? The guy at the top is focussed on subverting the election.

Donald Trump and his allies are taking increasingly frantic steps to subvert the results of the 2020 election, including summoning state legislators to the White House as part of a longshot bid to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. -AP

Trump has spent the three weeks since Election Day sowing doubt about the reliability of the vote, attacking election workers and insisting that he won states that he did not win.

The president's scattershot legal approach appears aimed more at undermining confidence in the election than actually changing the results. Biden's lead in Michigan is more than 140,000 votes, and the Democrat leads in Pennsylvania by roughly 80,000 votes. -The Hill

Instead of leading during the second surge of COVID19, we're getting golf outings and tweets. We're also facing a steep decline in the economy. The pandemic and the economy are intertwined. The economy cannot be fixed until the virus is under control. That's why the Fed is urging another stimulus. The consequences of not focusing on the two major crisis we face are dire.

This was in the NYTimes:
The research firm Moody’s Analytics predicted that the economy would shrink during both the first and second quarters of 2021, and the unemployment rate would approach 10 percent next summer, up from 6.9 percent last month.



By The New York Times | Source: Moody’s Analytics


Many Americans would draw down their savings or struggle to pay medical bills. Some would lose their homes and go bankrupt. Recessions cause permanent damage to people’s lives, which is one reason that Fed officials and many economists support further stimulus.


A lack of government support, Powell has said, may lead to “tragic” results with “unnecessary hardship.” Loretta Mester, the president of the Cleveland Fed, has called the lack of another stimulus package “very concerning.”

So what's it going to be? Actual leadership or the partisan divide?

What's Next?

What is Life

I've been within a whisker of death a several times. I've met two sharks up close and personal. One knocked me sideways. The other glided past me as I put my foot up the ladder on the side of a schooner. I've been hit eight times in auto collisions. I was in an airplane that started to roll sideways 250 feet above the ground. Another plane was almost hit by another. We were within feet. Every time I've walked away. It makes me wonder, because I know I am only here for a short time. This is all temporary. 

After all that?

9/11

An economic collapse brought on by power and greed

Jobless and underemployed

A pandemic

What's the point? Is there a purpose to all of this?

One thing for sure, I am not in control. Something else is and it is all quite humbling. Perhaps I'm here to do more. Maybe something more is expected. I'm open to that. I hope my eyes are open. I don't want to miss it.

Freedom of Speech

 It doesn't mean you can say anything you want.

I can remember mom saying, "keep a civil tongue in your head," and " Is it too much to ask you think before you speak?"

It's in the bible too. This is from Proverbs 16:23 The hearts of the wise make their mouths prudent,and their lips promote instruction.  27 A scoundrel plots evil,and on their lips it is like a scorching fire.

Steve Brannon may have stepped over the line.

From multiple sources...Twitter permanently suspended an account belonging to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon after he suggested Thursday morning that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded. His comments were made in a video posted to his Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter accounts. 

 Is it a freedom of speech issue? Not if it puts individuals in imminent danger.

So...here are the exceptions. Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial speech such as advertising.

Along with communicative restrictions, less protection is afforded for uninhibited speech when the government acts as subsidizer or speaker, is an employer, controls education, or regulates the mail, airwaves, legal bar, military, prisons, and immigration.  Wikipedia

Are we allowed to say anything we want on line without regard to the consequences. Are the platforms we use liable for the content we provide? According to talksonlaw.com, But guess what? Facebook, Twitter, the other social media platforms are not the government. They are private sector entities, and therefore, they have no First Amendment obligation to protect your freedom of speech. To the contrary, they have their own First Amendment rights—their media right. 

Should freedom of speech be limited on social media? 

(a) It is the policy of the United States that large online platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, as the critical means of promoting the free flow of speech and ideas today, should not restrict protected speech.May 28, 2020 -whitehouse.gov

What speech is not protected? Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment (and therefore may be restricted) include obscenity, fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, speech that violates intellectual property law, true threats, and commercial ...advertising. 

It seems Bannon crossed that line. Subsequently, his lawyer quit.

Count Our Votes

From Slavery to Jim Crow to The Southern Strategy

Voter suppression is nothing new. Threatening and acts of violence to prevent people in this country from invoking their right to vote is not new. 

This continuing suppression of the vote was spawned by Jim Crow laws and continued through the southern strategy of the Republican party and embraced by white southern evangelicals and Trumpians. 

Through gerrymandering and a conservative court, barriers to voting by certain groups of US citizens have been put in place In the past ten years. Several states, north and south, have passed legislation restricting the right to vote.

I found this on the History Channel. 

The 15th Amendment granting African-American men the right to vote was adopted into the U.S. Constitution in 1870. Despite the amendment, by the late 1870s discriminatory practices were used to prevent blacks from exercising their right to vote, especially in the South. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that legal barriers were outlawed at the state and local levels if they denied African-Americans their right to vote under the 15th Amendment.

Is history repeating itself? Maybe not. Perhaps, the issue has never been resolved. The deeply-seated racism that feeds voter suppression has been there all along.

Now Trump supporters are turning to threats and potential acts of violence. 

"Two armed Virginia men who were arrested Thursday outside the Philadelphia Convention Center were "coming to deliver a truck full of fake ballots" to the city, CNN affiliate KYW reported, citing prosecutors.

The center is one of the places where election workers have been counting votes from the 2020 general election, which includes the race for president."

True leaders are calling for calm. Let the process play out, please!