Giving 2.0

Transform Your Giving and Our World

Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781118119402
• eBook ISBN: 9781118148570
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Nonprofit Organizations & Charities
• Index: Business

Gold Medal Winner; Philanthropy, Charities, and Nonprofits; 2012 Axiom Business Book Awards

Giving 2.0 is the ultimate resource for anyone navigating the seemingly infinite ways one can give. The future of philanthropy is far more than just writing a check, and Giving 2.0 shows how individuals of every age and income level can harness the power of technology, collaboration, innovation, advocacy, and social entrepreneurship to take their giving to the next level and beyond.

Major gifts may dominate headlines, but the majority of giving still comes from individual households—ordinary people with extraordinary generosity. Even in 2009, at a time of deep recession, individual giving averaged almost $2, 000 per household and drove 82% of the $300 billion donated that same year. Based on her vast experience as a philanthropist, academic, volunteer, and social innovator, Arrillaga-Andreessen shares the most effective techniques she herself pilots and studies and a vast portfolio of lessons learned during her lifetime of giving. Featuring dozens of stories on innovative and powerful methods of how individuals give time, money, and expertise—whether volunteering and fundraising, leveraging technology and social media, starting a giving circle, fund, foundation, or advocacy group, or aspiring to create greater social impact— Giving 2.0 shows readers how they can renew, improve, and expand their giving and reach their fullest potential.

A practical, entertaining, and inspiring call to action, Giving 2.0 is an indispensable tool for anyone passionate about creating change in our world.

1

GIVING YOURSELF

A Donation More Valuable Than Money

Jump in and engage—add value by giving your time, experience, skills, and networks.

Giving is a universal opportunity. Regardless of your age, profession, religion, income bracket, and background, you have the capacity to create change. Everything you do, from spontaneous acts of kindness to an hour of your time, constitutes how you give. Indeed, making a gift of time, coupled with expertise and compassion, is a powerful way to make a positive impact on our world.

Hector Chau is one of millions transitioning out of the workforce and, as such, redefining his professional and personal relationships to his community. Now retired and living in Westchester, a neighborhood of western Los Angeles, Hector lives on a pension that doesn’t leave him a large amount of money to give to charity. Hector is an active philanthropist, however, as he gives away something even more valuable—his time. Hector volunteers with a program called Tax-Aide, an initiative launched in 1968 by AARP, an organization that provides services to people over the age of fifty. Tax-Aide helps low- to middle-income taxpayers—many over the age of sixty—complete their yearly filings, with volunteers like Hector leading them through the process.

Born in Mexico, Hector has been living in the United States since 1977, when he moved from Mexico City to Santa Monica with his family. Hector, his wife Olga, and their three children (aged nine, eleven, and thirteen)—were all on holiday in California. Olga and the children were enjoying themselves so much that they told Hector they wanted to move to America. “We decided that since we were in a democracy, we should take a vote on it,” says Hector. “And I lost, four to one.”

Hector had left his home town of Tuxpan on the Mexican Gulf Coast once before to live in the United States. He attended a Texas high school funded by the Presbyterian Church, and later graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. After leaving college, Hector moved back to Mexico City, where he married his Texas-born university sweetheart and got a job with an accounting firm where he remained for the next sixteen years. He later worked as a salesman for an equipment manufacturer, a job he loved, as he enjoys meeting people and hearing about their lives.

In his new role as a volunteer, Hector is able to enjoy so much of what he loved in his profession. The Tax-Aide program has not only drawn Hector back to the accounting world; it has also given him a chance to make new friends. In between tax seasons, he exchanges jokes and letters, keeping in touch with his fellow volunteers via email. He also meets a wide range of people among the clients who use the Tax-Aide service. There was the hundred-and-two-year-old man who still managed to drive his car to the center, with his girlfriend (in her nineties) beside him. And the young aspiring actress who claimed her breast implants as tax-deductible items since she’d had them done to improve her chances of getting work.

