Brigid Slipka

…writings on giving & living

Dooce Goes To Bangladesh

June 29th, 2011 · International Aid

I am an enormous fan of writer Heather Armstrong. She is a master of language and wit, not to mention design, which would make me hate her if she weren’t so durn funny. She is a 21st century Mark Twain.

I am an enormous fan of many international aid writers: Tales From the Hood, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, Tom Murphy. As a donor, my eyes have been wide-opened by their discussion of how aid works. Or doesn’t. Or makes things much, much worse.

My RSS reader is neatly categorized into funny writers and philanthropy-related writers, but sometimes this division blurs. For example, like now:

Dooce went to Bangladesh.

I am nervous about what she is going to say. I am nervous that one of my favorite writers could fall into one of these patronizing traps:

Staring at others for one’s own enlightenment. What’s interesting for Westerners to come from afar and observe can be intrusive to the folks there. Being watched for the watcher’s educational purposes can be demoralizing. If not outright offensive.

Whites in shining armor. This is the terrible assumption that residents of developing countries are incapable of working to fix their lives and that Westerners must come in with their superior intelligence (or design) and do it for them.

How it will all pan out will depend on the answer to one question, and one question alone:

Will Dooce’s trip ultimately help or harm the beneficiaries?

And this will be worked out according to three factors, in increasing importance:

Amount of cash raised. Will Dooce’s audience give? Will they give more than they’d have done without her reporting back to us? Will they balk at cash gifts in favor of well-intentioned-but-ill-effective Gifts In Kind?

Where the cash goes.  It doesn’t matter how much money readers give if it goes to an NGO that’s ineffective. Or harmful. Folks often assume that of course the nonprofit is doing good work, but there’s so many examples of when things get inadvertantly worse that we have to reverse the burden of proof. At least from what’s available on the website, none of the NGOs mentioned through Every Mother Counts has demonstrated proof that their programs make lives better.

(Which doesn’t mean don’t give. It means just give somewhere else that has proven their impact.)

The perspectives of the beneficiaries. Yes, I know it’s circular logic to have one component of the question of beneficiaries be a question of beneficiaries. But the question of beneficiaries is so fundamental to everything charitable/philanthropic/human that we do. Do the beneficiaries have their dignity and our respect? Do they participate in implementing the programs? Do they participate in designing the programs? Do they ever get to say what they want?

Multiply all this by the fact that Dooce is widestream media, which amplifies everything.

I am worried that one of these things will happen:

  • Dooce’s readers don’t give cash.  The trip will end up not helping the beneficiaries.
  • Dooce’s readers give but to a place that’s ineffective. The trip will still end up not helping the beneficiaries.
  • Dooce’s readers give but to a place that inadvertantly makes it all worse.  The trip will now be harmful to the beneficiaries.

But most of all, I’m worried that readers will give, and even give to a place that has proven impact on the Bangladesh women & children, and while they give, they will only be thinking: “Oh those poor people.”

If Dooce’s readers view the Bangladeshis as pathetic, or sad, or incapable, or anything other than equal to their own selves, the trip will be harmful to those very people. The chance for monetary help will be overshadowed by the loss of global connection.

I see the humanity in Armstrong’s writing (even when doused in vast swathes of poop-related humor) enough to believe that she will personally get this.  And I see the skill in her writing enough to believe that she can communicate that to the rest of us. And, if by god she can can pull it off, I see the power in her writing to convince all of us to see this global community, see ourselves in these women, and see that we must all work together to make this small world of ours a better one.

UPDATE: Heather’s posted and Yahoo! has offered to make a gift to the charity of Armstrong’s choice. Folks in the Dooce Community can suggest charities here. I’ve put in a plug for a GiveWell recommendation :)

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How To Not Write: A List

June 29th, 2011 · Arts

Only some of the many, many things you can do to Not Write:

  1. Think about Writing
  2. Whine about Writing
  3. Prepare for Writing
  4. Rest up for Writing
  5. Envision yourself Writing
  6. Daydream about Writing
  7. Talk about Writing
  8. Drink & Talk about Writing

The list of things to do to Write is, thankfully, much shorter. Just one thing on it. That one thing is lots harder to do, though.

Bonus! This list is also helpful in describing How To Not: Get In Shape, Learn Mandarin, Play the Cello, Golf, Surf, Explore, Design, Build, Create, or Give.

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Gift Minimums: Floors and Ceilings

June 28th, 2011 · How Much to Give

In giving, as soon as you set a minimum amount to give, it becomes a maximum.  The floor becomes a ceiling.

“Board members must give at least $10,000″ becomes: Board members give $10,000 and not a penny more.

“Foundations must spend 5% of their assets” becomes: Foundations spend only 5% of their assets and that’s it.

Begin to broach the subject about raising the floor, raising the minimum, and the push-back can get fierce. Of course it does. Folks don’t hear that this is going to be a simple step upward, they hear that this is going to make them thump their heads on the ceiling.

How to prevent this?

