Do you know the kinship you feel when someone mentions your favorite obscure band, or makes a reference to a movie you thought you were the only person to have ever seen? That feeling that someone else stumbled onto this awesome music/movie/media on their own, and now you can discuss it? Sometimes that’s how I feel about the issue of homelessness.
I realize that’s an odd thing to say, since I work in homeless services and read articles on homelessness and even write about what I’m learning, reading, and thinking here in The Race to End Homelessness. I just mean that outside of those dedicated circles, it seems as though homelessness is an issue people are uncomfortable discussing. Telling people about my job at parties will often send them heading for the snack table, or at least grasping for a subject change.
That’s why I was surprised when I read the United Nations April 2014 report that criticizes the United States for several often discussed controversial policies – Guantanamo Bay, NSA surveillance… and one less publicized issue – the poor treatment and criminalizing of Americans experiencing homelessness. It wasn’t just that the content of the report that stunned me, (although the findings are quite astounding) but rather that the issue of homelessness is finally a talking point at an international level.
Of course it would be preferable if this were an issue the U.S. could address domestically and not be embarrassingly criticized on an international stage, but as long as criminalizing those without a home is a problem that persists in the United States, it deserves worldwide attention. If the United Nations committee on Human Rights calls a practice, “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” will we see change in the way cities treat homeless individuals? Approaching homelessness as a crime has been consistently demonstrated not to work, illustrated most recently by James Boyd, shot multiple times for camping in the mountains of Albuquerque, and Jerome Murdough, imprisoned for sleeping in a New York City stairwell and then left to roast in a 100+ degree jail cell. Even so, many cities and policies seem determined to prove that homelessness is wrong via arrests, fines and other punishments. Instead of sticking a homeless person with legal charges or bail that will keep them stuck in poverty, the UN report recommends state and local governments “ensure close cooperation between all relevant stakeholders … to intensify efforts to find solutions for the homeless in accordance with human rights standards.”
It is my hope that the United Nations recommendations will not be the last international look at the treatment of those experiencing homelessness. We need this issue in the news, in the UN committee reports, and on the minds of government leaders and individual people. Criminalizing homelessness is an issue that threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable American people, and it is too important to have it be an obscure issue we are uncomfortable discussing.
So here’s an immodest proposal: why not make poverty pay? Or, to put it more precisely, why not give eradicating poverty some clear market value? If Buffett is willing to reward a lucky guess with an astonishing fortune, how about a billion bucks for the person who alleviates the wretched conditions of the most unfortunate? Why is that not a bet worth making?
As it stands today, the fight against poverty is driven by charity and goodwill. Any kind of profit motive is considered unseemly. Helping the poor is a testament to how much you care, in which effort and good intentions are applauded no matter the result. It’s where scoundrels go for redemption and goodie two-shoes go for a spit-shine ethical polish. If we fail, no-one loses, other than the poor of course. It’s not as if anyone’s going to lose a billion dollars over it, or a shot at a billion dollars.
There’s no doubt that anti-poverty crusades are noble, Buffett’s own efforts included. But while we’ve made gains in reducing global poverty (largely due to China’s industrialization), this system on the whole doesn’t work very well. How could it? It’s based on the kindness of people’s hearts, and kindness doesn’t pay the bills or get me a shiny new iPad. That’s not a condemnation; it’s just a fact.
The profit motive is one of the most powerful forces known to human history. It drives capitalism, moves mountains, and conjures fierce competition, economies of scale, creative destruction, iconoclastic visionaries and innovative ideas. Some would say it’s the cause of poverty in the first place (including Buffett’s own son) but good luck extirpating it. Instead, why not try to harness it?
So how would this work? Well, pick a metric. Any metric. Malnutrition, household income, a solid roof over a child’s head – whatever suits your fancy, or a billionaire like Warren Buffett’s. That metric now equals revenue – this much poverty reduced equals this much money, like a bounty for the death of a rogue gunslinger or a unit price. Appoint an auditor to impartially determine whether gains have been made. Pool the money from as many billionaires and corporate behemoths (and governments) as necessary to create the payout fund. Announce, award, repeat.
Before this starts to seem implausible, consider the precedents. The Google Lunar X Prize will award $20 million to the first team to land a robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon. We’ve spoken in this space before of the need for a moon-shot for justice, “a space race for social change.” Well, what’s more worthwhile? To put one small unmanned drone on the moon or take a giant leap forward out of poverty for all mankind?
