The Mind is a Terrible Thing

While religious practice and belief is one exterior route that has been tried to help us human beings allow our better qualities ascendancy over baser instincts, some thinkers have prompted us to look inward and explore the internal qualities of our spiritual nature as a way to do this. But the mind is a terrible thing: its deviousness defies our attempts to reform it, and relatively few have succeeded in reaching a state of internal balance and peace.

Meanwhile the rest of us struggle to find ways to harness our good qualities and transform our greed and selfishness into socially acceptable patterns. Some among us do better than others, of course, but even in the midst of the wealthiest, most stable and most successful experiment with democracy the world has ever known, we are still very close to the anarchy and mob rule of the jungles from which we evolved. This is evidenced by such visible markers as our penchant for war, our drive for personal or group control, the avarice and deception of our corporate leaders, and our ability to discriminate against our fellows for the sake of our own advancement.

Self-discipline may be the answer, but that in itself is a product of a mind that is essentially bi-polar in nature: as it thinks, it employs two modes simultaneously: goodness and evil. Any scheme we invent within our mind (religion, government, education, business, high tech information) to try to alter our own nature -- or that of others, as in the case of religion -- is bound to have within it both the seeds of the greatest good and those of the most avaricious greed and deceit.

If we couple the qualities of this internal bi-polar human nature with what Cotter terms the "unfathomable disparities of fortune" among members of our race, it is indeed a miracle when we see persons or groups who are able to allow the kindness, creativity, justice and productivity aspects of our nature to have more permanent sway in their lives.

How, then, is charity possible at all? How can we go into the marketplace expecting any person to give significantly to our cause, or any cause? How can we ever expect the members of nonprofit boards to be self-disciplined enough to eschew micro-management and be comfortable doing strategic planning, or giving and soliciting funds? How reasonable is it to expect that an "individualistic" type of person starting a new charity will have the ability and self-discipline to plan first, get the community behind him/her, and then be satisfied with achieving personal gratification later, thus preventing trouble down the road? Are these not, given human nature, unrasonable expectations?

One answer may be that we simplymust "have faith" that sometimes the system works in a way that permits these phenomena to occur. Another perspective may be that we simply "play the numbers" and hope that "this time it will be better." Yet another view could be that we simply let human good and evil have their sway, however it happens, and do the best we can with what we have at the moment but not strive for anything better. But another yearning is to try to give people the excuse, the reasons and the information they need to make better decisions.

This raises the question with which I will end today's post: "In light of the condition in which human gbeings of even the most altruistic motives find themselves, what should be the fundraising consultant's essential task when working with a client nonprofit?"

1. Is the fundraising consultant's task simply to scatter as much educational and informational seed about good fundraising practice as possible in the client organization regardless of the ground on which that seed falls, and heedless of whether client's objectives are likely to produce positive results?

2. Or is the fundraising consultant's task to simply go ahead and help any client achieve whatever objective that client defines for their operation, even though that objective may be rooted in a process that is ill-conceived, or may be delivering an outcome to the client that is unproductive or even self-destructive over the long haul?

3. Or is the fundraising consultant's task one of intervention in a client's process, regardless of objective and desired outcome, to correct that process and help the client create a better, more achievable, more positive objective before assisting in the achievement of that objective?

The way I have been practicing these past ten years is a combination of the three. I have tried to sow as much educational and informational seed as possible, but have tried to plant those seeds in as many open and fertile minds as I can find. I have helped clients achieve objectives they have defined for their operations, but have endeavored to point out potential trouble that exists or that I see on the horizon given the facts of their organizational life as I can determine them. And I have attempted to provide intervention processes when clients indicate a willingness to undergo the changes necessary to achieve greater fundraising potential.

We'll get back to our main theme of start-up nonprofits tomorrow. There will be no afternoon post today.

Generosity

As we get started in the New Year, I'd like to share with you a perspective on giving that comes from two inputs during the holidays.

The first input comes from a wonderful article by New York Times art critic Holland Carter in the newspaper's art section for Friday, December 22, 2006. He was writing about the various art exhibitions available in New York museums, and prefaced his catalog with a quote from Tolstoy and a reflection on the meaning of philanthropy. He wrote:
"What's ours? 'With one hand I take thousands of rubles from the poor, and with the other I hand back a few kopecks,' wrote Tolstoy late in his life, when he was in despair about how life worked and how he, rich and famous, master of servants and serfs, had lived it. In the end he wanted nothing. He wanted to give back everything, give everything away….
"Generosity means different things to different people… For them giving may be pleasurable, but it is never optional. In a world with unfathomable disparities in fortune, generosity is simply justice."

To me this is the one of the simplest and most profound "cases for support" I have ever seen. Whether your cause is kidney disease or cancer, feeding the homeless or camp for the kids, art in the schools or the gift of a collection, indigent care or a new hospital wing, education for those less fortunate or scholarships for study abroad, the simple reason any donor would give, that is, "the case for support," ultimately comes down to the fact that "generosity is simply justice."

The second input is a reflection derived from Cotter's "disparities in fortune" theme. I have had the privilege to meet and work with many people, at home and abroad, throughout my lifetime in both the business and nonprofit worlds. My reading has augmented this experience with much richer panoply of characters from ages past and places around the globe. One thing comes crystal clear: humanity has two sides to its nature. On one side, we are capable of the basest immorality, ignorance, superstition, greed, injustice and inhumanity to our fellows. On the other side, we are equally capable of incredible kindness, creativity, justice, invention, productivity and technical advancement. Let's take a look at these two aspects of our nature.

On the one hand, if we consider that true "progress" for our race might be defined as gaining the ability to reinforce and enhance our better nature while subduing the worst, then I would suggest that we have not progressed very far in the last 10,000 years or so. We have, indeed, generated much knowledge about ourselves and our world, and have enhanced our technology and tool-making incredibly.

But the human being in the Jericho of today in not far advanced from his/her predecessor of 8,000 BC; the militants of Iraq and Iran today are only further advanced technologically from the conquerors of Persia, Babylon and Mesopotamia of biblical times, but they are just as wonton in their destruction and greed and desire for killing and revenge. We fare no better as a race whether we are in the United States or China, whether in Kabul, Nairobi or Paris when it comes to giving our better side ascendancy.

What we seem to lack, as a race, is the ability to gain some solid control over our baser nature that would allow our essential goodness and creativity to advance and become dominant. We seemingly have not been able to develop an effective mechanism of exerting and enforcing that kind of internal control and self-discipline that can become a shield against greed, avarice and envy.

For many centuries we have sought to repress and impose order on the human character from outside, by the artifice of religion. Whether we look at Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Hinduism, these religions have given us rules and regulations, myths and liturgies that are palliatives for life's unanswered questions. But they have also brought us dire threats from religion's version of mob rule, like jail, torture, death and hell-in-an-after-life if anyone didn't believe just like everyone else. Religion has only succeeded, then, in providing more stages on which our baser nature is declaimed with ever greater violence.

Many individual journeys to the contrary, as a race of human beings we have succeed, under religion's influence, only in confusing our internal spiritual development with the external practices of religious "faith" or "belief" as defined by "leaders" who themselves are principally motivated by greed, avarice and envy. It seems we still conform all too readily to the cultural, regional or family/clan greed, envy, avarice of the mob, and have not lessened the stranglehold of our baser nature so that we more naturally strive for qualities like peace and justice.

So war continues to be the ultimate way to settle disputes; greed determines when and where we invest, and in what; we harbor and seek revenge for slights and wrongs over generations; and envy moves us to accomplish great technological progress at our neighbor's/brother's loss.

Now, what about the other side? More this afternoon…