Tag: Money

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Money and Transformation: Diversity

Fundraising. Money. Economics.

Strange topics for me. I hovered near the bottom of the sales list every year when my Girl Scout Troop sold cookies. I hated my economics class in college. Today, I struggle to keep putting myself out there to market my book, Big Topics at Midnight.

Nevertheless, most of my life has circled around economics, especially fundraising. I am passionate about spiritual transformation, global justice and partnership across our differences, and that journey has lead me directly into money.

Money that I invest, spend or give to organizations working in these areas close to my heart. And money that I invite other to give in support of those organizations.

Last week I signed up for yet another fundraising committee.

Did I mention that I don’t really like fundraising?

This past January, I began my third Be Present, Inc. national 18-month training institute. For my first training, which started in 2003, I was a participant soaking up everything I could learn. Though initially I had a difficult time understanding all that was going on in the room, I knew that something was happening that I’d never seen before. I wanted to learn how to know who I was outside of the distress of anything that stopped me from fully participating in relationships/partnerships with everyone from my husband, Howard, to my grown kids, to friends, and to my work in organizations dear to my heart. I wanted to know how to really listen with my full self. And I deeply desired to be in partnerships that sustained and grew even in the midst of conflict across our many historical divides.*

That training was one of the most important of my life, and was part of the nudge to dive into the writing of Big Topics at Midnight.

In my second training, Be Present at the Table: Effecting Sustainable Change in Philanthropy, and this third one, The National Training Institute on Race, Gender, Power and Class, I have been on the leadership team.

Leron and AndrewMany organizations talk about the importance of diversity in their programs, but Be Present makes sure this actually happens. Too often, money stops diversity in its tracks: In order to attend, you must either pay the fee or apply for one of a few scholarships.

At Be Present trainings, no one is turned away due to lack of funds. Registration fees are on a sliding scale and support is offered for individuals to creatively raise money to cover these costs.

Stopping there would allow a few more people to attend, but the trainings would remain minimally diverse.

However, in addition to personal fundraising, all of the participants fundraise. That means that everyone, including people like me who have enough funds to easily pay our own way, works together to make sure that all of the registration fees are covered at a level that covers the site/training and organizational leadership costs.

Normally, folks like me are exempt from this fundraising process, leaving the responsibility for ensuring a diverse Trainingtraining on the laps of people with limited economic resources.

Be Present understands that every one of us benefits with the full diversity of people in our trainings. Therefore, we work together to make sure that happens.

This is what is required for trainings and conferences to embody a new paradigm of justice and inclusivity.

No mattTraining 2er how often I try to turn away from working the money, my commitment to waking up to the big topics and experimenting with keeping my values in line with behavior keeps bringing me back to the money. And fundraising.

 

*Be Present Empowerment Model

 

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What Is Your Theory of Social Change, and What Does That Have to Do with Money?

Rose Feerick Director of Harvest Time
Rosemary Feerick
Director of Harvest Time and author of this guest blog

“What is your theory of social change and what does that have to do with money?”

That was a key question that emerged on the first day of Harvest Time’s annual board retreat. Knowing that our plans need to be anchored in a clear vision, John Bloom asked the big picture question.

A rich silence ensued.  Then, for the first time, I was able to see and understand clearly what it is that we do at Harvest Time and why.

I remembered a talk at the 2012 SoCap conference in San Francisco. John Fullerton of Capital Institute (www.capitalinstitute.org) distinguished between three paradigms of social change.

One way that people and organizations try to effect social change, Fullerton said, is by working to solve specific problems.  For example, we work to solve hunger in a particular community by creating a local food bank.

Another way to create change is to shift systems.  For instance, we might work to prevent the injustice and environmental destruction that are consequences of capitalism by working to shift capitalism so those problems do not occur.

Yet another approach involves trying to shift consciousness.

For years I have known that Harvest Time is not a social activist organization.  Our goal is NOT to move x amount of money to organizations that serve people who are poor (though that often happens as a byproduct of our work).  And the organizational impulse to move to “scale” in order to have a wider impact has never grabbed my passion.  Why?  Because what I am most interested in is shifting consciousness, and I believe that happens best in small, committed, authentic spiritual community.

But how does this make social change?

My fundamental assumption is that Christ is present and active in history, working, among other ways, through individuals whose hearts have been opened and transformed.  For me, the most effective way that we can transform society is by supporting people who seek their own conversion so that they can participate in the flow of Christ’s love and energy as it moves through the world.

This support begins with helping people learn to recognize the presence of Christ moving through their lives and hearts.  That is a function of spiritual direction and of spiritual practice.

We then create opportunities for people to support each other as each finds the courage to participate in that presence.   We need this support because the way of Christ’s love is not the ordinary way of the human ego or of human culture.  In other words, there is a transformation process that needs to happen if we seek to align our lives with Christ, and in this transformation we need one another’s help.

That is the work of authentic Christian community and of transformative spiritual practices. When hearts are converted and open, the Holy Spirit can then flow with ease through the individual into their relationships and communities as love.

The conversion need not be dramatic.  God can work through any of us at any time, no matter where we are on the journey.  But I do believe that the more we are able to open our hearts, the more effectively we can be channels of God’s love.

I love the way Rumi puts it: “Our task is not to find love, but to find everything in us that blocks love and remove it.”

For us at Harvest Time, money is the practice place.  It is a great practice place, because money sits at HT logothe intersection between the person and society.  It is exactly that place where so much individual and collective shadow is acted out in our culture.  If you want to find your blocks to love, start paying attention to money and your relationship to it.

And there is more.  Because money is a symbol of our interconnectedness, the more we are able to shift our attitudes and relationship to money, the more the love of God can move into the world through us through our money.

What we do with money, what we value through it – how much we hold onto, how much and how we give, how we spend, how we invest – all of this changes as our hearts change and are opened.   Money becomes more and more an expression of love and an agent of grace as God works through the converted heart.

This is why I think what we do in Harvest Time — gathering people in small circles to talk about money and engage in spiritual practice — is key to social change.

What do you think?  What is your theory of social change?

This blog was written by Rosemary Feerick, Director of Harvest Time. Seeking help to align my heart and spirit and money, Harvest Time was one of the first places Howard and I turned after my family financial inheritance came to me. We have been in one of their retreat circles ever since, and both of us have served on the board (that is still true for me). Harvest Time is a ministry of “Christians of wealth engaging with money as a doorway to spiritual transformation.”