We’ve moved from the domain of our own hearts to the arena of the world, and now is the time to start to link these together. Step 5 is to develop your gameplan. In this step, you create a strategy for spending your currencies on your headline issues. The question to start with at this stage of the process is“How will I have a generous heart?”
When nonprofit efforts are driven by fundraisers, you get some problematic effects:
- Donors and volunteers become more passive and don’t give unless they’re asked to.
- Nonprofits proliferate and compete for supporters rather than collaborating on bringing supporters together around a cause.
- Fundraisers fixate on the check rather than trying to understand and fulfill the donor’s desire to create change.
As the economy changes from the large, centralized organizations of the Industrial Age to the focused organizations of the Information Age, we need to shift our approach to the social sector as well. Today, large and centralized often means slow and disconnected. We need initiatives that are nimble and grassroots.
But the good news is that individuals don’t need to wait for powerful established nonprofits to dictate the agenda. We can move locally, personally, and proactively to make progress on our headline issues.
My vision is for donors and volunteers to drive their own generosity by creating a personal giving mission and finding opportunities that fit that mission.
That is the essence of the Generosity Gameplan.
(A quick note: these emails are offering you just a slice of the Generosity Gameplan process. You’ll find everything you need to create your own complete strategic giving plan in my book, Connected for Good, or I can guide you through one-on-one consulting work together.)
Exercise: Connecting the dots
In this exercise, you’re going to connect the dots between the strengths that you named in Step 3, and the headline issue that you identified in Step 4.
- Brainstorm a list of ways you could use your strengths for the issue you identified. How might your skill set be valuable to create change in this arena?
You may be starting to feel like this is a whole lot of work for wanting to do something positive in the world! I promise you, laying this groundwork will turn your giving into transformational work that will be well worth it in the end.
As author and investor Frank Hanna puts it, “Don’t expect that making decisions about giving will be easy merely because you have good intentions. When you buy a new car or a washer and dryer, you expect to put in the work to find the brand, model, and price you want. You research products and suppliers. So why wouldn’t you make your generosity decisions with the same rigor as consumer purchases?”
John Stanley