Only that space race can unleash the energy and ambition we need to radically impact poverty. Whether it’s cheap, sustainable generators for the developing world, a farming system, or a jobs scheme, the prospect of riches would attract the best and brightest and encourage the most effective and efficient solutions so as to maximize profits. Entrepreneurs could take on venture capital in anticipation of reaping great rewards. “Social return on investment” would finally have real meaning rather than a fuzzy feel-good vagueness. Anti-misery magnates and transformative tycoons would take greater risks and try bigger ideas. Wheat would separate from chaff.
As one participant at the Ashoka Globalizer on Economic Inclusion said: “wouldn’t it be great if ‘billionaire’ was re-defined to mean someone who had improved 1 billion lives?” Yes, but wouldn’t it be even better – and a greater incentive for greater solutions – if that person could make a billion dollars from improving those billion lives? It seems odd that the rewards for helping to rid the world of the scourge of poverty should be dwarfed by the proceeds from creating the Shake Weight or the ShamWow!.
The Nobel Peace Prize cash award won by Muhammad Yunus was about a million dollars for a lifetime of battling poverty. Warren Buffett makes more than that in an hour. The Hult Prize gets closer: “the annual competition aims to identify and launch the most compelling social business ideas—start-up enterprises that tackle grave issues faced by billions of people. Winners receive USD 1 million in seed capital…” But that’s still chump change. And for the most part we get this: “By taking part in Activities, students can earn points on their way to become an Anti-Poverty Crusader. We will share the hard work of the winning school via our website, email database and social media. In addition, your school will receive a framed copy of one of the photos featured in the Make Poverty History photo exhibition.” Hardly a Lamborghini and a solid gold jet, or the cover of Forbes magazine.
Think of all the anti-poverty start-ups that might emerge if kids knew those points could be profits. Better yet, think what a person living in poverty might do if we weighted the rewards even more greatly for the poor to create those businesses and ideas themselves. There’s nothing to be lost with this model – the risk is entirely on the entrepreneurs and their backers; no results, no payout. Sticking with the current system is far more of a risk. The poor will continue to rely on the largesse of the rich and languish in the back of our minds as a guilty afterthought. Selfishness will run rampant and charity will continue to be seen as a speeding ticket or a piddling penance on the way to acquiring sybaritic fortunes.
Solving poverty is currently a hobby of the wealthy, let’s make it an industry for the innovator. Let’s make it everyone’s business, and whether or not it’s our problem, let’s make it our profit, until there’s nothing left to gain. Let Warren Buffett bet us all that we can’t eradicate poverty and have him pay out for our million and billion-dollar ideas. On reflection, the wealthiest might consider this quite a modest proposal. Because the only other solution for the poor masses gorging on the air promise-crammed and told for centuries to eat cake might just be to eat the rich.
Just under 20 percent of us are regular cigarette smokers, although there is a lot of variation by gender and race (higher among men, lower among Asian Americans, for instance).
This is not a post about the evils of tobacco, the high health care costs associated with it, or even the socioeconomic patterns common to most addictive drugs that are so frustrating for public health workers.
Instead, one might look at this post as a reflection on the entrepreneurial spirit and technologically cutting edge strategies of tobacco companies, and the policies that are growing to address new growth in the industry.
This is a second golden era for tobacco users. It’s almost as though the 1950’s have taken a ride with Marty McFly and arrived in a world where pipes, chewing tobacco, and cigarettes might be frowned upon, but e-cigarettes, “smokeless” tobacco, and hookah lounges are embraced by hipsters, Fed Hill club goers, and baseball audiences alike. Despite the smoking bans enacted around the country (and locally in 2007), the broad range of new tobacco products on the market are also a dream come true for today’s youth. While my peers were limited to a traditional variety of options – basically cigarettes, maybe cloves for the cautious, maybe cigars for the adventuresome – middle and high school-age kids these days have a veritable smorgasbord of options including lots of fruity flavors. Paradise! According to the CDC, there’s been a big uptick in use of those little cigars – often with delicious flavoring – by the tween and teen set, since they can be bought individually with lower taxes and more flavors than cigarettes, and with fewer regulations and less oversight.
For the grownups as well as the kids, the e-cigarette is a non-smoking-friendly smokers option, as is the smokeless tobacco pouch, which doesn’t require all the spitting and blackened teeth of the bygone age of chewing tobacco.
