Abstract
Green Giving: Engagement, Values, Activism, and Community Life
Charles Bazerman, University of California, Santa Barbara
Philanthropic campaigns typically offer value identification and identity rewards for gift giving. These rewards may be increased by engaging the gift-givers within the work and activity of the charitable organization; moreover, fund-raising may reach beyond the limited budget people typically allocate to psychic goods if charitable gifts are perceived as part of the costs of one's way of life and as part of the meanings, activities, and communities within which one lived one's life.
In support of these claims, I examine environmental fund-raising in Santa Barbara through interviews with fund-raisers involved with the Community Environmental Council and the campaign to purchase a major coastal property for a preserve. The fundraising for CEC indicates ways in which people's identities and commitments may be drawn on and reinforced and how people's interests in sustaining a way of life can become the basis of funding campaigns; CEC fundraising suggests that activism does not necessarily translate into giving, depending on the nature of the active engagement. The case of the preservation of the Wilcox property suggests how commitment to a community way of life can mobilize extraordinary giving when the community as a whole starts to perceive itself engaged in common endeavor and commitment. The success of the campaign itself then becomes a sign of community strength and community values.
Green Giving: Engagement, Values, Activism, and Community Life
Charles Bazerman, University of California, Santa Barbara
In a previous study, I observed that fund-raising texts engaged the potential donors by creating social roles and statuses for the benefactor and by providing values they could define themselves through. The fund raising documents particularly appealed to the emotions of shame and pride by representing a social rupture in the need situation (something shameful) and social healing in the act of charity (something one could be proud of). Fund-raising, I argued, could increase the psychic and identity rewards of giving by engaging the gift-givers within the work and activity of the charitable organization, and could reach beyond the limited budget people typically allocate to psychic goods by establishing charitable gifts as part of the costs of one's way of life and as part of the meanings, activities, and communities within which one lived one's life (Bazerman).
That is, fund raising documents could provide a variety of psychic rewards in exchange for the potential gift--- reinforcing the giver's sense of social power, allowing the giver to assert personal values into a wider sphere or to attach oneself to admirable public values, or giving the giver the opportunity to empathize with social ruptures and perceive his or herself proudly as a social healer, particularly in relation to the ruptures and healings of the giver's own life. However, the amount people seemed to allot to such psychic rewards seemed limited to, on average, 2-3% of income (Kelly). Only where, as in giving to one's religious congregation, people seemed to see the giving as part of one's more general activities, commitments and communities would gift-giving be more substantial, as the giving came to be seen as part of the general expenses of one's way of life.
Environmentalism in Santa Barbara community awareness
To explore these ideas more concretely this paper examines fund-raising for environmental causes in Santa Barbara--causes associated strongly with community values, with historical ruptures and healing in the region, with continuing activism in the region, and with the community's way of life.
Santa Barbara has a long historical self-conscious sense of itself as an aesthetic and environmentally planned community. The city was a major tourist destination and home to a substantial population of the wealthy and famous since at least 1875. When oil development came around the turn of the century, strong community opposition to unrestrained development led to a continuing history of resistance and regulation (Molotch et al.). In the late 1920's after an earthquake leveled most of the city, the downtown was rebuilt according to a well-coordinated aesthetic plan which became the basis of strictly regulated development. The quality of life (largely expressed in issues of architecture, development, public amenities, and environment) has remained a public priority that engaged the newspaper, the city council, and community organizations.
This communal sense was ruptured by the government leases for oil-drilling off the coast and the almost immediate oil spill in 1969 (Easton), which galvanized the community into activism. In the course of this crisis three organizations were founded that remain the cornerstone of Santa Barbara environmentalism--Get Oil Out (or GOO), which monitors and responds to threats arising from oil development and pollution, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) which monitors and responds to other environmental threats and land development throughout the region, and the Community Environmental Council (CEC), which engages in positive community development activities, such as recycling, hazardous waste collection, demonstration organic gardens, land use studies, and most recently a community indicators project. These groups have provided state and national leadership in the environmental movement--being, for example, early and significant players in the creation of Earth Day and initiating recycling. The people who were active in the events of 1969 remain active in the town, region, and nation. Further, although the University of California at Santa Barbara was not as fully engaged in the 1969 oil spill as it might have been, it soon established the first Environmental Studies Program, which to this day offers a vibrant undergraduate major. And in recent years UCSB established a professional school of Environmental Science and Management, which offers graduate degrees. Santa Barbara is also home to a major national environmental policy center and several other environmental groups, organizations, and foundations. I give these details to indicate how deeply environmentalism is now embedded in the activities, values, and way of life of the community.
