COMMUNITY
By Rev. Bill Stanfield
Investments in communities last longer than a season of charity
T
hey start coming in around midNovember and are as reliable as the holidays themselves. “Hello Reverend,” the phone calls begin, “our business (or civic/church group) wants to do something this Christmas to help a family that is less fortunate, can you help us identify them?” For the past 11 years, I’ve served as the CEO of a nonprofit working in some of our region’s most distressed neighborhoods. Some callers are also aware that my family and I have chosen to live in the same community where we work — so they feel that I should know plenty of families in need of a holiday donation. I do know families that could use a little extra something for the holiday season, but often it is not what the donor on the other end of the line wants to deliver. I see the toy drives, turkey giveaways and free holiday dinners from the inside in our neighborhood. I trust that they are done with the best of intent from the donor’s perspective, but my neighbors pay a significant price for being the recipient of this type of charity. Parents of young children may understand. You know the joy of watching your kids open presents that you provided on Christmas morning. Now imagine the gifts you might try to provide being dwarfed by some good-hearted Samaritan dropping off gifts at your door. Suddenly, the blessing and pride of parenthood you might have had becomes the weight of dashed expectations and failure to provide. We expect that we are donating free items to make people happy, but very often they are paying for our donated stuff with their dignity and pride. Perhaps it is time to learn a thing or two from that most venerable of holiday icons: Mr. George Bailey of It’s a Wonderful Life. I assume most readers have seen this film. The generous small town banker spends his
life helping others, falls on hard times and then is bailed out by his community (with an attempted suicide, an angel and a life story of great value in between). Bailey’s generosity, expressed through his savings and loan business, wasn’t charity oriented, it was investment oriented and that is a very important distinction. A charity orientation assumes that the donor has been blessed and that others are in desperate need of some measure of the donor’s resources. It expects no real return in the recipient of the charity other than momentary relief from an immediate problem. An investment orientation is different in that it is considered a success based on some definition of a return on investment. George Bailey’s returns are the opportunities that his savings and loan creates for people in his community to build on their strengths and grow their capacity to solve their own problems. There is no question that he was serious about giving back to his community (see Mr. Potter in the same film for the decidedly ungenerous investment model), but Bailey doesn’t go looking for desperation to bail out with his generosity; he goes looking for potential to grow and expand.
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An investment orientation steers away from offering people services based on their deficiencies and moves toward offering people opportunities based on their capacity. Bailey’s loans required hard work and repayment, and he didn’t charge people the price of their dignity to obtain them. When those callers reach out to me looking for needy families, I politely steer them in a different direction. We request gifts for adults and put them into a small “Christmas store” where our students then purchase them for their parents using credits they earn for good behavior (and yes, nicer items cost more credits). Students beam with pride because they have earned something that they are now going to give to their parents. It is not principally about the gift, but about the dignity, pride and character that the whole experience engenders. It is an investment in our students that creates an opportunity for them to work to earn something of value and share that with someone they love. Readers of the Business Journal know what an investment orientation can mean for a business or a community. This holiday season, let’s choose the eyes of George Bailey to steward our generosity. Let’s set aside our charity outlook that provides free stuff and erodes recipients’ dignity. Let’s go looking for opportunities to invest in distressed individuals and communities that will bring a genuine positive return. Rev. Bill Stanfield is co-founder and CEO of the Metanoia Community Development Corp. Stanfield lives in the Chicora-Cherokee community with his wife, Evelyn, and two sons in North Charleston. Find out more about Metanoia at www.pushingforward.org. Stanfield is the keynote speaker at this year’s Philanthropy Day Luncheon.
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