“Sometimes we get our heartstrings pulled, and sometimes it’s simply fun,” says Hector. Cheerful and outgoing, Hector still loves meeting different people and finding out about their lives. Working in sales afforded him this opportunity during his career; volunteering has restored it in retirement. “It’s very satisfying when you’re helping someone and then, when you see them next time, they’re doing well,” he says.

Hector is one of millions of Baby Boomers who’ve decided to take up volunteering or increase it in retirement. For some, it’s a chance to give back to society. For others, it means they can continue to learn and develop while meeting new people and expanding their horizons. These opportunities help countless high-energy retirees enhance their self-esteem and fill the void that can open when people give up paid work.

Thousands of new opportunities to do volunteer work emerge all the time, and not just for retirees, whether it’s making the occasional call for a nonprofit or helping construct libraries in a developing country. And these opportunities are mushrooming thanks to the power of the Internet. With the connectivity of the Web and online search tools, you can tap into a new world of community service, finding activities that match your skills and organizations that meet your goals.

Volunteering does not have to be a lifelong commitment (although it can be). You might start by doing a couple of hours a week playing dominos with a senior citizen and end up on an intensive six-month school-building project in an impoverished African village. You can work directly with people, giving your compassion and care, or help a nonprofit by giving your legal, financial, or marketing expertise. But you’ll make a bigger impact and get more out of it if you think carefully about the kind of work you want to do, how much time you have to devote, and how your skills and experience can best be used. As with any form of philanthropy, planning, tracking, and taking stock are critical first steps (find out how to do this in Appendix I, Creating Your Giving Journal), because if you establish the right volunteer relationships, your involvement will provide your greatest personal connection with giving.

A GIFT TO YOURSELF

In search of happiness, we read about everything from how we need to simplify our lives to avoid stress to how we should eat well, exercise, and surround ourselves with positive people. We are all obsessed with being happy, it seems. And after all, who doesn’t want to be happy? Well, it turns out that one of the things that make us happy is giving. And volunteering is no exception. What’s more, volunteering even appears to be good for human health.

That’s right—volunteering could lead to fewer pills and fewer trips to the doctor. The 2010 “Do Good Live Well Study” found that people who volunteered through their job rated their physical and emotional health more positively than nonvolunteers.¹ Some 92 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with their current physical health, compared to 76 percent among nonvolunteers. And 72 percent of volunteers claimed to have an optimistic outlook on life—tellingly this was true for only 60 percent of nonvolunteers. Moreover, 68 percent of volunteers reported that volunteering made them feel physically healthier.

Other evidence supports the observation that helping others brings benefits to those doing the helping. In a paper on the subject, Stephen Post, a renowned bioethicist, cites work conducted by researchers at Brown University Medical School.² The researchers studied members of Alcoholics Anonymous, the largest self-help group in the United States, to assess the difference between individuals who helped other alcoholics recover and those who didn’t. The study found that those who were helping others were far less likely to relapse in the year following treatment. Post also points to studies that show teenage girls who volunteer are less likely to become pregnant or take drugs, and these young women are more likely to do better at school and to graduate. A similar review conducted by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) found that states with higher rates of volunteerism also had lower rates of heart disease.³

What’s more, among the many studies that Post cites in his paper, research shows how people who volunteer tend to have fewer of the symptoms of depression. “We are perhaps substituting happiness pills for the happiness that flows from pro-social opportunities and more authentic community,” he writes.

Even if you’re already healthy of mind, body, and heart, the volunteer spirit brings with it countless rewards. For a start, the more you take on, the more you’ll find you have time to do. Being happier as a result of giving will increase your productivity at work, enrich your relationships at home, and put your own problems into perspective by focusing on the greater problems of others.

And volunteering can bring thrills rarely found elsewhere—particularly when volunteers get to see the difference they are making. “Some people say there’s a pop or a spark,” says Michael Lombardo, describing the moment when his volunteers see the turning point in a student’s progress. “They often talk about seeing a new light in the child’s eyes.”

