SPEAKER_00 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropisms podcast with Rodri Davis.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, Rodri Davis, and this week I am joined by a guest, and it is the wonderful Asher Curran, who is the chief executive of Giving Tuesday, the global generosity movement. And I had a great conversation a little while ago with Asher, all about generosity, giving, philanthropy, and the current state of the world. So a great wide-ranging conversation. But before I tell you a little bit more about that, and before you get to hear the conversation itself, I just want to use host privilege for a second to let everybody know about a piece of work that I'm doing that might be of interest and which you guys might be able to help me with. So I'm working with the Rory and Elizabeth Brooks Foundation here in the UK on a project where we're aiming to try and tell the stories of philanthropy. So essentially, you know, the problem is that they're one of the challenges when it comes to trying to convince people that we could have a better culture of philanthropy here in the UK is that they just don't feel like there are enough compelling stories about what philanthropy actually is and what it achieves. So what we want to try and do is gather together as many stories as we can from all around the UK to sort of tell the story of the impact that philanthropy's had at uh different sizes and on different cause areas and in different uh regions. Um so what I'm trying to do is to find good stories, so to talk to charities, philanthropy advisors, maybe even donors, um, to get some great stories about organizations that have been able to take advantage of philanthropic funding to do amazing things that they might otherwise not have been able to do, and particularly to focus on what was actually achieved in terms of the impact on the lives of people and communities and issues around the country. So if you think that you have a great story to share, please do get in touch. Um you can find me at the Y Philanthropy Matters website. Uh, the email address is Rodery at Y Philanthropymatters.com, or you can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. The idea is that we're I'm inviting as many as possible of these stories. Um, or try and pick some of the ones that sound most compelling, and then I will speak to people, do some interviews, write those up, maybe try and do some other bits of uh kind of media as well so that we can share them in as many formats as possible. And the hope is that we'll get a kind of core of stories together that we can make publicly available, and that might then be the starting point for a bigger, kind of longer-term uh resource for the sector where we can kind of keep track of really great stories about the impact that philanthropy's had. So if that sounds of interest, as I say, please do get in touch. Okay, let's get back to the podcast then. So, as I say, my guest is Asher Curran, who's the chief executive of Giving Tuesday, uh, the global generosity movement, um some of you might know um as a kind of big fundraising day in the US that takes place on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving and obviously after um Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which, as you'll hear in the conversation with Asher, uh is very much part of the origin story of Giving Tuesday. But we talked about how the organization and what it does has kind of evolved a lot since its inception uh a decade ago. So it's it's very much more these days than just that one day every year. Um so we talked about how it had evolved, both in terms of its aims but also its geographic reach. So Giving Tuesday is actually in our kind of um diffuse uh movement that's in many, many countries around the world, and there's lots of different kinds of in-country Giving Tuesday organizations in all sorts of different places doing lots of interesting things. We also talked about how important the day itself, the Giving Tuesday uh fundraising day and Wednesday and campaign day is, and how that sort of fits in with some of that wider work. Um, we talked about the role of the Giving Tuesday Data Commons, which is a really interesting sort of additional string to Giving Tuesday's bow. Um so for a few years now it's been collecting lots of data on all different sort of aspects of giving, um, particularly in the US, but increasingly sort of elsewhere as well, and able to track some really interesting trends in terms of what's going on with giving. As a result, we Ash and I talked a bit about the idea that we might be seeing some sort of long-term decline in giving or generosity in the US and in other places, what her thoughts were on whether that was a real phenomenon, um, what was underneath it, you know, is there a genuine decline in generosity, or is it just that generosity is taking new and different forms and maybe we need to adapt the way that we think about it and the way that we we measure it? Um, we also talked about the particular value of emphasising small acts of generosity and kindness and sort of everyday giving at a time, particularly when people might otherwise feel a little bit powerless in the face of some of the big challenges that are going on, and also whether it could play a role in renewing some of those bonds of sort of civic and associational life that we keep hearing have been weakened, and particularly in the context of some of the concerns about polarization and the rise of populism at the moment. We also talked about what we could learn from other cultures of giving around the world. So obviously, Giving Tuesday has uh managed to kind of spread across the globe, and as a result, Asher and and the others at Giving Tuesday kind of have a really unique ability to kind of tap into what's going on in terms of other places and how those places think about giving and the different kinds of traditions of giving they're able to draw on. And what could we learn in the US, in the UK, and in other places from some of those different cultures and kind of what does that look like in meaningful terms? You know, is it just about tools and techniques or is it about something deeper and more fundamental? Um, we talked particularly about the power of collective approaches to giving, which are sort of quite common in in many cultures around the world, um, and what you know we could learn from those, particularly in the work of sort of more traditional or mainstream non-profits and charities in the global north. Um we talked about whether mass-giving movements like Giving Tuesday are part of the solution, perhaps, to some of the concerns about the fact that big money philanthropy and elite philanthropy might be slightly anti-democratic because it kind of puts a lot of power in the hands of a small number of people, and whether actually movements that try to broaden the base of philanthropy are a bit of an antidote to that. Um and then we also talked about the wider political context and uh the impact that the uh Trump administration's uh attacks on philanthropy and on non-profits had had on the sector in the US and on the work of Giving Tuesday and what it does. Um and we also talked about whether there were any lessons that we could be trying to learn from what's going on and whether there are some elements of the kind of populist critiques of philanthropy that actually there's a kernel of truth in that we could learn something useful from uh in terms of nonprofits uh moving away from particularly kind of transactional relationships or um modes of operating that are quite kind of technocratic and top-down, and maybe sort of um going back to the origins of philanthropy and a kind of uh broader idea of um uh association and generosity. Um so without further ado, let's get into the conversation. Uh it's really great one. Um, I hope you all enjoy it. I certainly had a lot of fun talking to Asher as I always do. Um I will be back at the end for the usual little bit of housekeeping. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Asher Curran. Hi there, Asher.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Hey Raz, nice to see you.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Oh, it's nice to see you too. Uh, and I was just saying before we got on the record that actually we've had versions of uh this kind of conversation uh a number of times over the years, including on a previous incarnation of this podcast. We've never had it on this podcast, so I'm delighted to have managed to get you on uh and catch up. Um and for people who've uh don't know already from having uh listened to the intro or just from having heard about you and on all of your work, you obviously are the chief executive of Giving Tuesday. Uh most people listening again will know what Giving Tuesday is and will probably have done something over the years linked to Giving Tuesday, but maybe just in case there's a small handful who don't, we could start by you just saying a little bit about what Giving Tuesday is, what the organization does, uh, and yeah, that would take it from there.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Great. I I actually appreciate that because there's uh Giving Tuesday is a lot of things, and then it is perceived as a lot of other things. There's you know, there's an overlap in the Venn diagram. Um so Giving Tuesday broadly is a is a global generosity movement. It's uh almost 14 years old, um, and it is also a day. So that day is coming up on December 2nd. The first day was uh was 14 years ago in 2012, um almost 14 years, and uh and began really as a way to attempt to harness social media as a catalyst for giving. It was really that simple. It was never kind of designed to become what it what it is now, but it is what it is now because of some original design decisions. So um I am indeed chief executive of Giving Tuesday, the organization which has uh about 70 employees, and roughly our work is divided into um managing our community of leaders and into data. That's an oversimplification, but that's that's broadly it. And then we have a community of leaders who uh run Giving Tuesday movements with full autonomy and agency in at this point 111 countries. Um we just got to that number a couple weeks ago, and uh, and many more people who are running Giving Tuesday campaigns at the community level. So our um our constituency is very broad, but we do not work directly with um nonprofits as we did in the very beginning. There's just uh a whole lot of them, and they um and they do amazing and creative things and and use Giving Tuesday, you know, to to to full effect. So yeah, that is that is kind of broadly, broadly what it is. I could go, I could go on and on, of course.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

