I wonder if most everything born knows it offering? Looking at trees and birds, flowers and stars. They know their offering. They are part of the breathing of life, a delicate, intricate dance of absolute wisdom.

Knowing and honoring your offering imbues life with a sense of meaning, a sense of direction.

In indigenous cultures, part of the work of the Elders is to help each child recognize his/her unique offering. Observing a baby with patience. With stillness. What is the baby naturally drawn to? What is it innately interested in? What calms it? What makes it laugh with joy? What causes it pain and sorrow? What gifts come easily to it?

Our current western culture doesn’t recognize this enough. We too often fill our babies with stimuli and rules and fears and expectations. We don’t look through the eyes of divine love that says we are each here to make a gift of our unique offering.

The closer we are able to live to our own offering, the stronger and more resilient we are despite external pressure. The more passionately and joyfully we can live, the deeper our satisfaction is in the ways we feel in our daily lives and the greater difference we can make in our world.

What if you could find and follow your offering at any age? What if you could find a community of people who watch and listen and help you give birth to your deepest offering? What if you didn’t need some catastrophic event like an illness or loss or a loved one or a spouse leaving you to finally remember who you are and why you are here?

Walking the path with an open heart is simply an exploration of the nature of our offering, a recognition of previously unseen threads which are not random or peripheral, but are the path itself. It’s a remembering to do what we are deeply drawn to in the quietest moments of listening to our hearts.

-Jennifer

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Take a moment and ask yourself what values you ascribe to money. Too often, even subconsciously, we infuse money with values like power, safety, scarcity and control. But money is energy – without our values, beliefs and stories, it is just a piece of paper.  

I often get questions like these: how do I talk about money for my cause in a way that I don’t feel like I am losing my soul? How do I not walk away from interactions where money is being discussed feeling exhausted and burnt out?  How do I relate to someone more deeply than on the basic level of money?

My answer is always the same: ask yourself, is money at the center of your relationships or is it a shared vision for how you will work together to create social change?  If money is at the center, there will always be a skewed power dynamic.  Namely, the people or organizations with the money have the power and the people needing the money become supplicant to them. Then, we are in a competitive, consumer mode where we have to pitch people on why our program, organization, vision is better than another.  This has never made sense to me.

Why pitch people on, say, why the environment is more important than ending extreme poverty?  Or vice versa? They are intricately linked and so why be competitive about it?

In fact why pitch at all? The invitation – the “ask” – is not, at its essence, what you can do for me or how can you help me, but, rather, how can we work together?  This is an important distinction.  Asking someone to “help” creates an inauthentic power dynamic. I counsel people to strike that word entirely from their lexicon.  Instead, invite people to join with you and to stand together in a shared belief that together your resources can exponentially multiply and can make a powerful difference.

From here, asking people to join with you is not about helping, but about an exchange of values.  A vehicle through which you meet at a place beyond help.  It is an entirely new framing, a way to collaborate that transcends the power dynamic.  This way, money is out of the middle. It becomes a relationship built on a discovery of some of the most basic, human questions:  Why are we here? What might be possible? Who are we?

It is possible, albeit not always easy, to infuse money with values like justice, courage, commitment to change, even love. Money is not the end game. It’s just a means to an end – or, as I like to think about it – just the gas that goes in the car, not the car, not the driver and certainly not the destination.  The destination is the change you want to see in the world.

Drive on!  

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I suspect I’m not alone in still occasionally getting lost in the narrative that the approval of others is a necessary ingredient in life.  We believe trying to impress each other — society, especially the people we think we need most — is our best strategy to all things good: safety, security, love, happiness and success.

Yet when we are lost in the pursuit of happiness, love, admiration and approval, what do we think? We believe what we seek is “out there” – and in being “out there,” we move out of our authentic selves and into “I-need-to-get” mode.  Or “I need to preserve” mode.  We begin pursuing, instead of allowing all that we already are breathe freely.