Michael is CEO of Reading Partners, a nonprofit providing one-on-one tutoring for K–6 students from low-income communities (it was one of SV2’s early grantees and a recipient of a Social Innovation Fund, or SIF, investment). Reading Partners volunteer tutors (retirees, full-time parents, high school students, and working professionals) spend twice-weekly sessions with individual children, forming a close bond with them, watching their journey through frustration and disengagement toward understanding, excitement, and pride.

“We can all remember times as children and adults when we finally got something we were trying to understand,” says Michael. “And the real emotional nourishment for our volunteers is seeing the kids have that happen on a weekly basis—not only make a huge stride in their learning but also receive a huge boost to their confidence.”

As well as giving you emotional nourishment, community service also helps you maintain your skills during a period of unemployment, while demonstrating your energy and initiative to potential employers. When you’re looking for work, volunteering can expand your network of contacts. On an event committee for your city’s art museum, for instance, you might meet another volunteer whose company has job openings. Meanwhile, feeling productive can help keep your spirits up at a time when it’s easy to become discouraged.

It’s worth noting some of these benefits. Has volunteering helped you make new friends or find a community of like-minded people, for instance? Have you been able to attend lectures or events that you might not otherwise have known about? Has volunteering helped you get a new job or led to other service work? It’s this personal contact that makes volunteering so rewarding—in helping others, you help yourself.

For Hector, the Tax-Aide program has given him more than a chance to brush up his accounting skills. “I like meeting different people,” he says. “And part of the procedure is that, once you’ve finished a return, someone has to audit it to make sure it’s all correct and that you haven’t missed anything important. While you’re waiting for someone to do this, you have four or five minutes to chat with people—and those moments are fun.”

Community service as a family is also a way of introducing your children to giving and the idea of caring for others, while also showing them how they can contribute to solving some of your community’s problems. For your children, taking on new challenges—whether that’s helping plant trees on a neglected street or going on a fifty-mile bike ride to raise money—helps them learn new skills, gain greater self-confidence, and become more responsible. However, before embarking on any social adventure with your child, it’s a good idea to sit down together and decide as a family what projects or causes you want to spend time on. You could even select four or five possibilities and vote on it—thus, as Hector Chau did, giving your kids a lesson in democracy in the process.

Volunteering as a family takes many forms. You could involve the whole family or just a few members. You could take on a challenge for a day—or embark on something longer term. You could participate in an adoption-type program, through which your family might take on responsibility for helping an individual in the community on an ongoing basis—a recent immigrant, perhaps, or an elderly person without relatives (community organizations and churches can help facilitate these relationships).

Volunteering as a family is a great way to spend time together. Equally important, however, is the fact that when families work on community service projects, it provides a real opportunity for you to teach and transmit values to your children. This exposure has a more powerful and enduring impact on them than simply talking about the importance of giving. This was confirmed by a 2011 study called “Heart of the Donor.”⁴ It found that of people who grew up with parents who were frequent volunteers with nonprofits, almost half (49 percent) had volunteered with a nonprofit in the past year, and of those with parents who occasionally volunteered, 31 percent are volunteers. Among those who never saw their parents volunteer, only 20 percent do so now.

Whether you’re going to volunteer alone or with your family, you should think about what you’re embarking on as a true commitment—not being paid for your work makes it no less an obligation. So be realistic about what you promise to do. At too many nonprofits, volunteers come and go, many of them losing interest or leaving when another more exciting activity presents itself. Volunteering is a serious business—the business of transforming and saving lives. I’ve never been paid for my work at SV2 or Stanford PACS (Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society), for example, but because of the impact of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Giving 2.0
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 GIVING YOURSELF
• 2 CONNECTING THE DROPS
• 3 CHARTING A COURSE
• 4 DETERMINING A DESTINATION
• 5 GAME CHANGERS
• 6 SOMETHING VENTURED
• 7 CHANGING MINDS
• 8 FAMILY MATTERS
• 9 IN THE TRENCHES
• EPILOGUE
• APPENDIX I: CREATING YOUR GIVING JOURNAL
• APPENDIX II: VEHICLES FOR GIVING
• APPENDIX III: RESOURCES FOR GIVING
• APPENDIX IV: JARGON BUSTER
• NOTE OF GRATITUDE
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• INDEX