Design Fundamentals for Meaningful Giving #4: Why

Understanding Your Own Motivations is Fundamental to Meaningful Giving 

Why are you motivated to give? What will it actually take for you to feel joyful and fulfilled through
your giving?  These are vital questions to to explore as you seek to engage in meaningful giving, where social impact and your own sense of fulfillment come together.

Exploring the Why Behind Your Giving

The questions that follow are designed to help you achieve clarity by reflecting on
which of your core psychological needs your giving helps you satisfy. Even though these questions don't begin with the word "why,"  they will help you get to the deeper reasons giving truly matters to you.   

Please think about each of these factors in terms of how important you feel it is in determining your satisfaction with your giving. Rate each on a scale of 1-10 with 1 being totally unimportant and a 10 being this couldn't matter more to me. It is important to answer these questions honestly and without
judgment--there are no wrong answers here.

1. How important is it that I can measure the precise impact of my giving—how much certainty
do I want to have that my dollars are being used in a specific way? How comfortable do I want
to be that my giving will provide predictable, known value to others and to myself?

2. How important is it to me that my giving serves to protect and preserve non-financial sources
of value? (e.g. religious traditions, works of art, physical places and spaces, cultural and civic
institutions etc.)

3. How important is it that my giving provides a sense of adventure, exploration and risk taking?

4. How important is it to me that other people know about my giving and believe that Iʼm doing it
well? How much does it matter that I receive recognition for my giving?

5. How important is it that my giving helps me feel loved, cared for and connected to other
people?

6. How important is it that my giving creates an opportunity for me to express love, care and
connection to others?

7. How important is it that my giving makes me feel like I am learning, stretching myself, and
mastering new knowledge, skills and mindsets?

8. How important is it that my giving creates a positive difference in the lives of specific other
people--whether as individuals, or collectively?

9. How important is it that my giving allows me to contribute to systems change, to making a
lasting difference on the root causes of the problems I care most about?

10. If I had to choose a percentage of my giving that was focused only on addressing immediate
needs and a percentage of my giving that was focused only on addressing long term root causes,
how would I ideally divide my giving between the two?

11. How important is it that my giving allows me to feel connected to something larger than
myself and to deepen my understanding of what it means to be a human being?

12. Where am I on my own journey exploring race, identity and power, and what, if anything, do I
want my giving to help me learn about or act on in these areas?

Download the worksheet and continue your reflection

Check out the video, download the worksheet, and stay tuned for the next segment in this series, where we'll look at how you choose to focus your giving with Design Fundamental #5: What.