In pursuit mode, we too often walk around asking (often subconsciously) a stream of questions to monitor our position in relation others:  What did he/she think of me?  Did he/think I was smart, successful, attractive enough?   Why did I say THAT?  If I’d only said THIS instead. Why didn’t he/she return my text? Did I do something wrong? On and on it goes.

It is a constant scanning to try to determine where we stand.  Are we gaining or losing ground?   If we believe we are gaining, we feel great. If we believe we are losing, we feel lost and very easily move into manipulation mode to try to regain some sense of illusory control: little strategies we’ve perfected over the years to attempt to gain admiration and approval.  The real irony, though, is that this constant struggle to win love and approval or to ensure we don’t lose it, blocks the actual experience of it.

Enoughness isn’t determined by others.  It’s entirely our own to define and own.

There’s a Buddhist saying: “If you meet the Buddha on the road kill him.”  For a long time, I struggled with what this meant, but now I realize it is an invitation to know that my power, my authority, my enoughness is from the inside out – not the other way around. It’s an open and ongoing invitation to constantly question:  just how many Buddhas are in my life? In other words, how many people or outside influences do I feel like I need in order to be enough? The truth is, there in only one Buddha – and I am that.  You are that too.

Knowing this.  Living this.  It is here that real and authentic connection, real safety, real happiness, real love exists.

Jennifer

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When asking for feedback on how Exponential Fundraising has made a difference in people’s work, there are several key elements that are frequently shared as easy, but critical steps in shifting how to engage others. I encourage you to reflect on how you might integrate them into your own work:  

Ø  Make an Ask a Day – Asking is a simple, but critical muscle to develop.  When you start to make at least one ask a day (which doesn’t have to be a financial ask, you can also ask people to give their time, their expertise, access to the networks, their advice, etc)  – it gets you in the habit of inviting others to be a part of your work.  A friend once brilliantly said the ask simply requires “20 seconds of courage.”  Try it! Write yourself a reminder and hold yourself accountable for at least one ask a day.

Ø  Consider your philanthropic team “partners” instead of “donors” – Try removing the word “donor” from your lexicon. It has such narrow and confined connotations. Instead, use the word “partner” – both in words and intention –  and explore how that changes way you connect and work with others.

Ø  Don’t use the word “Help” – Similarly, the word “help” can create a power dynamic putting you, the person asking for something, in a position that feels less than equal.  Instead, ask people to join you in your work.  

Ø  Plan a small group “Jeffersonian”-style  dinner – Reinvigorate your board and current partners, plus invite new perspective collaborators to the conversation, by organizing an intimate, whole-table conversation. Ask questions that encourage participants to share personal stories, and then connect those shared values to your work. For more on Jeffersonian Dinners.

Ø  Stay focused on your work as more than just a job  –  Ask yourself, why am I called to do this work? Practice telling your story and share it with others. It’s our relationship to our work, even more than the kind of work we do, that matters.  The more we experience our work as a calling, the more we experience the personal meaning it has for us: what we stand for and what difference we can make.  It insulates us from a sense of isolation, stress, and fatigue and allows us to better tolerate the “job” aspects of our work.

Ø  Don’t put money at the center of a relationship – Keep the work itself at the center of your relationships. While money is a necessary, vital resource, remember it’s just the gas that goes in the car, not the car, not the driver, and not the destination.

Ø  Remember your courage! Go into every meeting standing up, never kneeling down –  You are offering people an opportunity to join with you and your community to make critical changes in our world and to participate in your vision.  It is the exact opposite of begging!  You can never be rejected.  If you ask someone to join with you and they say, “I love your work, but my passion is working on the oceans,” say, “Great!” This is a victory for the world, not a rejection of you. So ask. Ask. Ask!  

Integrating these simple tools and perspectives into your fundraising practices will have a dramatic impact on your work. If you are interested in diving deeper into Exponential Fundraising, learn more here.