Finally, perhaps the least bizarre on my earlier list is the hookah lounge, a long-standing, and, in many places around the world, culturally-important method of tobacco consumption. While I was in Public Health school, some colleagues and professors were conducting research into the potential harms associated with hookah use, as the popularity of these lounges is still relatively new. Their conclusions as well as well as those of the CDC are that there is significant risk for hookah users, particularly in the context of the hookah lounge, due to the length of use during a single session among other factors.
Interestingly, Baltimore County is considering a bill to sharply curb the hours of operation of local lounges, not because of tobacco-related health concerns, but because of several violent incidents that have taken place in or outside some establishments.
Regardless of the decision about this regulation, or any other local policy choices about tobacco use, the underlying fact is that tobacco remains a legal substance, used by a substantial minority of Americans. On the other hand, it is also an addictive and dangerous substance that causes a multitude of health effects, as well as correlating with negative socioeconomic indicators. Maryland, and Baltimore in particular, suffer from astonishingly high disparities in health between racial and economic groups. Tobacco related health problems, such as chronic lung conditions, are high on that list of disease disparities, and should be considered very seriously when policymakers choose how to regulate tobacco products, as well as how to allocate funding for cessation and harm reduction strategies.
What are you doing this Sunday? I have the good fortune to be moderating a terrific panel on food justice with a city councilman, a celebrated urban farmer, a vegan soul goddess, a champion in the war against hunger, and the city’s food access mastermind. The panel will follow a screening of Byron Hurt’s documentary, Soul Food Junkies, which is a truly lyrical and profound exploration of the role of food in African-American life and its complex power to both sustain and destroy.
Come join us for a great opportunity to learn more about Baltimore’s struggle for greater food justice.
I have a friend who raves about the fried peanut butter and jelly you can order at Rocket to Venus in Hampden. I’m sure she’ll get me to try it one day, but I have a hard time believing they have improved on my life-long favorite sandwich.
Because they are cheap, easily assembled and, (in my opinion), delicious, PB & Js are the favorite sandwich of volunteer groups passing out food to homeless people. If you don’t share my personal tastes, peanut butter and jelly could get boring. While everyone deserves variety, sometimes food is food, and when you’re hungry, a solid sandwich can be a big help.
Notice I said “when you’re hungry,” not “when you’re experiencing homelessness.” Most groups that pass out food in public places don’t care if the recipients are homeless, because they know that hunger affects people even after they get housing. That is why volunteers in Raleigh, North Carolina were so surprised last summer when they were told they could not pass out hot breakfast to the line of individuals that has come to expect their presence on weekday mornings. The group, called Love Wins Ministries, arrives weekly with breakfast sandwiches and a vat off coffee, but in August 2013 they were stopped by Raleigh police and threatened with arrest before they could serve.
Raleigh is not the only city letting its hungry residents stay that way. You may remember the less-than- hospitable town of Columbia, South Carolina that was working this winter to outlaw homelessness. As of February 15th, the area has taken further steps to alienate its already marginalized population, by requiring that any group planning to distribute obtain a permit (costing around $120) to serve meals in any public park or open space. This discourages volunteer groups that are not run by a registered nonprofit from providing food. In Rockford, Illinois, both food and shelter have been interrupted at Apostolic Pentecostal Church. Last week, church officials were informed they would be acting outside the law if they continued to use the empty church building as a shelter and warming station for homeless individuals.
Law enforcement in each of these cities and towns cite zoning or permit regulations as the reason for the recent interruptions, but there has to be a way to have a city that can feed its homeless population without it being deemed a fire hazard or an illegal act. Homelessness won’t end with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but if we can’t even serve this simple snack, what hope is there for a large scale, system change to end homelessness? These jurisdictions must find a way to prioritize human needs, and work with groups that are trying to help, not against their efforts.
Hélder Câmara, a 1980’s Brazilian Archbishop once explained, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” Today, feeding the poor might earn him handcuffs, not sainthood. As neither a saint nor a communist myself, I still think it is important to ask why so many cities demand people living in poverty navigate legal hurdles in order to obtain a warm bed or a snack – and I wonder how we can improve upon this practice.
Monday’s issue of JAMA Internal Medicine included results of a survey about American’s perceptions about health interventions and medical practices. Half of all Americans, according to JAMA, believe in one or more medical conspiracy theories, such as the autism/vaccination connection and deliberate, CIA sponsored, HIV infection of African Americans.