Yeah, and we'll definitely pick up on on all of those things. I guess to take the the first bit, you kind of separate it out there into the the day itself, Giving Tuesday, which was how the whole thing started, and probably, you know, for the the wider public is probably still where their awareness is most in terms of what what you guys do. Um, but I you know I know perfectly well that there's a whole lot more to it and and we're in many ways a lot more interesting stuff going on kind of under the hood. But it'd be useful just to kind of say a bit about, you know, first of all, when is the day this year? Um kind of what it every year obviously there's kind of a different focus or a different emphasis with Giving Tuesday. Is anything particular that you guys have got planned for this year in terms of how you're positioning to the day or particular kind of messaging that you're looking to get out?

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Yes. So the we think of the day, so the the day is always the Tuesday after uh Cyber Monday, um, which I'm kind of sheepish about now because uh that doesn't really resonate with global people. Um but we didn't realize it was gonna go global in the very beginning. And so um and so that that that predication made sense at the time. Um, and and it was really easy for people to get, right? Like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday was really easy. And then over the years, we've emphasized that a lot less, again, because it just is not a global, um, a global phenomenon. So this year it's on December 2nd, and we think of the day as like a wedding anniversary or a birthday, right? It's a really important day, but it in no way speaks to not paying attention to the work all year round. I actually feel really, um, really privileged to have an organization that has this big day of celebration that has all this amazing stuff happen on it. It's really, really, really rewarding. But indeed, the work is year round. I think this year, to that question, um, it's not a difference in what we're doing, but I think it is a focus in what we're emphasizing. So Giving Tuesday has always been sort of an exercise in civic engagement, more than it is an exercise in how to give well charitably, right? Like that's that's not really what it is. Um, and so citizens have always found ways to be involved in Giving Tuesday in these sort of lovely small ways, right? Caring for their neighbors and groups of teenagers, you know, going around volunteering to clean up their neighbors' yards and things like that, people um, you know, building mutual aid networks. The examples go on and on. And I think that our emphasis is gonna be there this year. And, you know, given the the state of the world and and everything that's happening, I think we all are, you know, we think we all sort of knew that the cavalry wasn't coming for us, right? Like, but now we really know it on a whole different level that if we're gonna make things better, if we're going to build bridges, if we're going to um decrease loneliness and isolation and um polarization, then that's gotta be done by us, right? Like it's not gonna be done by institutions and certainly not gonna be done by our government, right? Um, no matter where we said that's probably not gonna be done by our government. So it's like really emphasizing that sort of citizen agency and citizen power. And, you know, our data indicates all kinds of really good and hopeful things, right? In in regarding people's willingness to help one another, their willingness to reach across the aisle to do that. One of our recent data points, not yet even published, is that you don't even have to believe in giving across, in reaching across political divides to help other people, to be affected by watching people do it, right? You can be positively affected, even if you would say to, you know, in answer to a survey, let's say, no, I have no interest in helping anybody who doesn't believe what I believe ideologically. But then you see it happen and it creates a change. I think really emphasizing that, um, that community-level generosity and that, and most of all, I think very, very in line with our ethos is is emphasizing collective giving, right? The change we make when we when we give together, when we believe in something together, when we share a vision, and then our our actions, what we're capable of, what our capacity is, doesn't feel so small.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah, absolutely. And I definitely I want to pick up on some of that stuff, particularly around collective giving and also kind of all the work that you guys have done around data, because I think that there's loads in there that's really, really interesting. As you say, just one example there about a finding, but there's all kinds of findings that you guys have uh pulled together over the years in terms of kind of what drives giving and and how people perceive it. I guess just to finish up on the the sort of the day itself, you mentioned there that it's kind of almost like a wedding anniversary, um, and it's it's sort of nice to have. How how do you feel as that though that balance has kind of shifted over time with Giving Tuesday away from, you know, I guess when it first started, the focus was very much on the day itself, let's prepare for the day, let's do the day. And then over time, you know, the rest of the work and the kind of building of the movement has probably taken precedence. Do you how do you find those two things sort of work together mutually now? Do you find that actually you kind of get on with the rest of the work, but it's still useful to have a focal point so that everyone involved in this broad movement can kind of have something to coalesce around?