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–Rachel Naomi Remen

When we see a friend struggling, our natural instinct is to help or fix.   It is deeply uncomfortable – even painful sometimes – to see someone we care about hurting.  Our natural inclination is to give advice or to believe we are bearing their pain with them by suggesting we’ve had similar struggles.

I have wonderful friends – and I’m so grateful to be able to turn to them when I am hurting.  It is always a relief and incredibly helpful when they ask me open, honest questions, like: “Did you ever feel this way before?”   “When you say you are scared, what do you mean?”  or “What I hear you saying is X, is this true for you?”   

When met here, I feel heard and seen.  I also feel confident that I already know the answer.  I do not feel broken or flawed, which is how I sometimes feel when a friend, no matter how well meaning, says something like:  “I think this is about your fear of abandonment” or “You have a pattern of doing x.”  It may sound compassionate on the surface, but I suspect it’s really just another way to analyze a situation about which nobody else could really understand. Or to attempt to answer or solve my struggle for me.  But how could any of us have the power to do that for another? Nobody has walked in my shoes before, nor I in theirs.  We are each unique in the way we feel and move through this life.  How can anyone really know what I’m feeling or struggling with or vice versa?  I can walk with someone when they bravely come to me from a place of vulnerability, but I can’t know what their experience is like for them.

Listening openly and without any desire to judge or fix is a deeply spiritual practice.  It is gift to meet people with genuine love, openness and a trust that we are all our own best teachers.  A trust that all of the wisdom any of us needs is already inside us  — and the best we can ever do is gently coax it out of each other with loving, open questions, not answers.  

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Resources like time, creativity, networks, ideas, passion and money.  These resources are ours to leverage. Unfortunately, they can get stuck and stalled, in large part, because of the barriers we erect around them.  And the bossiest of barriers: our problematic relationship with money. I work with people on every part of the economic spectrum and everyone – I mean everyone – has, on some level, a dysfunctional relationship with money.

No way around it: we work in the world of money. So we need to understand ourselvesand how we relate to it. Take a moment and ask yourself honest questions about the values you put around money. Do you assign money values coming from a place of fear and scarcity? That is, does talking about money take on a dark threatening posture? Or do you color it with the light, warm values of courage, commitment and love?

In my workshops, I often get questions like these: how do I talk about money for my cause in a way that I don’t feel like I am losing my soul? How do I not walk away from interactions where money is being discussed feeling exhausted and burned out?  How do I relate to someone more deeply than on the basic level of money?

My answer is always the same: ask yourself if money is at the center of your relationships or is it a shared vision for how you will work together to create social change?  If money is at the center, there will always be a skewed power dynamic.  Namely, the people or organizations with the money have the power and the people needing the money become supplicant to them. Then, we are in a competitive, consumer mode where we have to pitch people on why our program, organization, vision is better than another. This has never made sense to me.

Why pitch people on, say, why the environment is more important than ending extreme poverty?  Or vice versa? They are intricately linked and so why be competitive about it?

In fact why pitch at all? The invitation – the “ask” – is not, at its essence, what you can do for me me or how can you help me, but, rather, how can we work together?  This is an important distinction.  Asking someone to “help” creates an inauthentic power dynamic. Helping implies weakness. I counsel people to strike that word entirely from their lexicon.  Instead, invite people to join with you and to stand together in a shared belief that together your resources can exponentially multiply and can make a powerful difference.

From here fundraising becomes much more of an exchange of values.  A vehicle through which we meet at a place beyond help.  It is an entirely new framing, a new way to collaborate that transcends the power dynamic.  This way, money is out of the middle. It becomes a relationship built on a discovery of some of the most basic, human questions:  Why are we here? What might be possible? Who are we? As the great philosopher and author of Money and the Meaning of Life Jacob Needleman says:  “Money can buy anything, except meaning.”  Meaning is the thing we’re going for here. A shared understanding that we are here to serve something larger than ourselves – that thing Plato calls Eros.

