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“Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.”

- Sir Thomas Browne

The fact that 35 percent of all American giving went to religious organizations in 2010 reflects how closely bound many of us are with our place of worship. The power of this personal interaction cannot be underestimated. Sharing values of any kind brings people closer, and when those values are religious, they not only express fundamental beliefs but also reflect ways of living—and that includes giving. Giving is an expression of gratitude for our blessings.

So how can you harness this powerful connection to enhance your giving? First, attending religious services provides a regular reminder of the importance of helping others and making the world a better place. After all, the nonprofit organizations to which you have the strongest emotional connection are probably those you visit most frequently—your church, synagogue, or temple (as well as your alma maters and children’s school—gifts to education make up almost 15 percent of all American philanthropy).

There are many ways that we can give to our religious communities. We can put dollars or checks into the weekly collections basket. We can contribute to capital campaigns for new facilities or building repairs. We can teach in the children’s or young adults programs. We can volunteer on trips to serve under-privileged communities around the world or take on a leadership or governance role for our congregation or membership.

But another way to take religious giving to a whole new level—increasing not only your social impact through your philanthropic activities, but also your spiritual impact—is by starting new giving activities at your place of worship (or enhancing existing ones). Here are some quick and easy ideas:

• If you’re part of a group that studies religious texts (such as a bible or torah study group), ask members if they want to add a giving component to the sessions. Members can pool financial resources and to meet a specific need within their place of worship, or volunteer shared time and expertise to help further other parts of your religion’s mission. (Customizable giving circle materials will be available for free every month at www.giving2.com in 2012.)
• Organize and chaperone a hands-on volunteer activity for the teen group at your place of worship.
• Suggest to your religious leaders that they might start offering advice on giving—including discussions on tithing (donating 10 percent of a monthly income), volunteering, and creating a philanthropic budget—through their pre-martial counseling program. Find out if a few philanthropic married couples in your place of worship might volunteer to meet with newlyweds or couples about to marry to discuss their values around giving.
• On existing volunteer days, serve as a liaison between your religious institution and the nonprofits it supports. Find out from the nonprofit leaders whether what members are providing (in terms of time, activities, and skills) is what that organization most needs.
• Hold a strategy session with a few of your congregation’s member-leaders about how you and other members might share their business and other expertise to help build the organizational capacity of your place of worship.
• Once a year, organize a “giving fair” and invite local nonprofits providing critical services—such as job training, at risk-teen counseling or homeless shelters—to set up booths and talk to congregation members about their work and the potential volunteer opportunities they could offer. This kind of awareness building could have a powerful philanthropic ripple effect.
• When celebrating a confirmation, Bar or Bat Mitzvah, or other similar religious celebrations, encourage your children and others to put their checks—or some of them—into a donor-advised fund (at a local community foundation, financial institution, or religious organization such as the Jewish Federation or Catholic Charities) so that they can give some of their funds to nonprofits. Create a family activity focused on researching and visiting nonprofits that your child is interested in to help them decide where to give the money. Invite their close friends along, too.
• Encourage people to make donations in lieu of gifts for all “life celebrations,” or choose to make a charitable gift as a family (whether monetary or volunteer time) in honor of special occasions such as holy days, holidays, births, deaths, or weddings. If the occasion is a birth or a death, encourage friends and family to participate.
• Organize a speaking series at your place of worship that invites local experts to talk about practicing effective philanthropy. You could introduce your congregation to a different social issue every month by bringing in a panel of experts who work in that particular field.
• Start a book club at your place of worship with a focus on reading books about giving.
• Partner with a sister church, temple, or synagogue and organize a “philanthro-cation” (a volunteering and learning trip) for families.

When you share giving—especially with those who share your core values—you demonstrate collective gratitude for the blessings you have. Giving together can reinforce religious bonds and strengthen the connections of communities and individuals to their place of worship. Since giving is a core element of all major religions, it’s a way to express your belief in the divine—whatever that means to you—by bringing light and love for humankind to your world.

Have a blessed Holiday Season!

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“Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul to another.”

- George Eliot

Countless forces inspire giving—the public library that showed you a new world in your childhood; the scholarship that enabled you or a relative to attend college; the family member who survived her battle with breast cancer. These are the personal, tangible reasons that compel us to act—to give to something greater than ourselves and touch other lives just as our own has been touched. However, the greatest power behind American giving is an intangible one: a divine influence–our religion.

Last year, religious organizations, received more than $100 billion in donations, representing an estimated 35 percent of all US giving. And some 91 percent of all religious people give. Donations to evangelical groups grew almost 6 percent last year to more than $9 billion, according to a recent study by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, and groups that allow donors to sponsor a child overseas saw contributions grow by over 24 percent. (When donating to these types of organizations, always check what percentage of your dollars go towards fundraising vs. directly to a child.)

