Considerations for Constructing "Robust, Vibrant and Diverse Cultures of Philanthropy"

When talking to fundraisers and non-fundraisers, I frequently share that my goal is to build "Robust, Vibrant and Diverse Cultures of Philanthropy." It sounds great right? Lot of fun, buzzy, idealistic words that feel meaningful. The problem is that people really have no clue what this actually means. In part because the term "Culture of Philanthropy" has struggled to be defined in a meaningful or operational way. As a result, it has become such a loaded term that people seem to throw around willy-nilly without any clear understanding.

Since the term seems to be so difficult to define, it is equally difficult to understand. Due its misunderstanding it makes it harder for us as fundraisers to step outside our boxes and examine what our organizational cultures of philanthropy actually look like and value. Especially because they are always growing, moving and dynamically changing - or - more specifically developing. This article seeks to provide some clarity to the term and encourage people to consider how we can better develop an understanding of how we should be constructing our organizational cultures of philanthropy over time.

Let's crack into that skull of yours! Quick Primer on Human Ecology

With the development process front of mind, allow me to drop some psychology on you and introduce a guy named Urie Bronnfenbrenner. What a great name, right? Bronnfenbrenner was a developmental psychologist who pioneered the ecological systems theory of development. The principle is simple: Our individual psychological and behavioral development, how we think and act, is the result of our interactions with our environment. This includes the people and forces we directly interact with, being those most immediate to us, and those in which we indirectly interact, like institutions, policy and cultural attitudes.

Think about it like this, as humans we are constantly learning by processing, assimilating and accommodating new information we receive from our environment. We use this information to create our understanding of the world around us. This means our perceptions, accurate or not, shape how we interact with those around us and how those around us respond. Perception becomes the lens through which we understand our own reality.

What you read. What you listen to on the news. How you feel about a decision in your workplace today. What your first-grade teacher told you about being kind to others. What your parents told you about eating your vegetables, or impressing on you the importance of trying new things. All of this effects your understanding of the world around you and how you respond to the environments you interact with every day. The more exposure one has the greater their understanding of how to process the information they receive.

If you have ever had the opportunity to work in a behavioral science lab you know how hard it is to teach a rat, through reinforcement, to press a lever. There is another factor involved here which is motivation and the way you increase a rat's motivation to react to food is sadly to starve them. So that the drive to eat to survive motivates them to learn a given behavior. However, that is a subject for a different article.

What make's Bronfenbrenner so important though, is that he gave us a framework by which we can try to understand how our interactions shape our perceptions, thoughts, behaviors and experiences over time. He even made a really cool, at least I think it's cool, systems model to use as a framework for understanding these interactions and their effects.

When we think about the basis for how we construct a "Robust, Vibrant and Diverse Culture of Philanthropy" this framework becomes critical to understanding the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats we face.

The world may not revolve around you but the first step to understanding is putting yourself, your donor, or your organization at the center of this framework and challenging your perceptions.

As fundraisers and philanthropy leaders, we value empathy but it is not a skill everyone in our field naturally possesses. This is probably why Brené Brown and Simon Sinek have seen so much growth in popularly. To be empathetic, rather than sympathetic, you have to open yourself up to vulnerability and "Start with why?" More importantly, as the ancient aphorism goes, "Know Thyself". Moreover understanding how your view of the world changes over time.

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom" - Aristotle

The same is true when it comes to thinking about what shapes our organizations over time. Understanding the culture you are in starts with understanding how the organization got to where it is today. Exploring how interactions have changed over time and what is holding the organization back. It requires stepping out of our box and taking a good look at our organizational history. Paying close attention to patterns in giving, changes in the organizational profiles, the effects of social and institutional change, how organizations have interacted with forces directly influencing them and how they have reacted or responded to indirect influences.

Let's take the COVID pandemic and higher education fundraising, as it highlights in stark contrast how an outside influence dramatically effected different cultures of philanthropy. Those institutions that were donor-centered reacted quickly and empathetically. Organizing caring campaigns, reaching out to students and families, calling alumni and finding ways of helping their constituents to stay in engaged while in isolation. These institutions saw massive growth and gains over the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.

While institutions who didn't run donor-centered programs have been struggled to catch up since 2020. As their donors were quickly inundated with engagement opportunities from other non-profits and organizations. This led to many college fundraising programs to flatline or decline during this same period.

Another example of an indirect influence that threatens a healthy cultures of philanthropy is when an organization's efforts inadvertently begin to mirror systems of inequality at the Macro level at the donor level. Look at how our industry has struggled to increase diversity on our boards and within our profession ranks. Due to wealth inequality and a multigeneration lack of philanthropic education for disenfranchised communities, it has become increasingly difficult, to practically impossible, to attract and retain strong and diverse board members and fundraising professionals.

In the case of fundraising professionals we have allowed unconscious bias and historically white cultures of philanthropy to be barriers to success for many. Look at how fundraising leaders tend to reflect the bias cultures of affluence in which they work. We have plenty of research on how race and gender have effected philanthropy but not so much within the profession. This is most likely due to the lack of diversity within the field. A savvy researcher seeking to understand why diverse fundraisers are fleeing from would do well to look at the responses to posts like this:

Because what you are likely to see are many people commenting on who is actually leaving the profession vs. who isn't. I will give you a hint, it resembles this post from Lynne Wester .