These beliefs are powerful and real examples of the challenges faced by public health workers around the globe as well as here in Baltimore. Beliefs are incredibly hard to shake free once they have taken hold, and no preponderance of evidence will be sufficient to do so, unless a number of other factors come into play as well. This is one of the primary reasons that public health experts emphasize the importance of community involvement in interventions, in building trust and relationships among the families and networks that are targeted for the intervention, and supporting the growth and learning that leads to change.
The Health Belief Model, Wkimedia Commons
A study published in the late 90’s illustrates an example right here in Baltimore, in that case of the perceptions of the benefits of preventative oral health care. Beliefs are often tied to communities, including communities of geography, race, ethnicity, economic status, and gender. Those who are most likely to refuse vaccination, for instance, are likely to be well educated and well-to-do.
The implications for Baltimore are substantial, and tied to our burden of disease. Public health efforts to address the HIV rate among young black gay men, or the rate of narcotic use, or even more socioeconomic health factors such as poverty and nutrition can only succeed if the perceptions of healthy behavior are also addressed.
As all of us who have ever tried to argue with deeply held beliefs will attest, however, people who believe things believe they are true. This is true for all of us. Imagine someone well-meaning and intelligent coming up to you and saying: “Listen, I know you BELIEVE that this gravity thing is a force that pulls you downward, but this is merely a perception that is reinforced by your community. If you listen to this well reasoned argument, then you will be free from this inaccurate belief and thus free to enjoy the benefits of weightlessness, ease of motion, decreased back pain, and splinters in your socks.”
ChangeEngine is a group of public health advocates, whether through advocating for thoughtful design and public planning, creative solutions to aging, the importance of art, the awareness of racial, gender, and socioeconomic divisions. We encourage thoughtful and creative solutions to Baltimore’s challenges, and we challenge our readers to do the same. We must also encourage our ChangeEngine community members to consider and advocate for creative and thoughtful approaches that acknowledge and respect the burdens that belief can impose on community. We must respect that often the greatest barrier to changing ourselves IS ourselves. We need reflect no further than the New Year’s resolutions scattered upon the gym floor to appreciate that this is true.
My suspicion is that Baltimore – or whichever community you live in – reflects the beliefs reported in the JAMA survey. If you have evidence that either supports or contradicts this suspicion, I encourage you to share in our comments sections and on social media. What are our beliefs about how we got to this time and place? What community legends prevent your neighbors from seeking care? What is the consensus among your colleagues about food, health, or wealth? We must first identify the biases of our community before we can leverage that knowledge to effect transformational change.
In a deviation from the biweekly rant and rave on one thing in the world of planning, TheGoodPlan is pleased to present a current rundown of … well, several things in the world of planning:
Lexington Market
The world famous market is trying to clean itself up – again. After promises of Superblock creation and targeted development to re-frame Lexington Market as a safe and bustling place, the Market Make-Over survey is asking its readership to help direct another promised clean-up. Without much action visible to the general public, the desire for guidance may seem as tired as the market itself. Facing a problem often encountered by community developers in perpetually unstable neighborhoods, just how many times can a place be studied without visible investment? Lack of continuity and unchanged landscapes will have a greater effect on the residents, as they feel repeatedly ignored and distrusting of what has become a series of empty promises. Will something actually happen with Lexington Market this time, or is this just another report to put on the shelf?
IMAGE CREDIT. [Lexington Market via Wikimedia Commons].
From Scaffold to Seat
There are stories of which I never tire, and they often revolve around urban furniture and ways to engage the public with their surrounding environment. Softwalks designers have created a ‘pop up park’ kit, aiming to create community, spatial awareness, and comfort in the same fashion of the sidewalk cafe. Most interestingly though, these kits can’t be ordered by the general public. As the seats attach to scaffolding, safety is a concern. It seems the consumer has to be approved by the design team before the kit is sent. Still, scaffolding can now be used for something other than just a temporary rain shelter.
Tufts University wins my awesome award, offering to financially support students willing to take a gap year between high school and University. Launching a program called ‘4+1,’ the groundbreaking program encourages students to get out of their comfort zone and go elsewhere. How could the opportunity to see the other side of the world help future changemakers? Time will tell; way to go Tufts.