None of this is surprising, given the role that faith plays in many of our lives and the fact that for all world religions, taking care of fellow humans is a core tenet of the faith. Religion is a complex and often contradictory force in our world. It fosters hope and comfort but also doubt and guilt. It creates both community and exclusion. It brings societies together around shared belief and tears them apart through war. However, what unites the faithful, whatever their religion, is the unshakeable force of generosity.

In fact, charity lies at the heart of most religions. It appears in many sacred texts. The Bible says: “There will always be poor people, therefore you need to be generous to them” (Deuteronomy 15:11); and “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

In Judaism, “tzedakah” is the Hebrew equivalent of charitable acts, defined as “giving aid, assistance and money to the poor and needy or to other worthy causes.” Unlike the word “charity,” which suggests benevolence and generosity, “tzedakah” derives from the Hebrew “Tzadei-Dalet-Qof,” meaning justice, righteousness, or fairness. Yet, as in many faiths, Jewish teaching stresses the importance of sharing blessings: the Torah reads: “Deeds of giving are the very foundations of the world.”

For Hindus, hospitality and charitable giving are core tenets of the faith, with Hindu scripture requiring a person to walk outdoors before every meal and declare: “Is anyone hungry? Please come to take your meal!” Only then can the family eat. Hindu faith has at its heart the concepts of “dana” (giving and philanthropy) and “paraspara bhavana” (mutual regard and service). “You came into this world with fists closed and you go away with open palms,” wrote Kabir (c1398-1470), one of the great Hindu mystics. “So even while living stretch your hand open and give liberally.”

Buddhists espouse similar philosophies, but hold that the intentions behind giving are as important as the gift itself. The Buddha, who teaches that those who give should do so with no expectation of being rewarded or receiving benefits of any kind, once said: “If you knew what I know about dana [generosity], you would not let one meal go by without sharing it.”

Meanwhile, the Koran tells us: “Those who are generous by day and by night, both in secret and openly, will be rewarded by God. They have nothing to fear or regret.” Islam encourages an action called “salaat,” (charity to the organization or individuals of one’s choosing) and Muslims practice “zakat,” one of five core tenets of the faith in which a yearly percentage (usually 2.5 percent) “tax” of all monetary assets is given to charity.

Regardless of what we believe, how we found our faith, or to which religious community we belong, giving unites us. We may agree or disagree on the details. In some parts of the world, we may even lack the freedom to practice our religion. But we can all express ourselves through our generosity to others—whether through an hour of our time, a meal from our table, or a gift of money. In fact, the one value that we can all share, whatever our faith, is that giving to others should be a driving force of a life greatly lived.

“Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.”
 - Buddha

As philanthropists, the most powerful legacy we can create is one that keeps on giving–through our children. Here are ten easy ways to help your young children make giving become a core value of their own.

Top Ten List: Giving 2.0 for the Family

1. Take your children on a site visit to one of the nonprofits you support or one with which you are considering getting involved.
2. Talk to your children about why you give to the organizations you support and why each one is important to you. (If your gift is significant to the organization, consider inviting a staff member to meet with you and your children when making that gift. Use the time to explain to staff why you chose to give to make the gift and let the staff talk about the impact your gift will have on their work.)
3. Find out if there are any nonprofits in your area that allow teens or college students to sit on their board, as board fellows or volunteer members, or are willing to pilot such a position. Nonprofits that serve youth may be especially interested in doing this.
4. Create a “volunteering circle”—essentially a giving circle but one that donates time instead of money. Partner with two or three other families who have children of similar ages and with whom you enjoy spending time. Choose an issue area that’s important to all of you, and plan monthly volunteer projects focused on that area. End each volunteering session with a potluck meal at a circle member’s home.
5. Suggest your children try tithing—giving 10 percent of their allowance to a charity every month.
6. Once a week, read stories and features from the newspapers or online media with your kids and ask them to explain what concerns, upsets, or even enrages them about the stories. Ask them what they would like to do—however small the contribution or effort—to help solve the problems arising in the stories and brainstorm ideas for how they might do this.
7. Read through a number of the online profiles of social entrepreneurs featured by organizations like Kiva.org, Acumen Fund, Technoserve, or Ashoka with your children and learn about how individuals around the world are addressing pressing social needs.
8. Create a campaign on a social networking site for a cause that everyone in the family cares about and spend an evening a week updating the site, adding news items, and connecting with new members.
9. Instead of a beach or ski vacation this year, take a “philanthrocation.” Spend a week or weekend traveling near home or abroad (you may be able to organize this through your place of worship or children’s school), and have your family help build a school, hospital, or orphanage for a community in need. The perspective and sense of achievement gained from such an experience could make the holiday one of your family’s most memorable.
10. On each birthday, help your child fill a basket with unwanted toys to give away to a hospital or a homeless shelter.

