A workbook for personal giving
By Joseph Wakelee-Lynch

Inspired Philanthropy: Creating a Giving Plan by Tracy Gary and Melissa Kohner, edited by Nancy Adess, Chardon Press, Oakland, Calif. 1998.

In November 1999, Kim Klein, co-founder of a progressive publishing house in Oakland, Calif., and publisher of Grassroots Fundraising Journal, told an audience: "All social justice requires an understanding of money – how it works, who has it, how it is taxed, how it is given away. Therefore, fundraising is central to program work, not ancillary, not supportive of, central to. Get rid of the barriers between program and fundraising."

Klein knows the money business. She also knows the how-to-find-out-who-has-the-money-business, as well as the how-to-find-out-how-those-who-want-to-give-away-their-money business, and, maybe most important, the how-to-ask-them-for-their-money business. Best of all, Klein, as co-founder of Chardon Press, is helping to publish a cornucopia of fundraising and organization books designed to help people who work in progressive and religious politics to learn it all, too.

Many of Chardon’s offerings are guides to help people make their way through the intricate, intimidating mazes of fundraising. Indeed, Chardon’s most popular book, now in its fourth edition, is Fundraising for Social Change, by Klein herself.

Inspired Philanthropy: Creating a Giving Plan, by Tracy Gary and Melissa Kohner, approaches the funding problem from the other direction: It is a workbook designed for people who have money and want to give it away in order to further social change. That’s different than traditional philanthropy. "Progressive philanthropy," write Gary and Kohner, "supports what is called social change, that is, actions that seek to right the imbalances of an unjust society or an unequal distribution of resources."

Inspired Philanthropy will help you to understand how and to whom you’ve been giving time and money in the past, even if it is only a small annual amount. It contains exercises and worksheets designed to help you examine and identify your most important values and issues. By using them, you can focus your giving and strengthen your ability to help causes that you care the most deeply about. Other exercises offer assistance in tracking the recipients that you’ve given to in the past and identifying their organizational characteristics and goals. These provide a tangible way of making intentional and focused something that until now you may have been doing haphazardly. And there’s a useful section on volunteering – giving one’s time – that includes a statement of a volunteer’s rights and responsibilities that every social service agency should know about.

But the book is also of great use for people who do, indeed, have significant amounts of money to contribute. It’s full of tips that can assist you to clarify and maximize your relationship as a donor to an organization that you support. It even includes creative suggestions for challenging others to give with you. And although it is mostly oriented toward individuals, Inspired Philanthropy could be adapted easily for a congregation’s use. There are many whose members, perhaps because of age or family responsibilities, cannot often take to the streets with the activists. But those parish stalwarts are often ready to pool their contributions and distribute them to needy organizations. I was part of such a church in southern California that has been giving away more then $20,000 a year for the past three years.

The book’s authors bring their own interesting histories to this work. Tracy Gary, when she was in her 20s, inherited a trust from her parents. At first she gave the money away haphazardly, but she quickly felt the need to be more disciplined. After 25 years, she has given away three-fourths of her inheritance. "My sense of real abundance has come through that giving," she says. Anyone who has met tithers who truly give from the heart will know how Gary can feel so rich by giving money away.

As for Kohner, her first experience in giving was carefully placing a dollar in the collection plate in church. She muses that churches are good at raising money because the plate keeps coming round. I doubt she’s sat on any stewardship committees: Church people don’t give generously because they can’t escape the offering. Usually, they believe that following Jesus means not spending a lifetime accumulating but, instead, giving in a radical way: giving love, forgiveness, peace and hope.

Inspired Philanthropy can help take you down that road of giving, and it’s one that gets more satisfying with every step.

Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is a writer/editor in Berkeley, Calif.