Design Fundamentals for Meaningful Giving #5: What

For Meaningful Giving, Try Letting Your "Why" Guide You to Your "What"

What do you really care about? As you gear up your giving, what meaningful impact are you seeking to make with your money and other forms of philanthropic capital? You have tremendous opportunity for meaningful giving when you let your why (see session #4 in this series) guide you to your what.

When you are committed to meaningful giving, your personal sense of joy and fulfillment is inescapably linked with the impact of your giving out in the world. And there are so many ways to create positive impact with your giving that you don’t have to worry about giving up your own joy and fulfillment in the process. Whether you are starting from scratch or already have a chosen arena for your giving, the following questions can help you focus your giving on the what is truly most meaningful for you--maximizing your impact, as well as your joy.

1. What is your ultimate vision for a better world? What is true and flourishing in that world you hope and dream to see, whether in your own lifetime, or for future generations?

2. Many factors will likely have to come together to bring this ultimate vision for the world into reality. What particular element of this change story is calling most for YOUR service? What is your arena of engagement in pursuit of this ultimate vision, whether for now, or for life? Is there a personal story or experience that leads you to focus on this?

3. What’s the most audacious measure of impact in your chosen arena of engagement? What will be different when you and others have succeeded beyond your dreams within this arena, and made the greatest possible contribution towards the ultimate vision for a better world you named in question 1?

4. What is the ONE thing that you CAN do, such that by doing it, everything else on the path to achieving audacious impact becomes easier or even unnecessary? In other words, within your chosen arena of engagement, what is the most important contribution for you to make? In Gary Keller’s book The ONE Thing, Keller underscores how vitally important it is to focus on the highest and best use of your time when seek int to achieve extraordinary results. Similarly, Jim Collins introduced the idea of the “hedgehog concept” in his book Good to Great as a way to figure out exactly how to focus a business for unique success in a competitive market. Here’s an adaptation of this idea for forward thinking philanthropists. Your ONE THING is at the intersection of four spheres:

• Root cause of the problem in your arena of
  engagement
• “Resource engine” that can reliably bring money
  & other assets to solve the problem (not just your own!)
• Your passion
• Your talent 

5. What are the lagging indicators of your successful impact? When you achieve success pursuing your ONE Thing, how will you know?

6. What are the daily/weekly/monthly activities that constitute leading indicators of your philanthropic impact? In other words, what is the Mission Maximizing Output (MMO) for your giving?

7. What can take place without you? Take a step back and imagine that you had to take yourself completely out of the equation. What if this work of making change in your chosen arena of engagement had to be carried out while you were completely sidelined and couldn’t lift a finger to help? [Think witness protection program or alien abduction...] Whose ideas would be needed to move forward? Who would need to take action on those ideas? What institutions and which individuals would need to get connected and work in concert?

8. Now, bring yourself back into the story--is there anything you want to add, emphasize or amend about your philanthropic focus and how you carry out your giving moving forward?

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 #6: Which Way.