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“Working with youth will be like a stone thrown into a pond; the ripples keep expanding far beyond our time and place, far beyond our ability to measure or perhaps even envision.”

–Dr. Russell G. Mawby, former CEO, W.K. Kellogg Foundation

When it comes to giving, we can draw inspiring lessons from today’s youth. The volunteer rate among sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds, in terms of hours given, has almost doubled since 1989, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service. Last week, I wrote about how colleges and universities are developing programs and fields of study in social entrepreneurship that can empower a new generation of individuals to create both nonprofit and for-profit companies with social benefit. This week, I’ll highlight the work of young social entrepreneurs and teen philanthropists.

From Global Engagement…

About eighteen months ago, Elizabeth Newton took my Stanford undergraduate class, “Philanthropy and Social Innovation” (she was earning her MA in Education at the time). During our last class she presented a powerful idea–the creation of a nonprofit that could educate and empower teenagers to be philanthropists. With hard work and passion—and the support of a few key board members, including Kiva-co-founder Jessica Jackley (who met Elizabeth when she came to talk in my class)—she made that idea a reality.

Elizabeth established Allowance for Good in the summer of 2010 to cultivate a culture of giving, inspire American youth to become “the next generation of engaged global givers and citizens,” and contribute to the evolution of education in developing countries. Allowance for Good invites teen investors—it calls them “Young Catalysts”—between the ages of thirteen and eighteen to pledge $5 or $10 of their allowance on a monthly basis or to make a one-time funding commitment to selected international education projects through a Student or personal PayPal account or credit card. And helping create such accounts (while also setting boundaries around the use of the student PayPal account) is a great way for parents to help empower teens to be philanthropic.

The organization teaches participants that thoughtful contributions—however small—can broaden their perspectives of the world and help make a difference in youth education in developing countries. Teens learn about global educational needs and select projects to fund.  Additionally, these teen funders receive pictures, videos, and stories of how their donations create impact. Allowance for Good aims to reach students of all socioeconomic backgrounds and to demonstrate to them that, by participating as a global citizen, they’re not limited by income, race, or culture.

The program allows young people across the world to take up giving opportunities that are both tailored to and benefiting teens. Essentially, it democratizes the philanthropic act and makes it accessible to anyone of any age.

…To Local Engagement.

An inspiring example of teen philanthropy that engages in local, collaborative giving is the Teen Philanthropy Program of SV2 (Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund), the venture philanthropy partnership I created and led for its first decade.

Launched in 2009, the SV2 Teen Philanthropy program offers a comprehensive philanthropic experience through which 6-12th grade children of SV2 partners develop deeper knowledge of the nonprofit sector and grantmaking practices. They also actively learn about a variety of social issues and the nonprofits addressing those issues, and are often inspired to make a bigger difference through giving their time or own dollars outside of the program. SV2 staff members and partners (sometimes even parents of the teen participants) lead the program in close partnership with a Leadership Committee–a group of returning high-school students who have graduated from the Teen Philanthropy program.

The SV2 Teens program has grown quite a bit in its first three years—it started with thirteen teens in 2009, and last year in 2011 it had twenty-five. Hopefully, it will have even more this year. The participants are middle and high school students from a variety of local schools who have chosen to participate in this program and give their time, energy, and talent to nonprofits.

These “philanthroteens” spend an annual twenty hours over five to seven sessions during which they volunteer at local poverty-fighting organizations, talk with nonprofit leaders, and work as a group to make funding decisions. This year, the SV2 Teens will also participate in a three-hour poverty action simulation with their families to help them gain empathy and perspective before diving into their service projects.

Here are a couple of examples of what they’ve achieved. In 2009, SV2 Teens granted the San Jose’s Awaso Hope Foundation $5,000 to buy desks for the school the foundation is building in Awaso, Ghana. SV2’s donors were so inspired by this project that several of them got together and matched the gift to Awaso. Last year, the teens gave $5,500 to furnish a new computer lab at Family House, a Ronald-McDonald-House-like charity in San Francisco. During their grant presentation, the Family House staff told them about a second big need–a new dishwasher for residents to use. One of the SV2 teens and her family stepped up to donate the dishwasher too.