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Exactly that. I it it's an incredibly rewarding evolution for Giving Tuesday. I I probably wouldn't be involved in it anymore if it had stayed just being a one day mostly focused on fundraising. Um I would wish it a long, happy life existence, but but it probably wouldn't have held my interest for all of these years. I think the day is so important in terms of even if somebody takes one small action, that's like that's enough. It's fine. But generosity is actually so generative that it tends not to be just that one person takes one small action. Once somebody does that, it tends to encourage them, inspire them to do more, and inspire the people around them. So I think the the looking at the day as a pipeline for people to come into the movement is really useful. And then I think just from a sort of excitement and morale perspective, yes, indeed, having all 111 countries have this rallying moment, right? This moment of feeling, you know, from the very beginning, people said the reason they liked being involved with this movement is that they liked feeling that they're part of something bigger than themselves. I think that's a feeling we all relate to, right? It's even a it's even a feeling that it's a it's a psychology that leaders know about how to make people feel good in their own organizations, right? So this is just like that, um, but writ much larger. So it's so, so useful in that way. And then it is the year-round work that keeps the steady drumbeat going and leads to not just the breadth and scale of the movement, because it would be okay if that was the only thing that mattered, but it's not, right? For us, depth matters just as much. So the year-round work is what gives people the chance to really go deep into the work. On your wedding anniversary, you're not doing a lot of work on your marriage, right? You're like, you're celebrating, like you're this is a big day, let's celebrate all everything that's happened, blah, blah. Um, and that's sort of it's sort of the same thing. And then you just like really dig back into that day-to-day work of building a movement and building more generous cultures, which is not big fancy work, right? It's like a day, perspiration, and then, you know, a once-a-year day of big, big inspiration. The the other thing I would say about the day that makes it so beautiful to me, at least, is that it is a sort of relentlessly forward-facing day, right? It's like it's never a day that reminds you of, you know, those old, um, I don't want to name any organization, but like those old animal welfare commercials that were like kind of deeply troubling and sad and set to really sad music. Like this does not have that vibe, right? Giving to is about imagining, not turning away from all the things that plague this world at all, but instead turning toward the really happy feeling that we can make an impact.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah, absolutely. And it's, I guess one of the things in that is kind of again when when it first started, there's probably quite a lot of emphasis, um, I mean, from outside, maybe from inside a little bit as well, on kind of measuring how much was actually given. Because the focus then was just on kind of fundraising and giving in monetary terms. And as you say, as it's kind of evolved beyond that, both in the US, but also, you know, as it's kind of uh moved, you know, and expanded globally, which we'll talk about in a moment, I guess it's much more about those, you know, kind of broader acts of kindness and generosity that aren't just about transfers of money. Has that made it kind of more difficult in a way sometimes to measure, you know, actually kind of what happens on the day? And and from your point of view, is that fine? Are you kind of do we just need to sort of slightly get away from that? Or do you still find that people really want to kind of put a number on things and that you have to kind of try and talk them out of that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 18:51

He will certainly do like to put a number on things. So it's let me let me think. I think the answer is yes. It is incre we have made it more difficult on ourselves to measure everything that is happening on the day or year-round, and we wouldn't have it any other way. It it is a good thing that so many things of so many different descriptions are happening that it's almost impossible to get our arms around the whole thing and to measure as well as we can and to look at the process of measurement as a journey, right? As a as learning every step of the way, not just how to measure, but learning as the aperture widens evermore about what is actually happening. When this, when something is very easy to measure, it usually means that it is creating a fairly constrained impact in a fairly constrained amount of space. There's nothing wrong with that, right? But the Giving Tuesday's open architecture, the way that it was deliberately created as an idea meant for other people to take and change and remix and reshape and pass on, all of that makes it totally unique in the world and it makes it more difficult to measure. So when when I first began to be involved in the sector, and I'm not a sector lifer, right? Like I certainly can't call myself the new girl in the room anymore because it's been 13 years, right? 14 years. Um, but I really didn't know anything. I worked at a community center, right? I worked at a cultural and community center and I ran um different programs. And when the first Giving Tuesday happened, I thought we could just easily add up a bunch of numbers and determine how much was donated. And I was absolutely gobsmacked by the state of data in the sector. I just had to ask about a million people who holds this data? Do they share it? What gets done with it? Right. So the the beginning of the data commons was really an effort to just understand how resources were being mobilized on Giving Tuesday. That's it. I just really want, like everybody wanted to know that number. I wanted to know it, our funders wanted to know it. And there were, and I think there was a lot in the beginning of sort of like, well, it's just money that would have been given on December 31st, right? It's just money that that's being given earlier. All of us who were involved in it just knew that that wasn't true, right? Um, for for the simple reason that so many people were saying, I was never even invited to this table before. I was never asked to give before. I was never told that my giving is powerful before, which is like exactly what the problem is, right? Like that's a huge problem. But so a lot of these people were were were new to giving. They were searching, you know, Twitter to find organizations to donate to. Can you imagine a world where like that's the case every day, where people are like, where should I, where can I find somewhere great to donate? Right. And um, and so we were able to to you know show conclusively that Giving Tuesday indeed creates a net lift um in in fundraising year over year. But then I was like, this it's not enough, right? Like the that knowing only about the flow of money into registered nonprofits is one piece of the puzzle. But only knowing that, and it's important to know, but only Only knowing that and not knowing what fills out the rest of the picture of the way that people manifest their generosity is like trying to tell what time it is on an analog clock that only has one hand.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess that takes us to one of those kind of wider questions that that I think is, you know, lots of people are grappling with, but you guys probably have a particular insight on, which is, you know, what is going on more broadly with generosity? I mean, partly in the US, but also kind of more widely, there's this sense that something's happening, you know, whether it's that people are getting less generous, whether it's that there's kind of less participation in in you know generosity behaviours, or whether it's that you know people aren't doing things in the same ways they were before, they're just as generous, but they're kind of you know, uh kind of demonstrating it in different ways. As you say, if if part of it is that if we're totally fixated on kind of formal non-profits and people giving monetary donations to them, we're missing increasingly large part of the picture, and actually we need to broaden our definitions. Do you do you guys have a sense of whether we should be optimistic about actually generosity is doing fine, thanks very much, or we should be a little bit concerned that maybe there is something happening that we need to kind of take a more active approach towards?