Go into conversation with others standing up, never kneeling down. Fundraising is not begging.  We all have something of great value to give each other when we are operating from a place of partnership and collaboration.

And money isn’t the enemy. It’s also not the end. It’s simply a means, a single resource among many that can be activated in service of our work together.

This post also found at Forbes and the Skoll World Forum

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Flow and no-flow. Morpheus is the embodiment of flow. Graceful. Aware. Focused. Fluid. Doing the needful and untroubled by the press of events around him. He even has his hands “tied behind his back.” Neo is no-flow. Confused. Fearful.  Trying to maintain control in a world that feels chaotic and unknowable. Manic and slow at the same time.

I am especially interested in this flow/no-flow topic as it relates to relationships and conversations. Am I selling, controlling, bumping into ego and fear? Or am I open and fearlessly allowing connection with grace and ease?

The best way I know how to flow effortlessly with another is to drop formalities and launch into an exploration of direct experience. Ask questions with openness: what has surprised you about the work we are doing together?  What has disappointed you? What has helped you feel most connected and effective?

I find when I drop the need to monitor or sell, the flow state just naturally emerges.  Plus, it’s just so much more relaxing and interesting for everyone.

Which are you right now? Flow or no-flow? Morpheus or Neo?

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“Of course not,” replied the Lama.  “You love your son. You want his happiness. He’s happy when he beats the other team. This is only natural.”

The man smiled and said, “Thank you, Rinpoche.  I feel much relieved.”

The Lama laughed and said, “I was only joking! Actually, this is not at all the right attitude.  In fact a good practice for you would be to root for the other team.  See them winning.  See them happy.  See their parents overjoyed. This is the bodhisattva way.”

Last week, an old friend called me in tearful dismay at not being among the acknowledged for a large gift that was given to her organization, a gift for which she had felt very much responsible.  She lamented not only that she wasn’t recognized, but that others were being praised in her stead. She was quite shaken.

My first instinct was to tell her that she should just be happy for the organization’s success and that was enough.  Then I remembered this story and I invited her to try it. I asked her to be sincerely and actively happy not just for her organization’s win, but for the others who were being recognized. To feel their joy and to celebrate it with them.

This is counter-intuitive to our competitive minds, but it is the only real remedy for envy. It also has a powerful effect on our ability to actually partner and collaborate with each other.

Collaboration and Lip Service

I hear so much talk in our sector about collaboration.  We claim we must find ways to collaborate among each other and among our organizations if we are going to successfully impact the enormous challenges in our world.  We all agree that these challenges are far too immense for any one organization.  But collaboration is hard.  Especially when our minds are hard-wired around the belief that the world is a zero-sum game.  Many try to convince themselves that collaboration is a good idea. But when the rubber hits the road, rooting for their own team is what keeps the opposing team from eating them alive.  You can’t afford to collaborate or surely everything else will be lost.  You can’t be happy for others or else you will become weak and lose your edge.

Just try it.  The next time one of your star employees is scooped up by one of your competitors.  Or when your Board member makes an enormous gift to another organization.  Or when your college roommate makes his first billion and you’re sitting in your nonprofit-sized cubicle.  With sincerity, be happy for their good fortune.

When we honestly wish for other’s success, a natural feeling of abundance emerges and roads for collaboration open that we never imagined possible. We become much more capable of giving and receiving.  Of course, this is easier said than done given our conditioning. This attitude can’t be “installed” into your hard drive from an outside vendor.  It’s only sustainable when we see no separation. But for now, seeing the world through another’s eyes is at the very heart of collaboration precisely because it makes us feel (and know) that there is plenty to go around.

Best of all, in the words of Carl the caddy, “On your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.”  So you’ll have THAT going for you.

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Haegwan Kim
So, as my research is on the law of success, shall I start by asking about your definition of success?

Jennifer McCrea
I think the term “success” is generally misunderstood and also deeply limited. The question I prefer to ask – and what I think you’re alluding to and the reason you’re doing this project – is “what makes a good life?”

