Philanthropy Needs a Joy Revolution

A couple months ago, exhausted by the barrage of distressing headlines everyday and frustrated by the inertia of our sector, I posted a simple question on LinkedIn. What is bringing you joy?

Through this simple exercise, I was reminded that my joy is wrapped up in yours. Reading about the joys that you all have found in children, pets, music, food, cocktails, hugs, exercise, hosting, dancing, gardening, acts of service, self-affirmations, deep conversations, silliness, friendship, and sleep, left me feeling lighter, brighter, and more deeply connected to our shared sense of purpose. Knowing of your joy heightened mine.

In her book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich introduces the term “collective joy” to describe group events involving music, synchronized movement, costumes, and being part of something greater than us. Though we might not all be at Burning Man together, the ability to define a space, even momentarily and virtually, that calls for nothing more than the simple indulgence in each other’s pleasures, is essential for our lives and livelihoods.

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I was also struck by the gratitude people gave me, online and off, for simply posing the question about joy in the first place. It was as if the question itself triggered a release – during a time so shrouded in sadness, it gave permission to share, unabashed and unjudged, in happiness. With overlapping crises that sap our energy and threaten our sense of hope, it provided a space to acknowledge that seeking and finding joy is, what one colleague said, “a call to find whatever ways we can to gently refill and refuel”. It reminded me that joy is not a frivolous or selfish pursuit. Joy is an essential tool for resilience. It is, like poet Toi Derricotte said, “an act of resistance”. Joy is the salve for our feelings of fatigue, anger, and hopelessness. So, we must not let the hatred and injustices in the world, and those that perpetuate them, diminish our individual and our collective joy.

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Of all the responses I received, however, one has stuck with me the most. A colleague wrote me an email saying, “I don’t post personal stuff on LinkedIn, but I wanted to say how much joy I had from a post which was not about how brilliant and successful and awarded winning you are, but without ego reaching out to peers when the world and so many colleagues are in conflict and pain.”

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Those of us working in the philanthropy sector – as fundraisers, donor organizers, and network-builders – got into this work because of our commitment to social change and our “love of humanity”. That sounds entirely altruistic and collaborative, while we know that our reality is not. The system we operate in is just like all the others – it fosters competition over collaboration and a mindset of scarcity over abundance. We are hard-working and creative and have every right to boast about our successes; but we are also forced to do so in a way that attempts to rise above one another so that we might draw the attention of the few donors willing to fund our existence. Here we are trying to achieve the seemingly impossible goals of equity, justice, and human dignity; trying to unlock capital for the greatest, most complex, and most devastating crises of our time. All through a system that forces us apart rather than together, and at the expense of us making long-term change. A system that celebrates individual wins and joy, at the expense of our collective ones.

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To dismantle that system, we must shed our egos and protectiveness over our work. We must recognize and honor the deep and important value that we each bring to the sector, while holding lightly the things that replicate or undermine what others do. We must admit that the more siloed we are, the more disempowering we are to donors and the less impact we are able to make. We literally have no more time to waste operating the way we have been. We must rip the old ways of working apart and shape a new way of working that centers abundance and partnership. That is what will bring me joy.

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