Deeper Dive - Thoughts on Generosity - December 13, 2022

Some observations between Thanksgiving and Christmas and how generosity is there through it all.

On my recent vacation had the time to reflect on the holiday season. We were just days removed from Thanksgiving and heading strong into Christmas. Personally, while I like Thanksgiving, Christmas is not exactly my favorite holiday.

For purely selfish reasons, I love Thanksgiving because it’s a day of low expectations. I know a lot of people try to “do all the things” on a day like Thanksgiving and try to reach for unattainable levels of perfection. Christmas, on the other hand, it all about the expectations. I can’t count how many Hallmark Christmas movies I have had to see, where the cute young woman has to decorate all the cookies, buy all the presents, fall in love with the quiet, flannel shirt guy all while saving the whole town from some existential crisis. What a load of malarkey. My wife and I are still wrapping presents watching the Pope deliver midnight mass on Christmas Even.

If you know me rushed and hurried is not my style. During Thanksgiving, I’ll gladly consume whatever is made and do it with a glad and cheerful heart and hopefully do it in the company of people that I enjoy being around. To me, the stories we tell around tables are much more valuable than anything under a tree. After all, good stories last longer than the best meals ever prepared.

But as I think about the holiday season, I think about the one tool I need as a non-profit executive director that I can’t do my job without and many ways, the holiday season is all about it. That tool is generosity.

It’s a term we don’t talk about much these days.

In a culture that has primed the pump on self-reliance and grit (both of which are important), generosity sometimes takes a back seat. Yet, it’s generosity that keeps our nonprofit shops open. And yet, it’s that generosity that is one of the most tangible examples of love that abounds in this world.

Love is a tricky word to define. If you ask ten people what love is, you’ll probably get eleven different answers. And it’s one of those words that is highly context dependent. Romantic devotion, generational bonds between families, friendships all conjure up love in different ways depending on where we are in life. But, if I had to put my finger on it, Love is probably best defined as “The Best in Me Serving The Best In You.”

And that’s where we find ourselves in the nonprofit world. No matter what role we play in the nonprofit world, we are always serving the best in others around us.

When we have our neighbors come to our front door, we gladly open the doors of our shop to listen, comfort and console those that are beaten down by the tyrannies of life. When our donors come, we share with them the powerful stories of how generosity changes lives and changes communities. When we speak to our communities, we remind them that the spirit we see in our work helps make our little corner of the world more like a home than just another place on the map.

Generosity brings our world joy, love and peace. And it’s the most important tool we need to do our job.

If we didn’t have the generosity of our donors, our volunteers and our communities we could not do what we do. No amount of strategic planning, no amount of survey research, no amount of financial stewardship can take the place of the warmth of the human spirit to bring out the best in others. There is no replacement for generosity. There is no substitute for love.

I am grateful for all of you, readers of this newsletter. I am grateful for the work you are doing to help make our communities wonderful places to live. I am grateful for the people who everyday see something broken in the world and they take the responsibility to try to fix it.

Friends, we are world changers and that is a huge responsibility. In our world, that is so defined by division, I hope we never lose our generous spirit. Because, we know that generosity is what will restore our world.

Generosity has fed the hungry child. Generosity has healed the sick. Generosity has taken a family from poverty. Division and discord couldn’t dream of doing any of those things.

Happy Holidays friends and Stay Generous!