SXSW Reports Tragedy
Over the past 25 years, the annual music, film, and technology gathering has helped Austin become the place to be for aspiring entrepreneurs and forthcoming radio gods. This year a tragic collision involving a drunk driver and concert goers killed three, creating negative buzz when there had previously only been good. The incident is the dark stain, sparking discussion of the festival getting out of hand, having become far removed from its roots, forgetting the spirit under which it was created. I wonder though if these are the right questions to ask. Of course the festival has changed in the past 25 years. To think otherwise would be shortsighted – the needs of two and a half decades ago were very different than those today. Perhaps the right questions to ask would be directed at the human behavior that caused such tragedy – how could that have been prevented, and is it a case of SXSW, the availability of alcohol, or simply an individual’s intoxication and reckless actions? Let’s get to the root of the problem, rather than simply scrounging on the surface for blame.
ChangingMedia is proud and delighted to be an official sponsor of Purim Pandemonium: Art Comes Alive! Come celebrate the carnival of mischief and chaos dressed as your favorite work of art, sip Artinis with the Mona Lisa …
My first job was providing crying kids sticky peppermint ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. I earned less than six dollars an hour and I left each day smelling like waffle cones, but I can still craft the perfect double scoop when someone breaks out the Ben & Jerry’s.
Besides being something that we all need to survive, food is an industry most of us will work in at some point in our lives. From fast food to family style to fine dining, there are a plethora of eating options for any palate. Since every food service option employs some people, and many employ a lot of people, there is a fairly consistent job market in food production, cooking and serving. Realizing this, one San Antonio food pantry started working to train homeless individuals to work cooking and restaurant jobs.
It’s hard to overlook that the adage, “Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, Teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime” has come to life at the San Antonio Community Kitchen. The six-week class includes tips on food safety and, because all the food is donated, getting creative with your meal options. This concept has gained traction in many cities, even leading one food pantry in Salinas, California to close its doors in 2010 after twenty-five years of proving meals to the hungry. The pantry hadn’t ended hunger, but instead had decided it could better serve its population by teaching, not serving. Today, the facility is known as the Red Artichoke Culinary School, a program to teach individuals in poverty to cook at a level that will make them competitive or chef and sous-chef positions.
Why is this type of job training any different from the other types of employment coaching available to low-income job seekers? Unlike teaching someone how to dress for an interview or fix up their resume – which are both important skills – culinary training offers both an employment edge and a boost in the individual’s personal health and wellness. Even if a person experiencing homelessness does receive food stamps (which max out in Maryland at $189 per month), most shelters and day centers don’t allow outside food. People who have lived in homelessness for an extended period of time do not have access to an oven or even a refrigerator, so food items are limited. This leaves options that require no preparation and leave no leftovers, such as snack foods or instant meals.
When a previously homeless person does get housing, the kitchen can feel like an intimidating place, and old eating habits can be hard to break. Demystifying cooking and food options can help someone out financially if it leads to their employment, but also personally if it can improve their health and comfort level in their new home.
Occasionally there are stories that finally help you connect and ground thoughts swirling around in your head. A RadioLab piece on the game show called “Golden Balls“ did that for me this week. In the show, contestants are faced with a Prisoner’s Dilemma. They each have two golden balls, one that reads “split” and one that reads “steal.” If both contestants choose split they split the jackpot, if they both choose steal neither get the money. Yet, and this is the part where it gets interesting, if one person chooses “split” and the other person chooses “steal” then the person who chose “steal” gets the entire jackpot. Most of the times it goes down like this:
Each contestant assures each other they will split. The man in the clip above has swindled people earlier in the game so, Sarah, the female contestant, doesn’t trust him to choose split. They plead with each other and Sarah assures him that “everyone who knew me would just be disgusted if I steal.” It looks like it is going to be a split and then it is revealed Sarah, the sweet girl we all assume will make the altruistic choice, chooses steal. Jad Abumrad explained this phenomenon:
If you analyze all the outcomes, which social scientists have done, what you see is that a majority of the time something like what I just showed you happens…They stab them in the back. They are grandmas, policeman, etc. Here’s my theory, it’s not that they are mean people. It’s that they don’t want to be that guy slumped on the table. They don’t want to be the sucker. The fear of being the sucker far overwhelms their desire to do good to their fellow contestants.
It’s that last sentence that made me shout “Yes!” when I was listening to this while running in the streets of Baltimore, assuring passerbys that I wasn’t a complete lunatic. It is our fear of being suckered that impedes our desire for social change.
