Honesty: The Thing We Keep Trying to Avoid is How We Actually Get to True Philanthropy

I was talking to a friend last week.

As a new staffer at his organization, he kept finding himself confused about what one of his colleagues’ job was. And when he talked to him, that colleague was confused too. Even more, all of their team members had been not only ignoring the issue of his role confusion — for years! — but they were also actively ignoring the colleague.

“Don’t ask him for that,” they’d say. “He never follows through and he never gets anything done.” (As though one could "get anything done" for a job one doesn't even have defined!) In effect, they were training their new colleague to accept the culture they had developed, which was avoiding direct and honest communication — which consequently meant actively accepting confusion and marginalization as the norm.

One of the most heart-breaking elements of the story was hearing about how that colleague had been trying to clarify his role, and trying to be a good team member — but was just finding himself marginalized by his team repeatedly.

My friend refused to play along.

He started asking questions. He started pushing for conversations. He started encouraging the team to actually clarify all of their jobs and job descriptions.

What it Means for Us

Doesn’t this story resonate?

Have you experienced anything like this story?

I’m willing to bet you have.

The dynamics present in this story, ones common within teams of humans who work together, are related to the reasons why we avoid direct and honest communication with our donors, too. And, similarly, the consequences of our avoidance and dishonesty can be seriously damaging to our fellow humans.

This is why one of the core principles of Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) is that “We treat donors as partners, and this means that we are transparent and occasionally have difficult conversations.”

When we don’t have honest conversations with donors, SO many harmful things will become the reality that we accept and co-create:

• “You might want to consider a Peloton now that you’re married. You gotta keep in good shape for your hubby!” If we let a donor say something like that to a young female fundraiser, without addressing it directly as problematic, we are letting shades of sexism and patriarchy continue to be our shared reality.
• If we let our donors refer to the Black youth they’re supporting with their giving as “colored” or as “coming from broken families,” we are letting shades of racism and White Supremacy continue to be our shared reality.
• If we encourage donors to support youth of color so they can get an education or learn job skills, without being clear that the reason extra support for them is even necessary has nothing to do with the kids themselves, but rather is because of the systemically racist ways we’ve constructed our society, we are simply perpetuating White Supremacy.

Each of these examples is something I’ve seen myself, or that I’ve heard about from friends and colleagues. These are real-life situations. And they are the shared reality that we have accepted and co-created.

Honesty is a tool we need to change these realities.

Honesty is powerful.

Honesty is how we call attention to the way things actually are, so that we can work together on changing our shared reality… into something much better… rather than doing/saying nothing (a.k.a. just accepting and thus co-creating what is).

On Hierarchy + Honesty

Now, a word about hierarchy.

We’re obsessed with hierarchy in our dominant, prevailing culture. Everything is always about who’s on “top.” Or about prioritizing whatever’s “bigger,” or “faster,” or “stronger.” Or what is “best” or “right.”

We live our whole lives within hierarchies — within our workplaces, within our governments, within our social circles, even within our families, so much so that many of us have just stopped consciously seeing hierarchies… and have accepted that they are inevitable.

(This is yet another thing that we can question and change, rather than accept, but that discussion will be for another time.)

Our insistence on hierarchy — and relatedly, and relevantly, granting more power to certain people — is a core motivation behind why we humans created categories like “race” and “gender” in the first place.

And, much like the microcosm of our individual lives, the lessons we learned early in our human history have continued to be acted out and perpetuated by us in the present day, without us really stopping to evaluate them and question whether these are the realities we want to be accepting and co-creating.

How do we resolve this?

We need to raise our consciousness.

See and acknowledge what is.

Ask the necessary questions.

Challenge what needs to be challenged.

Point out the realities.

Suggest alternatives.

But unless and until more of us commit to that work, the hierarchies persist… and thus, I want to be clear that the kind of honesty I’m talking about will be most required from the people closest to the “tops” of those hierarchies.

If you are a White, cisgender man, and you want to see all these dynamics I’m discussing be different, you need to speak up whenever you see these things. You need to actively embrace open, direct, and honest communication. If you don’t do that, you are actively accepting and co-creating our current reality.

I feel a similar responsibility as a White, cisgender woman — especially one with education and class privilege in our society. I know that, even though it’s likely I won’t be listened to as much or taken as seriously as a White, cisgender man with similar education and class privilege, I know it’s a heckuva lot more likely I’ll be listened to, and a heckuva lot less likely that I’ll experience harmful repercussions, than will my siblings of color, or those without my education and class privilege.

So I’m speaking up.

Honestly.

And I’m asking my fellow White, cisgender women, especially those with education and class privilege, to commit to this direct and honest communication too.

Stay very aware of these race, gender, class, and other power dynamics as you move through your day-to-day.

These power dynamics are present always.

The way we stop accepting them (and thus co-creating them!) is by actively creating something else — and we do that by being honest.

We take on our own power this way.

We use our power for good.

We embrace a new freedom this way.

We live in love this way.

Honesty As Love

This is getting long, so it’s time to wrap up for today.

But first, I want to just plant the seed with you that, of course, we’re centering “love” here at For the Love of Humanity. And I know that "love" is a word that can mean SO many different things, in so many different settings… and that it is a word that carries a lot of baggage, because of how twisted it’s gotten by us imperfect humans.

In the future, we will dig much deeper into what we know love to be from our experience… but I will bet, based on my own experiences, and those of my friends and colleagues and loved ones, that for today’s discussion, you can say that you know in your bones that the most loving way to be is honest.

Now, there is of course a thing we call brutal honesty. That is not what I mean. We don’t need to be brutal, when we’re honest. We don’t need to be mean. And we shouldn't be.

But being clear, direct, and honest is the kindest and most loving way we can be with others. Don't you agree?

We’ve seen the alternative.

And it’s not very loving.

Yes?

Honesty is how we will all find a shared, true freedom. Honesty is a key to our co-liberation. Honesty is a way we can all start to live in the love we so crave. Honesty will bring us to true philanthropy (love of humanity).

Are you in?

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