The teens’ grants reflect SV2’s core mission—to build the capacity of nonprofits, funding infrastructure and organizational management capabilities, so that the nonprofits can deliver their goods and services more effectively. And like SV2 partners, the teens are able to see how they’ve made a difference through their involvement of time, dollars, and talent, as well as inspire additional gifts from others around them, leveraging tens of thousands of dollars through their efforts. All of this while developing their own capacity to give in a way that matters more.

The words of the teens themselves capture the power of this program:

“I’d never really tried to help anyone but myself,” said Rachael K., a 9th grader. “Working with SV2 Teens has helped me to think about the change I could make if I tried!”

“Coming into SV2 teens three years ago, I didn’t want anything to do with it,” said Alex S. (12th grade). “Now I look forward to every session and know that I am making a difference in the world, locally and internationally.”

From such early-stage changemakers, these words are inspiring—for, with a giving legacy that has begun at so young an age, just imagine the ripple effect each teen will create over a lifetime.

In an op-ed in last weekend’s New York Times, William Deresiewicz talked about “Generation Sell”—a youth culture in which everyone treats themselves like small businesses that need managing and promoting.  I believe there’s another side to today’s youth culture that could be called “Generation Give.”

Over the course of a decade teaching at Stanford Graduate School of Business and University, I’ve seen a significant shift in how this new generation thinks about our world and makes life decisions. For the individuals in this generation, the focus is not selling—it’s giving.

This new generation, the Millennials (widely defined as individuals born sometime between the mid-to-late seventies and early 2000s), embraces giving as part of living. Here’s how:

• As the Facebook generation, these young adults define themselves—using social networks—by the people, issues, and organizations that they care about and support.
• Fundraising campaigns for birthdays and weddings are increasingly becoming the norm. Along with his fiancé, one of my former undergraduate students, now a PhD candidate at Berkeley, has decided to not accept wedding gifts, but rather to have friends and family give to a few organizations about which the bride and groom feel passionate.
• Career decisions increasingly have a social change component to them. For the Millennials, job decisions are often swayed by whether or not a company engages in employee volunteering, offers gift matching, or strives to achieve social benefit through either corporate philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, or through its core products.
• For the Millennials, work-life balance includes volunteer work, and at an increasing rate. In 2010, 3.1 million college students (more than one in four) volunteered 312 million hours to communities across the country.
• Today’s students—particularly at business schools—are increasingly demanding courses in social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and nonprofit management.

At business schools, student demands for programs on social entrepreneurship and innovation reflect these new values. And academia is shaping courses to meet this demand. At Oxford University’s Said School of Business, for example, the Skoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship (created in 2003 by Jeff Skoll and the Skoll Foundation) offers students an MBA program with a focus on social entrepreneurship. Other universities, (both at the undergraduate and business school levels) teach social entrepreneurship, run contests for student social entrepreneurs, and design programs that make social entrepreneurship not just a study topic, but also a life-long pursuit.

At Stanford, the d.school (School of Design) has launched several initiatives in which students work with professors and mentors to design innovative products that are affordable by the poor. Through its “Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability” program, students (a few of whom have taken my undergraduate “Philanthropy and Social Innovation” course) work directly with indigenous populations to create low-cost, life-changing, life-saving devices such as electric lighting, water pumps, and incubators. These products address social challenges faced by indigenous populations and create market-based solutions that often cost less than $30. Products include the high-quality, solar-rechargeable LED d.light lamp and the Tripod Pump, a human-powered irrigation pump.

Ashoka University, (created in 2005) is another powerful example of how universities are creating programs to meet the demands of students for course content on social change. Ashoka University–part of Ashoka, the nonprofit founded by Bill Drayton that supports global social entrepreneurs—provides college students with the mentoring, resources, peer groups, and community they need to develop their own social innovation models, paving the way for a new generation of social entrepreneurs to create positive change.  (As a donor, you can also volunteer as a mentor or give financially to support a new social entrepreneur or Ashoka University program at your alma mater.)

Many of the programs available today (including the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, which I founded and now chair) did not exist five or ten years ago, perhaps because students did not see themselves as capable of being social entrepreneurs at such a young age. This has all changed—a new generation has re-defined what is possible. With colleges developing what Bill Drayton calls “changemakers,” it’s thrilling to imagine the countless ways these young people will transform our world in the years to come.

We all know the expression, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Well, the same can be said about giving. Giving, it seems, helps you stay healthy and happy. People who volunteered through their job rated their physical and emotional health more positively than non-volunteers, according to the 2010 survey, “Do Good. Live Well.” In the survey, 92 percent of volunteers said they were satisfied with their current physical health–compared with only 76 percent among those who did not volunteer. Meanwhile, a 2007 Corporation for National and Community Service study found that US states with higher rates of volunteerism also had lower rates of heart disease.