The Community Environmental Council Capital Campaign
To examine the kinds of appeals that have worked for environmental causes in the region, I interviewed Roe Anne White, the current development director at the Community Environmental Council, and Sally Walker, who was paid consultant on the major capital campaign for the CEC about five years ago and on the 1996 effort to raise funds to acquire the largest remaining undeveloped coastal property in the city for use as a park and preserve--what is locally known as the Wilcox property, though it is now officially the Douglas Family Preserve. As a volunteer and officer of the local chapter of the Audubon Society she raised more modest pay-as-you-go funds for that organization. She has also worked as a fund-raiser for a number of regional human service and cultural organizations.
Prior to the capital campaign initiated in 1991 CEC did not attempt systematic fund-raising and development. Rather from its inception it had successfully supported itself largely on major grants and contracts from the government and private foundations, in recent years producing a half a million dollars a year. It also raised around $20,000 a year from annual membership fees of $20 to $25 and had an annual major gift of $50,000. However, in 1991 the board of the organization determined that approximately $750,000 was needed to pay off the mortgage for the organization's center, make repairs and improvements, equip a downtown recycling center, and expand some programs. Sally Walker began professionalization of fund raising at the organization and oversaw the goal's accomplishment in 2 1/2 years. After that Roe Anne White was hired as permanent development director.
One of Sally's first tasks was to help CEC's staff understand fund-raising was an "institution-wide commitment" to a public relations mindset. "The program staff needed to come to think of their work in terms of projects that could then be communicated to a potential funder." To identify givers she also needed to organize the records and establish a data base that would track donor histories, keep track of and provide reminders for renewals and pledges, monitor cash flow and goal achievements, and to provide names for future appeals (the cleaning up and development of the mailing list remains a continuing task). She beefed up membership benefits and designed fund-raising literature for the capital campaign that had a distinctive look, different from prior appeals from the organization. Finally, she also needed to develop volunteers because "All capital campaigns are volunteer intensive."
I will focus on volunteers and the roles they served in for a few minutes now, because this issue seems to contain several interesting implications for the social relations involved in gift-giving. Sally Walker particularly was concerned to "increase involvement from very prominent and qualified individuals." The individuals served on committees that drew on the particular talents and professional networks of these qualified individuals, as well as established strong alliance between the CEC fund-raising and aspects of the volunteers' lives.
Most impressive was the site development committee, composed of such people as a painting contractor, a developer, landscape architect, and an owner of a home improvement center. They took charge of renovations, got bids, selected contractors, and oversaw some aspects of the work. In short they provided highly professional contributions of specialized "expertise that no one on the staff or board had." Further, they negotiated in-kind contributions and discounts by using their own professional connections, including ecologically appropriate technology, such as outdoor lighting powered by solar panels. The members of this committee were enacting their own personal and professional commitments to environmentally sound construction and were able to enter into collaborations with suppliers who had interests in supporting green development and green construction trades.
The "Burn the Mortgage" effort, essentially a major gifts committee, was similarly headed by a vice-president of a major investment brokerage. Because of his profession he was very comfortable in talking to people about money and giving. He was also able to enact his commitment to the town and the environment through his professional identity and skills.
One of the major changes that occurred at this time was that the board, which had previously thought of itself as a group of activists, began to think of itself as potential givers and fund raisers. A couple of board members speaking to other members of the current board of about a dozen people were able to raise over $70,000 among themselves. Similar amounts of funds were raised from prior board members.
