Happy daylight savings time (?)
Not sure how to punctuate that. I’m still not exactly sold on this collective delusion of ours.
Truth be told, I usually forget about daylight savings time until it (quite literally) springs up on me. Every year, I’m baffled at how we all agree to low-key time travel like it’s nothing and then go about our daily lives as if we weren’t just robbed of a full hour of much-needed rest and relaxation.
When did we agree to this? Are we allowed to stop agreeing to it? One more hour of sleep and one less hour of work feels like the correct ratio to me, not the other way around.
I digress. This tangent on daylight savings was all a set up to say:
✨ Time is a construct.✨
Like many concepts in our universe, time has no inherent meaning until we, as humans, assign it one. That’s not to say time isn’t real, it very much is. But we choose the role it plays within our lives. We agree on how we interact with time as a collective society. Just like we all agree that the color blue is actually blue, not green, and that the Olsen twins are actually one person, not two. Yes?
Okay, glad we’re on the same page. Let’s move on.
I think that generosity is a lot like time. In the nonprofit world, we place such an immense value on generosity. We rely on donors who generously give their money, volunteers who give their time, board members who give their expertise, administrative staff who give their weekends and sanity all in service of the greater good. In a way, nonprofits stake their very livelihoods on the generosity of others.
So how do we, as a society, define generosity?
Is it measured in how much money you give? What about frequency? Will performing one giant, selfless act cover you for life or do you need to continue giving at consistent intervals to be considered truly generous? Is generosity something we can even control, or is it just a label that other people assign to us?
A quick Google search of “most generous people in history” will spit out names like Bill Gates, Mother Teresa, and Oprah Winfrey.
Speaking of, do you remember when Oprah gave away 247 Pontiac G-6 sedans live on television? Of course you do. How could you forget this energy?
Only, Oprah didn’t actually give away 247 free cars. I mean, she did appear to give away cars on her television show while we ate it up like candy, but she didn’t actually pay for them. Pontiac did. And so too it turns out, did the recipients of these cars. Many ended up paying thousands of dollars in taxes and fees on the supposed “gift” they thought they’d received.
The “free” cars Oprah offered ended up being more like 75% off cars. Which is still a great deal, so maybe it’s the thought that counts?
The Oprah Show pulled this stunt again in 2004, when they hosted a second giveaway to celebrate hardworking teachers. Each teacher left with a gift package worth $13,000, plus an additional $2,000 check from the show to help cover any taxes and fees, in an attempt to correct the mistake of the aforementioned car situation.
Unfortunately, several people in the audience still ended up owing the IRS a ton of money, but nevermind that. This “giveaway” strategy worked, big time. In fact, Oprah’s giveaway specials helped her show earn some of its highest ratings in history.
And look, I’m not shitting on Oprah. Oprah’s great. The point of this example is to demonstrate that generosity, like time, is relative. It’s subjective and nuanced in a way that can’t be quantifiably captured with complete accuracy.
In the nonprofit world, we tend to measure generosity by associating it directly with wealth.
Somewhere along the way, we decided as a sector that folks are only as generous as the number of zeros they can write on a check. We make a point to distinguish “major” donors from regular donors once they reach a certain gift threshold, and then we basically treat them as though they’ve hung the moon.
But you know what? They haven’t. And what pisses me off is that most “major” donors could hang the moon, but don’t. Actually, if we’re measuring generosity solely by wealth, most major donors aren’t being nearly as generous as we give them credit for. In fact, the richest among them refuse to give away even a single percent of their total wealth.
So, you tell me:
Is it more generous to give $100 million when you’re worth several billion, or does true generosity lie in giving $2 when you only have $10? I would argue that both gifts are equally valuable and that maybe money shouldn’t be our only marker of what constitutes a generous person.
For the pragmatists out there: yes, when you’re talking about fundraising for a nonprofit, more money is never a bad thing. I’m certainly not suggesting we should stop taking money from major donors. Donors are individualistic people, living in the same capitalist society we all live in. At the end of the day, they’re looking out for themselves. Which is fine, but why are we exhausting all of our energy trying to appeal to them?
I think we have to stop focusing so much of our precious energy on the wealthiest members of our communities and holding out for these people to save us. There’s a whole world of amazingly generous and caring human beings who each have something unique and invaluable to offer us, if we choose to let them.
I encourage all of us to challenge our assumptions around generosity, and think about unconventional ways that we can show up for our communities— both as nonprofit workers and as human beings.
Maybe that’s a monetary donation, maybe it’s giving gently-used clothes a new home, maybe it’s smiling at a stranger on the street or offering a kind word to a friend. There are infinite ways to demonstrate generosity, and we’re going to need them all if we ever stand a chance of addressing the collective suffering in the world.
I’m looking forward to a future where we value time and energy equal to money. A world where donors, board members, volunteers, and administrative staff are all recognized for their unique contributions. Where we can all agree to take care of each other, to reject norms that no longer serve us, and most importantly— to stay in bed for an extra hour, please and thank you.
At it's core, philanthropy is a voluntary contribution made for the common good. It can be time, money or any other resource. We live in a very generous world, if we only open our eyes to see it and encourage everyone to participate in the act of generosity, regardless of what they can give.