These principles also apply to family volunteering. The results of a 2011 study called “Heart of the Donor,”—arguing that volunteering is a wonderful way for families to spend time together—show that of people who grew up with parents who frequently volunteered with nonprofits, almost half (49 percent) had volunteered with a nonprofit in the past year, and of those with parents who occasionally volunteered, 31 percent were volunteers. Among those who said they never saw their parents volunteer, only 20 percent do so now.

The message is clear—the sooner you engage your children in meaningful giving, the sooner they will begin their own giving lives–a win for them and a win for our world. When you give as a family, not only are you sharing the happiness that giving brings you by watching it translate into positive change, but you are also transmitting your giving values to your children by engaging them in the giving process itself.

While talking about why you give and what inspires your support for particular nonprofits and issues is a good first step, there is nothing like experience to drive home any value. When you start giving with your kids, your values become their values.

Even so, remember that the way they choose to express those values may be different from the way you express your beliefs and passions, so be sure to respect their philanthropic individuality in the process. The more you help them channel their own interests into their own generosity, the more they’re likely to give in the future.

As you approach this holiday season, here are some of the ways you can engage your family in giving:

1. Have a Holiday Giving Meal, and choose an issue (such as emergency food help or homelessness) together that all family members want to address during the holiday season.
2. Make your holiday giving more strategic by supporting family giving decisions with information and knowledge. Involve your children at every step of the way, especially the selection of an issue area and the process of learning about that issue. Encourage them to go online to do some research. Or go online as a family, especially if your kids are too young to do Internet research alone. Learn about organizations working in the issue area you’re interested in and the possible models to approach those social problems, and then share that learning with the family.
3. Have your children own a portion of the learning process independently, engage your children in a discussion about what they’ve learned, and then make decisions collaboratively about where to give and volunteer as a family.
4. Make family giving more meaningful by channeling time, skills, and dollars into one organization that engages the whole family. Seeing how your generosity translates into action over the course of the holiday season will give your children and you true understanding of how, together, you can touch individual lives and help change them for the better.

Often family traditions begin when they’re based around an enjoyable, meaningful activity. This year, express your family’s thanks for the blessings you have by sharing them with others–starting with your children. Learn about nonprofits together, volunteer together, and make gifts together. When giving becomes a family activity–especially one supported by learning and action–it turns into a tradition that can last several generations.

Giving stories often have powerful beginnings. Whether that’s an event, a set of experiences, or encounters with certain individuals, something usually inspires us to embark on a lifetime of giving. My giving story started with my parents—my late mother, Frances Arrillaga, who dedicated her life to philanthropic and community service, and my father, John Arrillaga, whose daily generosity of heart, mind, and hands-on contributions make him one of the most extraordinary philanthropists I know.

Picture an awkward thirteen-year-old in knee socks, two sets of barrettes, a white middy blouse, and a pale blue skirt. The girl stands slouched, looking as if she’d rather be just about anywhere else. Holding her hand is her mother—a silver-haired, smiling woman, radiant in her selflessness and elegant in her grace.

Together they stand in the lobby of the Palo Alto, California-based offices of Family and Children Services, a nonprofit organization that provides counseling and support to families during the most difficult times in their lives. They wait to be greeted by representatives of the organization amidst some of the families it serves.

“But Mom,” whispers the girl to her mother, “I don’t understand why we have to be here now. I need to go home and do my homework.” The angel mother smiles at her daughter with the patience only a parent can give a child. “One day you will understand why I brought you here,” she says calmly. “These people need help. It’s our responsibility to give them that help. One day they will need your help.” It was my first site visit; my first glimpse into the world of social change.

In the fall of 1994, a year before she died, my mother wrote the following:
“The service I have been involved in has expanded my knowledge and added great depth to my life. It has been an incredible source of joy to me.” Since then, I have not only come to understand what she meant, but have also embraced everything she believed in.

My mother taught me that to maximize your philanthropic potential, you need to constantly challenge your capabilities and put yourself in situations that are not always comfortable. Through her example, I discovered that there is no more beautiful way to live a life than to live a life of service. And in following her path, I have made my mother’s work my own.

My father, John Arrillaga, took immense pride in my mother’s work, and he supported her constantly in her career in service. Like my mother, I never would have been able to follow this path without his boundless support–and now the support of my husband, Marc Andreessen. My father taught me, as he puts it, to “give as much as you can to others–for there is nothing more important than giving back.”

Of course, I also learned invaluable lessons from the twelve years I spent running SV2 (the venture philanthropy partnership I founded), from a decade of teaching at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford University, and now from my four years leading Stanford PACS (Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society).