We need to be doing better at auditing our privilege and mentoring diverse fundraisers. [Emphasis on the period]

Personally and professionally I have walked into too many organizations who have allowed systems of inequality to seep into their continuity planning. Diverse fundraisers are not given the opportunity to grow within the profession. As those, often optically questionable choices, being groomed to ascend are offered advancement opportunities, career tracking, and other advantages that diverse candidates are not.

A Personal Note Here: I am a college educated, cisgender, able-bodied, middle-class, white, male, living in rural America. While I am a member of the gay/queer, Appalachian, and neurodiverse communities, I recognize that I have the situational privilege of "passing" and that my personal experiences may not reflect those of the broader diverse and unrepresented communities for which am only one member. I also acknowledge that I have most certainly benefited from generational and historical systems of inequality and as such I have a responsibility to regularly audit my privilege and challenge my perceptions to avoid the furtherance of such systems in the future.

This is why we have to actively challenge our perceptions so that we can avoid missing opportunities while perpetuating negative influences in philanthropy.

Everyone is a fundraiser and should understand the role they play in supporting the organizations culture of philanthropy. From inside out!

If you receive a paycheck from a nonprofit organization, you are a beneficiary of your organization's culture of philanthropy. Everyone's work has an impact, that is what organizations must share with their donors and should be reflected by employees.

At one point in my life, I worked for a community based mental health center that served adults, children and families in need of mental health services. Everyday, when I walked into the main center, I was always greeted by a colleague who worked to keep the facility clean. I made it a point to thank him regularly for what he does. Because a clean healthcare facility, providing services to low to no income people, really says a lot to a prospective donor about the level of care and compassion the organization has for the people it serves. In turn, the donor who invests in an associated program long term often provides the budgetary relief an organization needs to better provide for its staff and their families while continuing to raise the quality of care.

It's important to provide opportunities, as part of our workplace cultures, that illustrate the value of philanthropy to the work we do and how philanthropy helps us all be successful long-term. Failing to do this can actually hurt your culture of philanthropy through negative attitudes and interactions with your donors, who may include your staff. Here are some tips to combating these negative attitudes.

• Treat your staff as you would any other donor. Show them how much they are appreciated and thank them for their contributions
• Give them the option to opt out of stewardship vs. automatically removing them to reduce costs.
• Provide opportunities for life long philanthropic education.
• Explore and be responsive to negative attitudes about philanthropy.
• Celebrate organizational successes with everyone involved.

Integrate philanthropic education into your organizations culture of philanthropy, especially in your donor development and stewardship programs for all donors.

One of my favorite TED talks is by Kara Logan Berlin , CEO of a fundraising consultancy called Harvest.

As she points out, people carry a lot of baggage when it comes to conversations about wealth and money. One way to increase comfort with these conversations and help navigate this baggage is to provide opportunities for philanthropic education. This should be framed as a way to help people think about how they can support the things they value while helping your organization.

Philanthropic education also helps people, especially those who are not well represented in philanthropy, learn and become more comfortable talking about the value of giving. It can help relieve anxiety about money and also reveal information. I've found that people aren't comfortable talking about their own wealth sometimes, but love talking about others. That is why it is important to showcase all the ways in which people give, while being sensitive understanding generational and age-related feelings on discussing wealth. Knowledge is indeed power and philanthropic education helps empower donors.

This is especially true as we move through the great wealth exchange because we are about to start seeing some dramatically different ways of giving that have not been typical of generations past. There are about 90M people who will be retiring by 2030. These generations have represented the largest groups of donors we have seen within our industry and ~95% of them have given to non-profits primarily in the wealth accumulation phase of their lives.

As more individuals retire, they are likely to shift how they give as their incomes become more fixed to their savings. That means providing education on how Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) can help individuals satisfy their Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) and how gifts of stock can help avoid capital gains taxes. I offer this Letter to the Editor of my local small town newspaper as proof that we need to be doing more.

This need for education will only grow as potential policy changes with respect to IRA's and charitable gift annuities change. We are already seeing some financial planners begin talking about testamentary charitable gift annuities as potential vehicles for avoiding problems related to the SECURE Act.

For younger donors, education should be more focused on how nonprofits can help care for their family. Talking to newlyweds and new parents about estate planning and ways to take care of their families should the unforeseeable happen. Acknowledging they are in the wealth accumulation phase of their life and how to save for their future. There are plenty of attorneys, wealth planners, and tax professionals out there who love opportunities to talk about these things, usually paying for the privilege.

At the minimum you should use your stewardship programs to educate your donors on the impact of their gifts small to large.

All these factors should be considered when thinking about how your organization is constructing it's culture of philanthropy. I would encourage you to take the time to really dig in and examine your own organizations culture of philanthropy and consider to following.

A robust, vibrant and diverse culture of philanthropy must be centered around directly engaging a generalizable donor experience for all donors and stakeholders regardless of individual differences. Offering opportunities for all donors to learn how their giving can further the organizations mission, goals, and values.

To be robust, we have to welcome everyone, within and outside our organizations, to join us in philanthropy in their own way making them feel valued at all levels. Utilizing philanthropic education as a means of expanding our donors understanding of how they can give back.

To be vibrant, we have to energetically show our appreciation every gift of time, talent and treasure while highlighting it's impact and value these gifts have to our organizations.

To be diverse, we have to do everything within our power to ensure our work is equitable. Recognizing systems of inequality which have prevented participation in philanthropy and doing our best to address these in our future work.