Watch your language. No more “board dues” or “required contribution.” This stuff immediately falls into the realm of expense minimization and cost-benefit analysis.  Use the language of giving: connection, support, building.  Shape your words so that donations become an opportunity to connect with each other. These are the gifts that grow, both in compassion and in amount.

Uphold examples. Some board members are giving more than their minimums, and some foundations are spending down entirely. Hold these folks up as exemplary examples. Yes, at first the fact that they are noteworthy has a holds a shadow of disheartenment, as giving above and beyond feels so unusual. But if the original big givers are revered, more will join in.

Change the indirect factors. Foundations who do give more than the legally-obligated 5% can find themselves the following year hit with a higher tax break, something a recent House bill proposes to change. Look to what could be changing the minimums into maximums and fix those mitigating problems.

Be an example yourself. It always comes back to this: to inspire generous giving in others, you must do it yourself.

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Related articles here

How To Be a Leader in Philanthropy

Related articles elsewhere

Giving While Living from Charles Feeney, who sparked the instructions to spend all assets of Atlantic Philanthropies

Spending down French American Charitable Trust (FACT) from Diane Feeney, via Bolder Giving

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Esther Duflo: Responsibility of the Rich, Responsibility of the Poor

June 27th, 2011 · Inequality

Esther Duflo at the Center For Effective Philanthropy conference:

We tend to be patronizing about the poor in a very specific sense, which is that we tend to think, ‘Why don’t they take more responsibility for their lives?’ And what we are forgetting is that the richer you are the less responsibility you need to take for your own life because everything is taken care for you. And the poorer you are the more you have to be responsible for everything about your life….Stop berating people for not being responsible and start to think of ways instead of providing the poor with the luxury that we all have, which is that a lot of decisions are taken for us. If we do nothing, we are on the right track. For most of the poor, if they do nothing, they are on the wrong track.

(h/t The CEP Blog)

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UK Philanthropy Review: Policies to Encourage Giving

June 22nd, 2011 · Philanthropists & Donors

The Philanthropy Review has released a report outlining ways to get UK citizens to give more.

First: this is astounding to me. At least in America, giving is driven by the nonprofits that are asking for gifts. People give because fundraisers ask in order to raise the resources to support the programs (one criticism of the report cites just that). There is no uber-organization pushing for folks to be generous, the drive is coming from the nonprofits that need the funds.

Yes, churches & universities teach their communities to be generous, but with the aim for the generosity to (at least in large part) come to them.

I eagerly look forward to seeing whether this conglomeration of British philanthropists , charitable and forprofit leaders, and government liaisons can encourage the nation as a whole to become more charitable. The idea is laudable; the question is whether policies are implementable, and whether those that can be passed will make a difference.

Meanwhile, here’s the summary of what Philanthropy Review reports will increase generosity in the UK:

  • Increase in payroll giving
  • Establishing bank accounts specifically for charity
  • Providing tax incentives for giving
  • Encouraging legacy giving while living, instead of in wills
  • Educating school children about giving

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Related articles elsewhere

Institute of Fundraising says Philanthropy Review neglects role of fundraisers

Matthew Bishop’s perspective: More A Whisper Than A Scream

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    Breaking Up: Ending a Philanthropic Relationship

    June 22nd, 2011 · Philosophy of Giving

    Eric Friedman has written a GiveWell testimonial, describing how he found their research and decided to give according to their recommendations. Up until that point, he had been giving to Freedom from Hunger, an organization that he choose based on the best research of impact he was able to find at the time. The desire for more impact led to a switch to GiveWell. But first, he had to break it off with Freedom from Hunger:

    Eventually, we decided that there was one fundamental principle we should apply: giving was primarily about helping the less fortunate, not our friendships or personal interests. Breaking up with Freedom from Hunger would be hard. I explained our reasoning and they took it in stride, demonstrating that they care more about the less fortunate than their own institutional growth. They are a good group. But in 2010, we gave about $31,000 to GiveWell’s donor advised fund to ultimately be distributed as they recommended.

    Eric could have chosen to simply stop giving, stop responding to solicitations, and hope they’d eventually go away (fundraiser’s note: we will keep persisting for several years). But he felt an obligation to make a clean break, to give the recipient of his generosity an explanation, and part ways with wishes for success.

    Freedom from Hunger could have dismissed Eric, chosen to continue soliciting him anyway, tried to change his mind. But instead they accepted Eric’s decision graciously.

    Even when gifts are made in order to have an impact, there is still an emotional connection made between the giver and receiver. There is still the blossoming of goodwill on all sides. So when the gifts end, it is an emotional process, too.

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    Read blog posts through RSS Reader (Google instructions)

    June 20th, 2011 · Life That's Un-Categorizable

    I’ve been walking a few people through this lately and thought it’d be easier to just plop it all in a post.  Skip if you’re all RSSavvy already.

    RSS is one of those things that doesn’t make much sense even you know what it means (here, “Real Simple Syndication.” See? Meaningless) but when you’ve stepped through it in practice is brilliant.  So follow along to set it up for yourself.

    There’s several good RSS readers out there, but if you’ve a Gmail account for email, you may as well let The Google collect even more information on you by using their reader, too.  Click “Reader” at the top of your Gmail account or any Google page once you are logged in.