However, there’s a difference between teaching and educating. Teaching is the imparting of practices, concepts and facts to someone else. Educating is a two-way process of both passing on and eliciting ideas and knowledge from those one aspires to educate.

My parents did not teach me about philanthropy–they educated me. They spoke constantly about their ideas, they lived their values every day, and they empowered me to create a life in which I could do the same. They showed me that supporting the individuals and institutions that provide essential community services is a responsibility, an opportunity, and a privilege. Because of them and, now, my husband, I’ve been able to spend my life giving to others – my time, my passion, my knowledge, my networks, and my financial resources.

This is the power of creating a philanthropic legacy. It’s not just about donating funding or leaving an endowment. A philanthropic legacy is also a gift that keeps on giving by empowering the individuals and institutions that serve us all. In effect, we are all a part of an extraordinary circle of giving. Because, ultimately, it’s what we do for others—regardless of the kinds of resources we give or the amounts in which we give them—that will define who we are. That is our true legacy.

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How many times have you given based solely on the fact that your heartstrings have been tugged? Perhaps it was by an online video or a late-night television commercial? Perhaps in response to a disturbing photo in a mail solicitation? Or, simply because a friend, colleague, or community member asked you to give to something that’s important to them.

Often, when you make a gift in this way, you have no idea where the dollars will end up. You hope they’ll go to the starving child, the homeless family, or the disabled veteran. But the organization may provide no information about how it will use your resources. So how will you know if it’s been successful or what precise support it will give the people you want to help?

You also don’t know what percentage of your dollars will go to the people featured in the advertisement or solicitation letter (that is, the little girl or boy, whose name and age they tell you). You have no idea whether part of your gift goes towards paying the celebrity endorser, the mail-house solicitation company, or the telethon company. To often we’re happy to receive thanks from the nonprofits we fund, accepting gratitude instead of feedback or performance measurements.

This approach is wrong. Philanthropic investments are investments in the future of individual lives and our world. Having gratitude be our only return on investment leaves a huge chasm between intention and impact–both for those of us who give and those we want to help.

In a 2010 Hope Consulting study, 85 percent of the American donors surveyed said that nonprofit performance was “very important.” Yet only 35 percent said they did any research on their gifts—only 35 percent! Among those who did research, only 5 percent said they used their research to assess the quality of the organization’s team. This is both worrying and puzzling. After all, leadership and product quality are two of the most important criteria to consider when making for-profit investments. Yet we seem to ignore them when making nonprofit investments.

This is what I call “giving in the dark.” When you give in the dark, you fail to grasp the meaning of your generosity. And an understanding of the impact you ultimately have is what makes giving meaningful.

When thinking about how to make your giving more meaningful, it’s important to consider both sides of the giving transaction. One side is defining and assessing the impact of your giving portfolio (all the resources that you give–time, expertise, networks, and dollars) over time and in its entirety. The other side is defining and assessing the impact of the nonprofits you support and the contribution they make in providing services, creating social change, or building awareness of a social or environmental problem.

The Philanthropic Sweet Spot

Passion is, of course, important. But after you’ve determined your philanthropic passion, I urge you to balance that against public needs. That’s when you’ll find that philanthropic “sweet spot,” and once you’ve hit on it, you’ll need to consider what types of resources you have to give and what your goals are within the scope and breadth of those resources.

Once you’ve created your giving goals, think about the steps you need to take to achieve them. These include identifying the right nonprofits to fund (that is, organizations whose strategies and missions align with yours) and how they’ll determine if they are successful in meeting your shared objectives. Finally, you need to consider whether their measurements of success are sufficient to meet your own assessment criteria.

Different organizations measure success in different ways. Some use anecdotes and stories. Others use short-, intermediate-, and long-term success metrics. Some commission external evaluators to conduct reviews that include both hard and soft data. Some base their work solely on the immediate feedback of those benefiting from their services.

You need to decide which of these measurements is acceptable for the situation at hand. But whatever you decide, you should demand the same kind of accountability from your social investments as you would from your for-profit investments. And greater accountability will only help the nonprofit sector refine its programs and services to become even more effective.

In fact, if an organization you’re considering funding has no internal evaluation processes or resources, you could also fund that internal capability, instead of programs. While not as “sexy” as directly funding food for the hungry or housing for the homeless, this kind of funding can enable a nonprofit to increase its efficiency and enhance its fundraising efforts since being able to demonstrate measurable success is extremely compelling to today’s donors.

A Funding Gap

Assessing nonprofit performance is not easy–either for you or for the nonprofits themselves. Even in the foundation sector, only a small percentage of philanthropic institutions have sufficient staff and infrastructure to conduct formal evaluations.