SPEAKER_02 23:07

People are generous. I mean, that that's like that, that's one the one of the few hills that I would die on is that people are innately generous. And that when we as a sector say that people are growing less generous, it's a way of not looking at our own role in what is happening with people's engagement with the sector, right? So I think there's a lot of things that we can be doing by looking at what's really working, both both within the incorporated nonprofit space and outside of that space, but what could still be termed as being in the giving ecosystem or in the in the generosity ecosystem. We have, there's just no evidence that people are growing less generous, none at all. Yes, they do have a lot more options in terms of ways to give, but frankly, like minimally more in terms of the vast span of ways that people could give all through human history and have, right? We that we were just ignoring. So, yes, there is crowdfunding now, and there's peer-to-peer giving, mutual aid, re-emerging, and all kinds of interesting, interesting things. But our data actually shows that a person who is likely to give to peer-to-peer funding, let's say to crowdfunding, is also more likely to give to a nonprofit. So it's not that people say, I have 10 bucks, right? And I'm gonna give to one thing with that $10, and like then I'm not gonna think about giving again. People who give generally don't think about giving like that, right? They're they're they're they're likely to give to whatever engages them best. So there are there are so many mechanisms for giving now because of hyperconnectivity, right? For for one reason, um, and and for other reasons as well, but they're not replacements for one another, right? So if if we see declining donor participation, we need to look at ourselves. We need to look at what we have been doing to engage people, to tell our story, and what we haven't been doing, right? And and look at the things that that are really working. Just to throw out one thing that is really working is collective giving. That really works. It really speaks to people, it allows them to feel their impact in a way that is a force multiplier for what they themselves are contributing. They feel that they're contributing what the collective is contributing. So learning lessons from that and how we can um appeal to people's sense of being part of um, again, something that is bigger than themselves, whether that's their their apartment building, their community, their their world, you know, that's something that's working that we can learn from, but we can't unless we know what that full picture looks like. And that's really the work of the Data Commons now. So when we look at declining donor participation, which has been happening for years and years, right? I I'm not a fan of most of what is happening right now, um, but no, nor can we blame all of our ills on what is happening right now. And I do, I do see that discourse, you know, out there. With the exception of COVID, we have been in a pattern of declining donor participation, and you know, steady state dollars, let's say, right? Sometimes up, sometimes down, but like not dramatically up or down from fewer people. So many people would look at that fact and say, you know, if if if 20 billion dollars is given to charity, who cares if that comes from three families, right? Or from 20 million people? Well, I care. Right. Because for me, it's not only the receipt of the gift that matters. It's not only right, like we're looking at a there's a there's a nonprofit and it receives money, terrific, right? Who cares where it came from? Then you have to look at it from the perspective of the giver, right? What giving does for a person, how integral it is in their in their lives and in their journeys as human beings and as and as citizens and as members of their community, it's it's absolutely vital, right? And and I think one thing that has happened, not the doing of any one entity, any one sector or anything like that, but that we have enshrined giving as being transactional when it is not by nature transactional. And that has been do, that has done a disservice to both the sector and to the vast swaths of humanity out there who we would love to be engaging with us. There are whole um demographics of people who are not approached enough to become involved, who are not asked. Um, I don't like to say solicited because it's just and it's like another one of those super transactional words that like even put in proximity to the word generosity chips away at its real meaning and its real value. But there are whole demographics of people who are not, who are not asked. And then we say, oh, well, though they're not giving because they're not generous, or they're not giving because of income inequality, or not giving because of the state of the economy, when there's no data to show those things, right? It proportionally it is people with less money who give more, right? And that and that happens when when people are suffering, that happens even more, right? And people are suffering more when the economy is bad. I'm not in any way saying that income inequality is not a massive, massive problem. It is, but we cannot blame declining participation on that.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Yeah. And I think that point about giving having become too transactional, I think, is really important and something I've definitely heard from other people. I mean, apart from anything, in you know, historically you would you would kind of contrast the gift relationship with a transactional relationship. So the idea that the two have sort of become the same is really, really weird. Um, and you can kind of understand why organizations over time, as they're kind of competing for resources, have ended up doing that. I guess it'd be really interesting to get your thoughts on what the I mean, you said a little bit about it there, but what you know some of the solutions are. If there are these other ways of doing this that kind of maybe return more to the unique nature of the gift and to giving people more genuine opportunities to participate rather than kind of being you know kept at arm's length and being seen as kind of having a wholly transactional relationship and to do things collectively, are there kind of relatively easy things that mainstream nonprofits in particular could kind of learn from other organizations that are doing quite well in engaging people?