HK
Good to hear that.

JM
And, of course, while there are no ultimate answers to the question of what makes a good life, I would say that it begins by living through the heart, not through the mind. When I say the heart, I don’t really mean the “heart” as a soft, gushy thing, a kind of Valentine that is memorialized in love songs and the like.

HK
[Laugh]

JM
I mean heart as an instrument of vision and a very powerful portal to compassion and joy and love. These aren’t things that can ever be experienced fully on the level of the mind.

HK
For you does fundraising mean a part of your happiness or a part of your good life?

JM
First, let me say that the term “fundraising” is a clunker. Like the term “enlightenment” or “success.” It’s a terrible word.

HK
[Laugh] No, I love it.

JM
I wish there was a better word for it, but it’s the word we have and so I celebrate it. Fundraising isn’t really about funneling money to organizations. Fundraising is about transformation, organizational transformation and individual transformation. It’s deeply sacred work.

HK
You said you’re doing exponential fundraising to differentiate other fundraising. Can you tell me a little bit about exponential fundraising and its importance?

JM
Well, I just came up with that as a term, “exponential fundraising,” to express that all the fundraising that’s being done now is great, but there’s just so much further we can take it. One of the reasons people hate fundraising is because they think it’s about money. And there’s a weird power dynamic when money is at the centre of relationship. If you stop thinking about fundraising as being just about money, you can actually create a ground of being where genuine, authentic partnership can occur. Money then becomes the means, not the end.

HK
Sounds great.

JM
So, exponential fundraising is really about using the portal of philanthropy, or fundraising or whatever you want to call it, to really explore transformation with people. It’s not even about solutions because I think one of the places we often wrong in our world is that we think the world is a problem to be solved. Yet, we really can’t “solve” the problem of life. It’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and all the world’s problems are going to be solved.

HK
For sure.

JM
That’s not the nature of the human condition. The nature of the human condition is that life is an unfinished opus and we will continue to serve it. Service of life seems to me to be much better than attempting to fix it. My favorite Mother Theresa quote is, “we serve life not because it’s broken, but it’s holy.” Holy means whole. That to me, the act of partnering with someone and serving together is where real grace and compassion comes from. That’s the real essence of fundraising.

HK
Do you think there are enough funds for people to make actions?

JM
There’s plenty of money out there. It’s not an issue of money, everybody knows that you can put all the money in the world to these issues and that’s not going to solve any of these problems in any real or sustainable way. This is not an issue of money.

HK
So, there’s enough money to change the world.

JM
Yes, of course. Money is a currency. You just need to get money flowing so that it’s not bottled up somewhere. But again, money is the means, not the end.

HK
That’s why society needs you. [Laugh]

JM
Yes. [Laugh] There’s plenty of money. Where things get derailed, and it’s is totally understandable, is that people feel this compulsion to do something on the planet and so they create an organization then they say, well, I’ve got to fund this idea to get it going and they go out and they try to sell people on why their idea is better than other people’s, but that is a competitive mindset that just makes everything so much harder. In the US alone there are 1.8 million non-profits and every one of them is saying they have a great idea and trying to compete against all the other great ideas. Again, that’s operating on the level of the mind, trying to convince someone or sell someone on why your idea is better.

HK
True.

JM
What motivates people is shared values, connecting on a much deeper level. I think that’s a much more powerful place, actually, from which to work. Then you get out of the buyer and seller dynamic, which is going to limit you from actually partnering every time. To me, if there’s a magic bullet in this work, it’s to transcend that buyer/seller dynamic. And not just in fundraising, but everywhere in our lives. We’re always trying to sell people on ourselves, on our ideas, and it puts up a barrier to actual authentic connection. I think we can let that go now.

HK
What do you think about money for your life? Is it a necessary thing or is it just important or is it a tool for you?