Regularizing fund-raising at the CEC
After the capital campaign met its goals in 1994, Roe Anne White, who had previously worked with private schools and arts fund raising in Los Angeles, became permanent development director. She continued to work with the Board to build their fund raising potential through personal contacts, to whom they might send relevant news articles with personal notes and whom they might invite to receptions and lectures at CEC. The most promising contacts are invited to lunch at the headquarters with the director.
These initiatives illustrate what Roe-Anne White characterizes as a standard principle of fund-raising: "people give to people, they don't give to organizations." Information about the organization and its programs is provided in a series of brochures, newsletters and pamphlets distributed regularly and which are available on a rack in the entryway to the center. These serve to provide supplementary information and keep donors aware of the organization's activities. Other materials are directly part of activities such as a widely distributed pamphlet on non-polluting means of pest control. As far as fund-raising goes, however, the documents seem secondary to the personal contact. In the personal contact, Roe Anne and the organization officers can speak directly to the interests and concerns of the gift-givers.
About the values that drive environmental concern, she notes,
What I have found with the environment is that while many people are concerned with the environment, few open their pocket books to it as readily as one might expect. It is more challenging to raise money for an environmental organization than the other non-profits I have worked for. For example, while the donor base is limited at an independent school, those involved are more likely to give because the gift directly benefits their children or grandchildren. It is clear that many Santa Barbarans care about the environment, but CEC's work, while addressing important environmental issues does not have high visibility (like the Wilcox property or the current Oak issue).
Having a compelling need is a useful tool in fund raising. CEC has steadily addressed issues and problems for a quarter of a century, but has had no urgent crisis to rally around since its founding after the oil spill in 1969. CEC also has a special fund-raising challenge in that our work is so diverse. It ranges from community programs to research and technical assistance and is not explained with a few pat phrases. Additionally, while CEC has been in Santa Barbara for over 28 years, it is a little known organization. To enhance our fund raising effort, we need to more clearly articulate our mission, clarify the work CEC is doing, and get our name out into the community more effectively. Finally, with over 500 non-profits in Santa Barbara, there is a lot of competition for contributions in this community.
This is why building that sense of personal contact and ownership is important. Since most projects are carried out by staff there are only limited roles for volunteers, such as to help out with the gardens, office work, or the art from scrap program. These volunteers are also not the same as the donors and are likely not to have the means for substantial contribution. Similarly campaigns based on names gathered from various community events and programs have had low response rates. Nonetheless, a targeted appeal directed at 20 people who had been involved with CEC's Garden Program in the past did produce a 37% response rate. This suggests that commitments established earlier through activism and volunteerism may be reinvigorated and mobilized in other forms of commitment as people's life situations change. Part of the continuing analysis of the membership database is to locate those who have had continuing commitment through regular modest giving who may be now in a position to become major givers.
Through such efforts the CEC now receives around $200,000 per annum in donations and has a target of twice that.
Four large donor walls at CEC's headquarters recognize major donors to strengthen the sense of identity and ownership on the part of givers. In the library/meeting room one plaque identifies large givers to CEC's Annual Fund in the current year, distributed in four categories named after offshore islands. Another plaque identifies members of the Selma Rubin Society (named after long committed activist and founding board member who was the first to write the organization into her will). These are people who have made planned gifts . Members of the Selma Rubin Society are invited for an annual luncheon and receive letters from the director periodically to keep them updated and involved. This campaign is aimed at building endowment, which had been only $300 and now is approaching $100,000 in cash with $665,000 in anticipated gifts.
The first of two plaques in the office hallway identifies the major givers in the 1991 capital campaign in five categories ranging from benefactor to friend. The other lists about twenty corporate gift givers to the new Corporate Council in four categories from corporate patron to Corporate fellows. Major corporate givers include local banks and newspapers as well as refuse and recycling companies, landscape and architectural organizations, hotels, and other industries with a direct interest in environment and town quality of life. A number of companies have chosen to locate in town because of the quality of life and some have become members of the Corporate Council. Roe-Anne White explains:
From our earliest days, one of CEC's roles has been to ensure that the quality of life we enjoy in Santa Barbara is sustained. I initiated CEC's Corporate Council last year so that we could provide a forum for the business and environmental communities to come together to discuss issues important to both groups, while at the same time providing support for CEC's community programs.