SPEAKER_02 29:18

That seems like such a straightforward question, but in my mind it's actually quite a complicated one. Now, there are people who are very close to the Giving Tuesday world who are brilliant on this subject, right? The people who work at giving platforms, people who are consultants who are incredibly forward-thinking in their ideas and creativity and really understand that giving needs to be become more transformational and less transactional in character. Um, and those people are very worth following and very worth listening to, and they have a million great ideas. And I think we have many things that have come out of the Data Commons that also answer that question. Lots of strategic recommendations for nonprofits. I would also answer it, though, in a different way by saying that the whole system needs to change. Making minor tweaks to how we tell fundraisers to fundraise is just slapping a band-aid, right, on it. In reality, this system works as it is designed to work. Competition between nonprofits is a feature, not a bug, right? The power dynamics that we find within philanthropy are features. Like this is a system that was designed and it is working as it was intended to work. So when we would like sure, one of the answers I could give to that question is nonprofits should reach reach out and and you know beyond their own walls and break down silos and collaborate with mission-aligned organizations, right? Tell tell a story about your mission, not your brand. Let leave your leg your logos and your egos at the door and create a creative, transformational, experimental, amazing campaign. All of those things, right? And they are they are really true. But I think there are bigger, more fundamental questions. Um, the the question for for one example of trust in the sector is a really interesting one because our data does not actually indicate that that nonprofits are suffering from low trust. I think people do trust nonprofits. I think they just don't think about them that much. And if they do think about them, right, it's almost like we just like that's even ickier than saying that we're not trusted, right? Because at least if we're not trusted, it means like somebody thinks something nefarious and sexy about, right? But in reality, I think people think of nonprofits as maybe there was a rough time in their life when they needed one and they don't care to remember that anymore. Maybe they think of it as, you know, uh a sector that helps people who are in need and they don't consider themselves to be in need, right? So there's like a whole bunch of ways that we have walled off people from engaging with us, and now we're seeing the fruits of that. So that wasn't too wonky an answer to that question.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Oh, I think it's a really interesting one. And it definitely reminds me of um, you know, I mean, certainly work I do now, but when I used to be doing kind of policy work from within a charity, as you say, you would occasionally have those kind of slightly harsh wake-up calls where you realize that you thought all of this was all anybody thought about day in, day out. And then you talk to some, you know, kind of mainstream policymakers and you realize, oh, you've never even bothered to think about it. So it's not that you have a negative opinion, you just literally haven't given it a moment's thought. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

But my my my example is not even the the policy people, it's like my friends.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Who I've had my whole life who are not in the sector, right? Who are like, what's what is Giving Tuesday doing? And and when we and when we talk about nonprofits, like it's exactly that. It's kind of like you know, not my friends, but like people might, you know, get momentarily enraged because it's all about rage now, about you know, a scandal within a nonprofit, right? Or or a big nonprofit CEO makes too much money, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. But that's, I wouldn't say that's like an indicator of like really seriously lower trust. In fact, one of the most fascinating data points that we've uncovered a couple in the last couple of years is that when nonprofits are in the news for a bad reason, people tend to give more than that, just having not like just having the reminder that nonprofits exist, even if the vehicle is there's the scandal, somebody was appropriating money or whatever else it might be, then it's on people's minds, right? And and then their innate sense of generosity does kick in. And and I love that. Like I find that our data work is so awesome because it usually yields really hopeful and optimistic findings when they're like at the person level, what motivates a person, what a person wants to do in their in their daily life, how much they value acts of kindness, how much they value being cared for by you know by the people around them.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

And and just to follow up on that, because I know this is something we've talked about in the past, and uh, you know, maybe it kind of rubs some people up the wrong way, but um, in terms of that thing, like, you know, your average person on the street, member of the public, doesn't really think about nonprofits at all, and to be honest, quite rightly so, is part of the problem that the nonprofit world itself has just become so caught up in our own ways of even the word non-profit and talking about it as a sector and all of this stuff doesn't make any sense to anybody else, and it's probably quite on off-putting. So actually, is it partly about acknowledging that no real person in the real world is ever going to engage with it in those terms and just trying to kind of go work with the world as it is and to talk to people about things in a way that might actually cut through to them?