That should not stop you, however. Do an assessment before and after you make a gift, determining what specific indicators or events a nonprofit will use to tell its donors how their money contributes to a mission. Say you’re funding immediate needs at a local food kitchen. How many families came to the church to collect food, for example? How many bags were passed out, what types of food were in the bags, and what was their dollar value?

Results in the social sector are tangible and intangible. It may take years before you have concrete evidence of the change your gift is helping to bring about. So be patient, and stand firm on the accountability measures you consider important. What you’re looking for in terms of measurability is probably similar to that of other donors. So a small investment to help nonprofits measure their work more effectively could be the catalyst for significant future investments by other donors.

Partnering with the organizations you fund to track their success more effectively is a win-win-win. The people or causes you want to help win because accountability and effective tracking leads to greater impact (especially if the results, successes and challenges are shared). The nonprofit you fund wins, because its ability to monitor its success more effectively will help it attract other donors. And you win–twice, because you’ll understand how your generosity translates into social change and you can have a bigger impact by using your gift as leverage to attract others.

Nonprofits are the intermediaries between generosity and social change. If they succeed, we succeed. If we continue giving in the dark, good intentions may never be translated into great impact. But if we partner with nonprofits to understand their success, we can shed greater light and take action on the best ways to transform our world.

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When I think of innovation, three definitions come to mind. First, the introduction of something new (Merriam Webster); second, the process of renewing something that already exists (from the Latin innovare); and third, new ways of thinking about or carrying out existing processes or activities. All three could be applied to today’s philanthropic landscape.

In the past decade, we’ve seen an unprecedented amount of innovation taking place in philanthropy. Thousands of new organizations, ideas, approaches, and giving models have been created. New ways of doing things have evolved and existing processes have been re-engineered—all of which can make our giving more meaningful and help us make a bigger impact. Philanthropic entrepreneurship and creativity has never been more exciting. This changes everything.

Countless, intractable social problems surround us. Globally, 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Nationally, one in eight Americans received emergency food assistance. And, here in California from where I write, one in four children live in poverty.

The way we are currently giving is not making a big enough dent in these problems. We give with our heart, our most powerful engine for action. However, this engine alone is not enough—it needs fuel and that fuel is innovation. We must strive to make every gift, regardless of its size or form, create the greatest possible impact. So when I talk about innovation, it’s something that should not be taking place only in the structures and systems for giving—you should be thinking about how to be innovative in your giving, too. Are you doing enough research before you make a gift? Are you considering whether your dollars are reaching the right organization?

The answer is not always obvious. Take the issue of children living in poverty. Is it more effective to give to a sponsor-a-child program or to fund the operational costs of a large nonprofit organization working to improve life for a whole community of children? Without doing some research, it’s hard to know which to choose. They may both feel good, but do they both do good?

The options for giving today are almost endless and are changing all the time. Technology innovation is driving a lot of that change. Online, you can become much more than a reactive donor—you can become a proactive, strategic, collaborative philanthropist, improving your giving every day by tapping into the wealth of philanthropic resources available at the tap of a keyboard or the click of a mouse.

Just think—five years ago, few would have considered that 140 character messages would have been able to drive awareness about the need for access to clean water in developing countries. But today, 1.3 million Twitter followers listen to what Charity: Water, a nonprofit, has to say. Three years ago, we did not live in a world where buying discount coupons could help make a difference to education. But last year Groupon invited its subscribers to purchase gift-credits to DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit that pairs individual givers with public school projects. As these grants were 50 percent off (through a Pershing Square Foundation matching grant), the promotion raised over $130,000 for classroom projects across the country. Once upon a time, the ING New York Marathon might never have imagined that it could raised more than $30 million through the web. But in 2010, it raised this amount for high-impact nonprofits through its partnership with Crowdrise, an online fundraising platform based on users’ own social networks.

Importantly, none of these online philanthropic phenomena facilitate individuals giving necessarily large sums of money—these organizations are not basing their “business models” on bequests from millionaires. But what they do is foster the aggregation of small amounts of time, creativity, and money.

Going online to give is one way you can move from making isolated, one-off gifts (a scattershot approach) to being a driving force in significant collective action (raising awareness, pooling dollars, and engaging volunteers). In the new web-enabled era, some donations are even traceable, giving you the kind of accountability—with even the smallest gifts—that was once available only to very large donors.

It’s very different from the days when to give in such small amounts you had to put your dollars into the collection boxes rattled by charity fundraisers on the street—and you’d have only the vaguest idea about what would happen to your money afterwards.