JM
Again, money is a tool. A means. It’s not a good thing and it’s not a bad thing. We call it currency, and yet ironically we don’t keep it flowing because we’ve got so much emotional baggage around it. I said this earlier, but when money is at the centre of a relationship, it generally creates a power dynamic that really skews the ability to partner. This is what happens with a lot of relationships between fundraisers and philanthropists: the fundraiser – whoever is doing the asking and that can be the executive director, a volunteer or a professional fundraiser – often becomes a supplicant to the person who is being asked. I think this power dynamic inhibits creativity and generally sets up a situation where we’re afraid of letting our donors get too close to the organization. So instead of partnering, we’re selling again and holding people at arm’s length.

HK
That’s a really impressive point. As our technology develops there’s a lot of tools to donate money on the internet or on the web. So, can I ask your perspective on the possibility of online donation?

JM
Yes. I think all of the technology stuff we’re still trying to figure out. They’re good tools but they’re never going to replace human relationships, face-to-face relationship.

HK
Interesting, why?

JM
Because you can’t build a really deep, authentic relationship online.

HK
That can be a strong argument. As a final question, talking about success again, could you tell me your advice to achieve success in general?

JM
My advice is to remain open to the possibility that you don’t have all the answers. I think the most important questions in life don’t have any ultimate answer. What is compassion? What is love? What is service? What is joy? What is meaning? There are no absolute answers to any of these things and when we think we know, it stops us from really being able to meet them and experience them. The more we can back away from our belief that we know what these things are, the more we can experience them and actually have an impact.

The post My Laws of Success appeared first on Jennifer McCrea.

So what does “opening yourself up” really mean and how does this add to the generosity equation? What does “being vulnerable” bring to the philanthropic party?

Nothing short of radical transformation, I submit.

Introduce vulnerability to your philanthropic journey and you effect not only the receiver of your expression but you yourself are dramatically changed.  Anything short of completely “opening up” closes the immense potential that lies within the encounter.

A thin interpretation of the concept of generosity describes a single, donated act: giving money, time, knowledge. The writing of the check. The receiver is helped with a scholarship or medicine and the giver gets that warm glow. Dampening the potential here, though, is that there’s often still an element of power at work. When I give, I get a feeling of goodness, of power. I’m making things happen and fixing problems … so I am someone.

For me, true generosity – generosity that sets the stage for personal transformation – is when there is no ‘other’.  When the roles are dropped. When you no longer see someone as a “poor person” or “sick person” or “person in need.” When you no longer see yourself in the role of “helper” or “giver” or, worse yet, “savior.” Who we are is so much bigger than any role we can ever ascribe to ourselves or each other.

This way, generosity moves beyond a single fleeting act to how we live our lives. Generosity becomes you. This adds a delectable sweetness to the process creating a free-flowing positive feedback loop.  Everyone is lifted by this tide.

So how do we allow this type of generosity to effectively flow in an actual meeting?  Through opening up, sharing and listening. Yesterday, for example, I helped a woman carry a chair up from the subway.  Our interaction could have ended there with a simple thank you from her and a feeling of satisfaction on my end, but when we reached the street we paused for a moment and talked.  I asked her about the chair and learned it was her late father’s favorite and she just had it reupholstered.  She told me of the countless hours she’d spent on that chair with him when she was a little girl.  She said that someday, when she becomes a mother, she plans to put this chair in the nursery and have her child feel a connection with her father through it.  I then told her about the table my father made for me when I graduated from college and the many meals that had been eaten with friends and family on it over the years. I told her I feel that same connection to my father through that table and have a similar hope for it being passed along through my family.

As we listened to each other’s stories, we became friends.  It was no more than a five minute encounter, but a sincere connection was made that moved beyond generosity into a relationship.   I was touched in a very real way by her story and I think she was, in turn, touched by mine.

This may sound simple enough, but it’s an earnest journey. It’s a journey to allow ourselves to be open and fearless enough to truly connect with others, not role to role, but human being to human being.

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