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. Like I couldn't even say it as well as you just did. I I read an interesting piece lately. I'm I'm good at remembering these phrases from pieces. I mean, terrible at remembering who wrote them because I want to offer an attribution to them. But somebody wrote recently that nonprofits are perceived more as vendors of the state, right, than as, you know, organizations that are doing profoundly important and heartwarming work on the ground, which of course they are, right? But I think anything that is seen as a sector of the economy is going to have, you know, uh people might default to thinking of it in that way. And and I think that that our sector um has fed that narrative, right? I mean, just speaking from a US perspective, we made giving the thing you think about on December 31st, the last day of the year, right? And to think about it in monetary terms and to think about it for a benefit, right? For for your own tax write-off. Like that, that I don't think that's done us any favors in um creating the narrative that we all seem so so desperately to want, um, to want to have. So I, you know, I don't think a big marketing campaign is gonna solve this problem. If anything, it could really backfire. I I think, you know, I certainly don't have all the solutions, but I also will say that Giving Tuesday's mission is not a healthy nonprofit sector. I like again, in terms of rubbing people the wrong way, like I yes, I like that sounds awful. And oh my God, do I not love nonprofits? Of course I do, and of course I care about them. But again, the the slice of the generosity pie that is about nonprofits is just that. It is a slice, and Giving Tuesday's mission is generosity, right? So if we were, you know, transported to a future 25 years from now where the nonprofit sector looked like a completely different thing, we would still be around because the value of generosity would still be around. And we will follow, right? Not try to engineer where the path of generosity organically goes. We always have done that. So we don't try to make things happen. We open up this space where um where things emerge, right? And that and that's it's so much better than anything that we could have possibly decided upon and then tried to reverse engineer.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Yeah. And and one aspect of that actually that that I've found really fascinating over the years is the way in which it's it's become from a start, as as you kind of said up front, uh kind of relatively kind of US-centric, to the point where some people kind of looked at it and said, I don't really get what this is, it's all tied in with you know Thanksgiving and stuff that we don't understand, to a point where it's become a genuinely kind of global movement where lots of different country-led movements are kind of taking things off in their own direction. And I guess this leads to, you know, what you were saying there before about how we can't necessarily address some of the problems because they're kind of they're structural ones to do the system. One of the things about seeing how things play out in other parts of the world is maybe we do have access to a vision of entirely different ways of doing things. So, have what have you seen in terms of the other countries that you've been able to kind of you know dig into their digging, their giving culture to get a sense of hang on, you know, that that's amazing. We could genuinely be doing something in a kind of radically different way.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Yeah, oh, so, so many things. And and it was really this it was this traveling around the world, really trying to understand what Giving Tuesday looked like in different places in the world and what philanthropy looks like in different places in the world, right? What is what is the nonprofit landscape here? What is the generosity landscape? What traditions exist, et cetera? And and I remember having a call with Woodrow, my chief data officer, at one point, this was years ago, and I remember it so clearly. I was wrapped up in a park walking my dog in the snow and talking to him about how the things that we were learning that different communities have engaged in since time immemorial are not just nice things, right? They are life-saving things that clearly um sustain and make more resilient the communities that engage in them. So, for example, when um when we started having uh a lot more African countries join, um our Liberia leader was telling me about how across the continent, dozens and dozens of manifestations of what are essentially rotating credit structures, right? So different forms of people put um funds into a common pot. Then that pot goes to, in some communities, it's a new mom, in some communities, it's a young person who wants to sign their first lease. In other words, there's a sense of collective care and responsibility for the larger community that I did not recognize as an American. I just really didn't recognize it. It did not ring any bells from my own childhood or extended family or friends, right? You you can you can consider yourself an incredibly loving person in an incredibly tight-knit community, but you don't necessarily consider it your responsibility to make sure that your neighbor is fed and clothed, right? And not alone. And that is true in many other places of the world, right? And that and and that's something that we have nodded to in this very dismissive way. And normal, when it when we even nod to it, it's under the category of informal giving, which again, like is a very dismissive phrase that is sort of meant has meant to sort of encapsulate, like, here's monetary giving to nonprofits and kind of here's everything else.

unknown 40:09

Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

But but when in reality, when people look at their everyday lives, what what makes us feel safe, what makes us feel belonging, what makes us feel cared for, you're just never gonna find a gift to a nonprofit being on the top of that list, right? It's going to be all about your your daily, your day-to-day experience, how you treat others, how you are treated by others. It just doesn't get more simple than that. And and what's what's really remarkable about those those traditions that um that I'm mentioning, and and they just take so many different forms in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, and um and then there are there are places that are, you know, that sort of tend toward the very transactional, just like just like the US does. But those things are not in any way sort of throwaway actions. They are highly organized and structured. And to me, that's a fascinating thing because informal giving, you know, I don't even know what that fall, I don't even know what what that calls to mind for me. It calls to mind like somebody kind of tossing a bill at a person on the street, right? Like that, that like that that's informal. Even that kind of giving, right, is is incredibly important to know and understand how that works. And there are parts of the world where that's the main form of giving. And we consider that highly problematic rather than thinking, wow, a culture where if you pass somebody on the street, it it's your responsibility, it's your moral responsibility to find a way to help them in some small way. Like that, that's a problem, right? Because it doesn't involve um incorporated organizations. Instead of saying, like, that means that there's a very generous foundation to this culture. I'm not even the gave us all culture here, like just like name as a placeholder. Let's try to build more formalized structures on top of that, right? And really understand what engages people in this culture and what speaks to them and you know, and and um how they communicate with one another, et cetera, et cetera. So that that's been like life-changing for me to experience that that kind of giving that happens in other places and even just the generosity that I've experienced traveling to those places, the way that people um use food, right? The way that people use meals and um and drink and food to welcome you, to feel proud of where they're where they live and how generosity shows up there and in in all of these really small ways.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

And what what do you think, in terms of like in the US or the UK or whatever collective term global north, or you know, none of them are unproblematic, but but sort of the bit of the world that doesn't currently have some of those kind of traditions of of giving necessarily, how how do we actually go about kind of learning something meaningful from that? Because I mean my my worry would be in a way that we kind of look at these things and people become aware of some of these different, you know, more kind of mutually based or horizontal cultures of giving elsewhere in the world. And then people go, cool, you know, and then just try and come up with a social innovation lab or something to kind of implement it within the frameworks that we have. You know, could you see any of that working? Or is there a danger that if you try and kind of take that stuff in isolation from a different context without actually appreciating what is fundamentally different about it, it's never gonna work. And that actually the lessons that we take have to be much deeper ones about, you know, as you were saying, the kind of fundamental value of generosity, the different forms it can take, the importance of kind of individual acts of kindness and responsibility.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

