My next step: GivingTuesday

Following up on last week’s news… honored to announce that I have joined GivingTuesday as Chief Global Strategy and Partnerships Officer.?And on a Tuesday. Seems fitting.

To those of you who have only known me as an advocate for digital equity or the digital transformation of civil society, this may come as a surprise. If so, we were clearly too busy doing business and hadn’t gotten to the point in our conversations where we talked about our professional histories and why we work on what we work on. My history is in community organizing and community philanthropy; I worked on digitalization as a means to the ends of a more functional, robust, engaged, civil society in our increasingly digital world.?

In honor of this announcement I had started and stopped several versions of grand statements laying out my Theory of Everything. Each culminated in some clever, never concise, version of:

‘...which is exactly why I am joining GivingTuesday… the movement and organization embodies and enables - as infrastructure, as engine of inspiration, as community - exactly what I believe humanity needs if we are to navigate the polycrisis in a manner that centers human dignity…’?

Threaded into the exposition were stories that illustrated how small acts of generosity are so much more than their dollar or hour increment when understood as expressions of trust in civic action and civil society; trust in community and social leaders; reminder of our power, roles, and responsibilities as citizens; the very foundation of civil society and democracy - and good for you, too. There were statistics about how the total value of these small donations far outweighs the total amount given by foundations, governments, and corporations. There was rationale for why, at a time when the world is getting hotter and harder, we must quit marginalizing the everyday generosity of everyday people as somehow lesser than other forms of giving, respect, and enable it as both critical and fundamental to evolution toward a more civil society. There was snark. Insight. Intrigue. There was even a short video.

Heady stuff. Perhaps a little too heady for a LinkedIn post, even if all true. I beg your forgiveness for sparing you the pontification in favor of some hope and gratitude.?

The hope is that we will have time to get into geeking out on all that other stuff over the years ahead. There is much to be done!

The gratitude is to the Team - for the opportunity to join in the work, continue my service, and learning; to join this community and organization with all its insight and inspirational programming; to join in work that started as a hashtag, which begat a movement, inspiring millions to act, across all countries on the face of the earth, everyday (with the data to prove it).?

I look forward to bringing my best. GivingTuesday does in fact embody so much of what I believe necessary in this ever hotter, harder, world. More about why to come.?