Let me explain by taking you back to an experience I’ve written about before. About a year ago, a homeless person in Fell’s Point asked me for money. I told him I didn’t have cash so he suggested I could pay with my card for food at a subway.
I agreed and while we were waiting for the sub, he says to me “It’s a shame you didn’t have cash, we would have been able to get cheaper food.” Now my first thought was something akin to “You ungrateful SOB,” but then I realized he was right and in fact being a good steward of my charity. If I had given him the seven dollars I spent at Subway he might have been able to go to the corner store where he could have gotten a decent meal for $4 and still had $3 to put toward his next meal. If I wanted more bang for my buck in terms of impact on his empty stomach I should have just given him cash.
We give to companies who pollute the land, mistreat people, and foster inequality every day, mostly without a second thought. Yet most people are more worried about what a homeless man will do with the $7 than what Subway will do with it. Why? We don’t want to be a sucker and our fear of being suckered far outweighs our altruism.
In a for-profit business transaction the result is mainly assured. If I give my money to a business, they will give me back a good or service. There are accountability systems built in to ensure that I get what I paid for. I give you money and you give me toothpaste. If you want me to buy your toothpaste you generally appeal to my self interest. The toothpaste will give me a cleaner mouth which will make me happier, perhaps help me find love. Regardless, I know if I choose to share my hard earned money with a company selling toothpaste that I’m going to walk out of the transaction with the product I want. Giving money for social good is a bit more like Golden Balls. I don’t know if the homeless man I encounter on the street will use my money for food or to get high. I don’t know if the child I give money to in India is controlled by beggar masters who deliberately cripple children to make more money from other people’s charity. I don’t know if the money I’m giving to disaster relief will help people or is just a ruse to siphon off our bleeding hearts.
We’ve talked beforeonChangeEngine about problems that result from nonprofits who can’t innovate because donors expect them to have low overhead and immediate results. I think the reason we hold nonprofits to a higher standard of accountability is because, like in Golden Balls, the benefit is not ensured. That means the potential for being suckered, by which I mean us giving money to someone and receiving no benefit (both the intended benefit to the supposedly worthy recipient, or the benefit of personal satisfaction at having done good in the world), is much higher than an interaction with a for-profit business.
On one hand, we have to get over our fear of being suckered. I once worked with a guy who was in charge of building systems to make sure no one misused a local food bank’s services. While it costs more money to set up the systems then it saved by eliminating fraud, donors were reluctant to give to any place where there was a chance of their money being misused. “It’s insane,” he told me, “it’s like not giving a dollar to a starving child because you’re worried they will drop a penny.” We need to spend less time worried about how nonprofit employees are compensated or how every penny of our donation is spent because even if there is a penny lost, those donations are doing far more good than some of our purchases to major corporations.
On the other hand, the social change community needs to help eliminate the fear of being suckers in their donors by changing the way we talk about social change. Instead of emotionally manipulating people into altruism, perhaps we need to start showing how investing in social change will guarantee benefits to them. We need nonprofits that are evaluating and measuring their results, who can talk about the impact they have in deep and quantifiable terms, not in pictures of cute puppies or one-off stories. We need to show people there is a real return on investment when you contribute money to social good beyond just a “good feeling.”
The title of this post is famously, though wrongly, attributed to P.T. Barnum, who, although he made his living by swindling others, was also one of the many who didn’t want to be swindled in doing good. When he used some of his money for social good, he used a method called “profitable philanthropy.”
“I have no desire to be considered much of a philanthropist…if by improving and beautifying our city Bridgeport, Connecticut, and adding to the pleasure and prosperity of my neighbors, I can do so at a profit, the incentive to ‘good works’ will be twice as strong as if it were otherwise.”
When we donate to a social change project we are choosing the “split” golden ball and choosing to share the money we have. In return we expect nonprofits to “split” so that not only do they get money, but some benefit returns to us. If we want to involve more people in social change, we have to find ways to return their investment, either monetarily through social entrepreneurship or show tangibly through evaluation and research how their donation returns to them in the form of a better community, more economic opportunity, etc. If you can ensure people there is little chance of losing, little chance you will steal their money without giving them a return, they are more likely to share. To overcome the fear of being suckered, we have to make social change seem about as risky as buying a tube of toothpaste, an act we are sure to get some reward from.