The latter for sure. Uh it's not about taking something that works or that seems lovely or something and replicating it exactly. That wouldn't even be in the Giving Tuesday ethos, right? Because it's never been about replication, it is great. In fact, we say uh there's no stealing ideas in Giving Tuesday, there's only joyful replication. And that means like that it is really encouraged in our community. To see something that works and to try it yourself. But there's always, that's always like with tweaks and changes and iterations, and then it's fed back into this kind of peer learning feedback loop, right? So that the ideas are constantly changing. I think when you look at the traditional institutional aid world, for example, that's one of the main criticisms about it, that it tries to simply replicate an intervention in place after place after place with no recognition of the uniqueness and authenticity of that particular culture and the way that it may change for that, right? And especially that that that intervention was often not even conceived with the consultation of that community, right? Let alone their their actual leadership. So it's not about that. I think it's um, I think when you when you start looking at giving as being fundamentally transformational, and you open the space for people to engage with it on their own terms, and you stop thinking of them as donors, and you start thinking of them as co-owners of your mission, then those things start to emerge organically, right? Those new traditions, right, those new networks, those new ways of practicing community care will start in a community and they will be fundamentally tailored to that community. Um, and it's and it's sort of just in sort of um clinging to more rigid and institutional ways of trying to open that space, which tend not to be very open at all, that we're not letting people in. And so they can't become owners and they can't co-create with us and they can't co-own with us. Right. So it's that we're we're almost preventing them ourselves from letting in some of those amazing ideas and then just seeing what happens, seeing what we do with them.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Yeah, absolutely. I'm aware we're coming towards the uh the hour that we had for this now. Well, a couple more things I want to ask. And I think we've we've had enough optimistic conversation that I feel safe now bringing the tone down by saying, you know, the reality is at the moment, certainly in the US, it's been a pretty difficult year for nonprofits and philanthropy, there's all kinds of challenges out there. Just be interested to hear kind of your take on, you know, have any of those issues that are affecting foundations and nonprofits and donors affected giving Tuesdays and organizations so far? What are you kind of tracking in your work? What are you concerned about at the moment?

SPEAKER_02 46:23

It's been a really hard year. Yeah, it's been a really brutal, um, brutal packet of months for the nonprofit sector, for all the friends that I have and colleagues that I have leading organizations who are not sure what tomorrow will bring. So I just want to acknowledge that. I and I think the the fall of USAID and these incredibly um dramatic sea changes to to aid and to philanthropy are are throwing everyone for a loop, right? So so we need to acknowledge all of that and the the very, very real distress it has caused and is causing. And, you know, organizations have already shut their doors. Um this is, you know, this is this is tragic. And and also for you know, for for a whole sector to be demonized in this way is is is really jarring, I find. All of that said, I think we ourselves complained about this system for such a long time, right? We were we ourselves were pointing out all of the problems with it. Would we have chosen for the system to change this dramatically with this little thought for individual experience and human lives? Of course not. Now it has been done. This is the new paradigm in which we find ourselves, and I think the biggest mistake we can make is to um yearn for a return to baseline. Like, let's let this opportunity, which is that a field has been raised, right? It has been burned to the ground. The fertile, the soil is now fertile, and we can build new things and we can have new ideas and we can dream big and we can rebuild these systems without those bugs slash features that we ourselves were pointing out for such a long time. And I think we can use the opportunity also to be less insular, um, to be less ideologically exclusionary, um, to embrace pluralism, uh, to find common ground. These are, you know, these are all things that are not universally popular, I'm very aware, but I believe in them. You know, I really do believe in them. And I think that we have a responsibility as social sector actors to really hold those values tightly, right? That we believe in the that a plurality of views only makes um a sector, an institution, an organization, a world stronger. So I I I think this the long, long answer short, there are opportunities in this moment that I really hope we seize and that we seize really boldly.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

And and actually sort of tying that back to what we were talking about before, I won I wondered in the context of the kind of some of the populist attacks on on philanthropy and on nonprofits, you know, the the starting point seems to be that it's easier to attack them because they are they can be painted as kind of out of touch, technocratic, elitist. And and maybe that goes to that idea that they are you know, there's a level of formalization and sort of transactionalism in their relationships with with donors and supporters that's meant that actually it's easy for people to come from the outside and make those claims and nobody's gonna stand up and defend those organizations. And maybe it's not to say that the attacks are entirely right, but maybe in kind of working out how to respond, part of it needs to be to see the kernel of truth in it as well, which is okay, maybe maybe it's overblown and polemic, but there is something there that they've latched onto that clearly kind of resonates, and maybe we should learn something from that.

SPEAKER_02 49:54

That that's it. I mean, the the most dangerous uh rhetoric accusation idea is one that contains that germ of truth, and then that a whole bunch of polemic, right, ideological stuff is built around. So if you know, if the the contention that is out there now is that philanthropy is elitist and out of touch, there's a germ of truth in that. And we all know it, right? And and now's our opportunity to really do something about it, right? To to just to kind of throw away the the jargon and and throw away outdated ideals and and really meet people where they are and and to understand that, you know, it's it's so interesting. I was at a um dinner with friends recently, and um several of the people are on the table were lawyers, and they were um, everybody was very, very upset about what was happening during that particular period of time with um the administration and the big law firms. And it was a good reminder to me that uh the havoc is being wreaked across all kinds of sectors and worlds and people right now, and that we're like we of course are in philanthropy, so that we're seeing the havoc that is being wreaked in philanthropy, but that it extends far beyond us. We are not at all the only targets here. And you know, uh a lot of a lot of people are being targeted, but I think unique among them, philanthropy really does have the power and the capital to reinvent.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and just uh kind of finally before I uh I'll let you go, it's been really great to have a chance to talk and I managed to cover loads of I think really, really interesting topics, but kind of what's next on the horizon for Giving Tuesday beyond obviously this year's day, which I'm sure will be you know vastly successful, but kind of do you have particular areas that you're looking to focus on or to kind of you know develop further or things that you're particularly kind of interested in taking forward?