You can also research the organizations you consider funding or create a giving portfolio that mirrors those of highly staffed, professional philanthropic foundations (thus not reinventing the due diligence wheel). Yes, this involves a bit of work. But shouldn’t you put the same amount of effort into your giving as you might for your for-profit investments? After all, philanthropy is an investment, and one in which lives¬–not profits–are at stake.

Here are five things to try out in the next week:

• Take $100 (or a dollar amount that works in your budget) and create your own online giving portfolio.
• Try investing at least 10 percent of your annual giving resources into specific giving “products” (such as funding books for a classroom in New Orleans) whose results you could measure (check out Jolkona Foundation or DonorsChoose.org).
• Commit an hour this weekend to learning about a social issue by doing some online research.
• Try using your social network (such as through a Crowdrise campaign, a Facebook status update or Twitter account) to educate yourself, build awareness, and fundraise for your favorite cause.
• If you live on your iPhone or Blackberry, find a way to incorporate your giving life (donations, research, tracking, and so on) into your mobile life.

Everyone has the power to try out new models, explore new opportunities, and apply entrepreneurial thinking to what they do philanthropically—whether through technology or otherwise. By discovering different, better ways of giving and melding those with traditional best practices, you’ll get greater satisfaction from your giving because you’ll discover how to amplify your impact.

Being innovative in your philanthropy allows you to stride forward in your giving journey; you can marry your mind and heart to turn charity into lasting impact; and you can become more ambitious in your giving. Learn from what you see around you; borrow, and adapt everything, and your giving will become a dynamic, living entity—something that’s constantly growing and evolving, and critically, something that’s doing much more to transform people’s lives for the better.

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Amid economic gloom, the news just gets worse. Last month, the unemployment rate rose in most states (in some cases as high as 11 percent), hitting millions of Americans in their pocketbooks. We also learned that in 2010, one in fifteen Americans slipped below the poverty line. Meanwhile financial giving fell by 11 percent in the past two years, according to Giving USA. How are these facts related? You might think that, with less disposable income at hand, this is a time to further scale back charitable giving.

The opposite is true. When incomes and bonuses decrease, revenues falter, and businesses stumble, it’s more important than ever to give—not necessarily more, but in a way that matters more. When incomes are down and wallets are stretched, the effectiveness of our giving is what really counts.

This means making more meaningful giving decisions. Whether you’re a parent volunteering at your child’s school, a recent college graduate taking an unpaid nonprofit internship, or a technology entrepreneur giving millions to reform public education, think about how to maximize the significance of your gift.

First, transform your giving process from reactive to proactive. Instead of waiting until the holiday season—when mail solicitations flood in from worthy organizations—and making a flurry of gifts because this is the time of year to give, sit down and take stock. Identify your passion, learn about it, and direct your time, mind, and dollars to aligned causes and organizations. Give to what interests or excites you most and make it a long-term affair, rather than a “philanthropic one-night stand.” Actively deciding to give to causes that move you deeply is far more fulfilling than the momentary gratification derived from signing a check and mailing it to a nonprofit about which you know little more than what’s on the brochure they sent you.

But while engaging your passion is important, giving in a vacuum, guided by emotion alone can only get you so far. To make a bigger impact, you also need to shift your giving from sympathetic to strategic. This means doing some work. Not many of us do this—65 percent of all gifts have no research behind them, according to a 2010 Hope Consulting survey. Yet shouldn’t every dollar you give deliver the greatest benefit possible to the people you want to help? It’s hard to have this happen without conducting some research.

So instead of responding to a late night television ad that pulls on your heart strings (and TV marketers and phone solicitation companies sometimes take a huge percentage of every dollar given), tap into the expertise of the hundreds of online nonprofits and funding intermediaries out there. Many do the research, assessment, and measurement for you and connect you to giving opportunities. Giving through trusted intermediaries means that, instead of giving to invisible recipients, you can see how your generosity is used to help an impoverished widow in India start a small business or to buy a computer for a low-income student in Detroit.

Collaborative giving is another way to maximize bang for philanthropic buck. Instead of giving only at your place of worship and being ‘done with your giving’ for the year, create a giving circle with family, friends, or members of your religious community, and learn together about an issue of shared interest. You can pool funds­–moving from isolated to collaborative–and make joint giving decisions, helping your money go further than it would have if you made a gift alone.

It’s true that the idea of giving when government, corporate, and personal budgets are being slashed might seem counter-intuitive. But in times like these, giving is critical. If charitable funding shrinks, the organizations providing critical services to the unemployed, our children, and our community members may be forced to choose between scaling back their services or reducing their staff—at a time when we need those essential services and dedicated nonprofit employees more than ever. So in the midst of economic turmoil, when everything seems out of control, let’s focus on what we can control—how we express our generosity. We don’t have to give more—just in a way that matters more.