    And you see this:

    The blogs, Google alerts, news feeds you want to see are listed on the left under “Subscriptions,” with the text on the right.  To add a new “feed”, click on “Add a Subscription” at the top left:

    If you have the URL of the blog’s feed, you can directly enter it in, otherwise enter your key words & titles and Google will do it’s clever searchy stuff to find it.

    If you’re on a page of stuff you’d like to continue to read, look for this subscription button: 

    For example:

    That’s it.  You now have set up an RSS Reader.

    If you go crazy with it and add lots of blogs and feeds, you might want to do some organizing.  Click the drop-down next to “Subscriptions” and then “Manage Subscriptions”:

    Here you can create folders to organize your feeds (mine include Philanthropy, Ideas, Fun, and Work).

    There’s two primary reasons I like using RSS over email or bookmarking:

    Low maintenance. When I’ve subscribed to blog posts via email, I’ve had to manage all the messages by either deleting or archiving.  Otherwise my inbox quickly gets clogged. In a reader, once the article is read, it’s off the screen (but still searchable, see below).  If I want to keep an article at the forefront of my mind but not yet do anything with it, I can mark to “keep as new” so it will appear again next time I open the reader.

    Searchable. When I was bookmarking blog sites, I could never remember which blog had the interesting article I wanted to link to.  The Google of course has set up their Reader to easily search through previous articles via key word.

    Coupla things for improvement: a way to easily link specific articles to Twitter and Evernote (suggestions in comments?) and ability to share subscriptions, not just posts.  Still, in terms of managing the internetously vast web, it’s supremely helpful.

    Happy Reading!

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    Profits Don’t Need To Be Defended

    June 16th, 2011 · Philanthropists & Donors, Philosophy of Giving

    Daniel Altman and Jonathan Berman have published a paper entitled The Single Bottom Line, which declares that companies do more social good when they focus only on their profits.

    Dig a little deeper and you’ll find some nuance: it’s companies that emphasize long-term results rather than quarterly profits that could see this outcome. The “positive externalities,” i.e. unintended but good consequences of the firm, over time provide just as much benefit as standard corporate philanthropy. No new data is provided to back up this claim. Anecdotes that are told are cherry-picked for support.  The logic isn’t followed though (i.e., if externalities are so critical, shouldn’t we give equal weight to the negative as well as the positive: pollution, public-bearing risk, and drug-resistent super bugs?)

    But these counterpoints aren’t why “The Single Bottom Line” is so baffling to me.  I am mystified as to what the overall purpose of this paper is supposed to be.

    Is it supposed to encourage greater social good?

    If this is the intention, I fear it’s failed. In this 140-character dominated world, all the public will see is a snapshot of the argument: Good Citizens Just Focus On The Bottom Line or Increasing Profits Is Best for Social Good. The reasonable argument about long-term horizons is lost (or rather, placed 12 paragraphs down in the NYTimes article), the implication of increased taxes ignored, and the assumption of “rational expectations” never questioned. What folks will see in these headlines is permission to scrap all corporate responsibility & drive harder on immediate profits, leading to long-term losses that make everyone worse off.

    (Well, except execs.  See: banking industry, circa 2008.)

    Perhaps they are instead merely affirming the desire to make a profit?

    If this is the case, there’s no need.  The desire-for-money needs no advocate.  My daughter is two and a half and while she’s sometimes hazy whether she wants food or sleep or clean clothes, she always knows that she wants money.  No one needs to teach us that we like having money, the more the better. We got that down, no problem. What takes an effort to learn is how to give up that desire, how to tap into our greater humanity through generosity.

    So then they’re trying assuage that guilt for wanting profits?

    Who knows. But that’s a matter of psychology, not philanthropy.

    **

    Related Articles elsewhere:

    Philanthropy Isn’t For Profit: Felix Salmon criticizes the paper and Matthew Bishop’s article in the Economist

    Of Philanthropy and Profits: Matthew Bishop responds

    Philanthropy Can’t Be Outsourced to the Profit Motive: Felix Salmon responds in turn

    Robust name-calling in all the above:  NSFKindSouls

    UPDATE: In Felix Salmon’s latest post, “Philanthropy Can’t Be Outsourced to the Profit Motive,” he argues that even the long-term argument isn’t reasonable:

    [Bishop] implicitly agrees with Altman that if businesses could just see their way clear to concentrating on the very long term, then the profit motive would automagically align with maximizing social welfare. This is dangerous, because Davos Man always thinks of himself as concentrating on the very long term. And I defy you to find a corporate leader who will ever say that chasing short-term profits is a better idea than maximizing value over the long term. When corporate leaders listen to Altman and Bishop, then, they get the message that if they just do what they claim to be doing already, then they’re already doing all they can in terms of their corporate social function.

    Assuming Salmon is right, and the long-term argument goes nowhere, it’s moot in light of the fact that most  won’t drill down far enough to even see that part of the discussion.  They’ll just glom on to the fact that they can stop the pretense about corporate philanthropy (example one, example two) and drive for profits while ignoring negative externalities.

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