SPEAKER_02 51:52

So many things, but I'll just mention one which is um sort of sort of the similar answer to to the one about what we're gonna focus on this year. Um so so we have been you know doing uh we have an instrument in the Data Commons called Giving Pulse, which is a weekly survey of uh giving behaviors. Right now it exists in the States because it's hard to find funding for it to roll out elsewhere, but we're really hoping that this will be a global tool. And it asks people what they have what acts of giving they have engaged in in the in the previous week, far from just money, right? What what what helping hand have they extended? What have they given to, et cetera? And what we kept getting back was this um these clear indications that people absolutely have the inclination to be active citizens, right? To be active citizens in a positive way. Like that is genuinely their intent. And I think the opportunities to exercise that intent are simply too limited and that that they they are exercising that intent 100%, but it's in ways that are very much off the radar, right? Very, very much unappreciated. And I so I think our immediate um work is really to shine more light on that, to really find those people who every community has those people, right? Who not only like feel a deep sense of connectedness to the place that they are, or let's even say the cause that they believe in, right? But the people who actually get off the couch and do something about it, right? Take some action. Even if it's like starting a book club or a giving circle, or right, like these ways that people find to make change in these very, very um, in these very small ways are are unbelievably important, but I would say have never been more important than right now, right? And that that that again, the the full one thing that philanthropy simply has not done is invest in community level giving. And I mean the the infrastructure in both the data and technology sense and in the cultural sense, right? Uh we just have we just have not done that. We have not invested in giving infrastructure, and now we're seeing the results of that when community is more important than ever. And and those those natural leaders in communities are also more important than ever. Our community campaigns in the states raise 90% more money on Giving Tuesday than in communities without community campaigns. So, just from a financial perspective, it makes sense for every county in America to have a giving campaign. And so that is one of our one of our near-term goals. In the next couple of years, we would like to see a community giving campaign in every community in America or in every county in America. Next in every community, we hope. And we don't care at all if those are called Giving Tuesday campaigns or if they're not. Just a community coming together around the idea of giving.

SPEAKER_01 54:40

Amazing. Yeah. And certainly the optimist in me definitely thinks, and you know, it's kind of gut feeling more than anything else, that that it the barrier to a lot of people actually doing that something is relatively small. It's just that people maybe they don't quite know how to do that first thing, or they kind of don't have the experience that allows them. So if it's that bit's made easier for them, the floodgates kind of open and then people are fully invested. So I think anything that you can do to kind of build that infrastructure at at that level of community so that people can easily get engaged, I think people will respond to that.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

So they always do, right? They always do. And I think you're right, it can feel you know, there can be a barrier to thinking, oh, what is this thing that I can do and will it make any difference? But to be fair, who could blame people for thinking that? Right. Or, you know, especially in the US, our attention, our our love for the big and dramatic, right? For the giving away of millions and millions or billions and billions of dollars, has solidified the word philanthropy as belonging to the ultra-high net worth, right, or the philanthropic elite. So we have done our part in sending the message that, like, oh, you're a little book club.

unknown 55:54

Come on.

SPEAKER_02 55:54

Like, I was not gonna say, right? Like baking that lasagna for your neighbor, right? Like volunteering at the community center, like super cute, right? But like we're not looking to you to make any any sweeping societal changes when in reality, systems are made up of people, right? When you change people and change their behaviors, you change the norms, you you're you are changing systems in them from the grassroots up, and that's the only way that ever lasts.

SPEAKER_01 56:18

Brilliant. Well, I feel more optimistic than I have for ages. But if nothing else, that conversation has achieved that. But it's absolutely great to have a chance to chat to you, um, uh Asher. Um, I'll put links in the show notes to places where people can find more information on this year's Giving Tuesday, on the Data Commons, all of the work that you guys do, um, and links to sort of other things that they might be interested in. Just remains to say thanks ever so much for finding time to come on the podcast. Uh, wish you all the best with this year's Giving Tuesday, be keeping uh uh a watch on it uh and with everything in the future.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

Thank you, Roger. It's always such a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 57:01

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Asher for coming on the podcast. Absolutely great to have a chance to talk to her. Um, I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find information on some of the things we're talking about, particularly on what's going on with Giving Tuesday this year, which uh in a rare case of actually timing an episode of the uh podcast properly. Uh this one I know is going out just before, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving and then Giving Tuesday. So um still plenty of opportunities to get involved if you've been inspired this year, but also loads of things to find out about the work Giving Tuesday and the Giving Tuesday Data Commons. Um I'll also put some links to some things that I've written that might be of relevance and interest. Uh, if you're interested more broadly in any issues around philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com. Uh, lots of articles there, guides to kind of topics and trends in philanthropy, all the back issues of this podcast, lots of little news updates and that sort of thing. Um, if you're interested in getting other updates on philanthropy, uh do follow me on social media. You can find me on LinkedIn, best place usually, uh, a little bit on Blue Sky. And as I say, if you connect with me on Blue Sky and convince me that it's worth spending more of my time on there, I'm sure uh I can have my arm twisted. Other than that, if you enjoyed the podcast, do tell people about it, friends, uh colleagues, uh enemies if you think that's more appropriate. But um I know personal recommendation goes a long way. Uh if you've got the time as well, and you could leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts, that helps bump us up the algorithm. Other than that, uh I will see you next time. Bye.