The CEC's Corporate Council's founding dovetails with a new major initiative being led by CEC in collaboration with a variety of individuals representing a number of interests. The Santa Barbara South Coast Community Indicators Project is modeled on similar programs in other communities designed to assess the overall health of the community. The project publishes a periodic volume and a web-site which create a portrait of the quality of life in the region from existing social, economic, and environmental statistics. It provides a mechanism for various groups to monitor developments and engage in informed policy discussion both on particular issues and in a more holistic way. In creating this community portrait with the environment as a major component, CEC both keeps environmental issues always on the policy table when any issue of community well-being arises and also makes clear to other community stake holders their interest in maintaining and improving the environment.
Another new project, monitoring pollution in the watershed also has potential impact on engaging targeted groups of people. The fund-raising consequences of the watershed project are unclear as it is in its earliest development; however, it has already elicited one major gift from a regular CEC funder.
The Wilcox Property Campaign
The most spectacular fund raising effort in the region in recent years--raising the money for the acquisition of the Wilcox property-- suggests how much community identity and way of life are tied up with environment and nature preservation and how extraordinary the gift-giving can be if these associations are tapped, so that people see giving as investment in their community.
A 65-acre undeveloped property sitting on bluffs above a beach popular with local residents, though not as much frequented by tourists, had long been of concern to the adjoining suburban neighborhood. For a number of years it had been used as a nursery, but in recent years it had been left fallow and open to community use for walking, dog-running, ocean-gazing, hang-gliding and other passive recreation. At least twice in the late 1980's, bonds to purchase the land for a park failed the needed 2/3 majority by narrow margins. A number of plans for development had not been approved by the city and a law suit was filed by the owners whose investment was being eaten up by the debt and the inability to use their property. In 1994, the county set aside one million dollars of Coastal Resource Enhancement Funds (originally oil mitigation funds obtained in a settlement with the oil companies) as seed money for direct purchase for the land if a local group led by the Small Wilderness Area Preserve (SWAP) could obtain matching funds. It was thought that the ultimate purchase price would be in excess of five million, and perhaps between seven to ten million dollars.
After a year of almost no additional funds being raised, the city council was talking of reallocating some of the funds for another land purchase (Santa Barbara News Press). At this point developers, perhaps suspecting that the preservationists at this point were vulnerable, announced that they intended to develop the land as a single mansion. The Trust for Public Lands, however, on January 18, 1996 was able to arrange a last-ditch option to purchase the land at a low price of $3,500,000 under the condition that the money be raised in six weeks--by February 29. Given the amount, the history, and the short deadline this offer seemed almost certain to fail as an empty but politically useful gesture to clear the way for development.
SWAP and the Trust needed to raise 2.5 million dollars in six weeks. The state Department of Parks and Recreation immediately offered a $282,000 grant. Other state grants were sought, but remained pending. Local politicians endorsed the effort. In the first four weeks over $370,000 was raised in private donations, including one $100,000 donation, but for the most part in smaller gifts. much of it collected at tables in front of local markets.
On February 14, with about two weeks remaining, however, an anonymous half million dollar gift gave the campaign an enormous boost, and donations increased. As the deadline approached they were $600,000 short which was made up by a single gift from a prominent actor who lives in the area.
Sally Walker describes the extraordinary nature of the campaign:
The Wilcox property .... transformed the community. To this day people will talk about the Wilcox campaign. And it evoked such synergy and such unselfish participation and sharing so broadly among the community. There was such a spontaneity to it that I don't think our community has ever seen anything like that. I don't know. I've lived here 21 years and I've never seen....[such]... a mobilization of this community around an issue, and in such a positive, whole-hearted sense. You are talking about in 1 1/2 months going from about 8 volunteers to about 3000 volunteers, going from virtually no donations to 3 million dollars in donations and it just swept the community with such passion and fervor that was unprecedented in my professional career, unprecedented in the history of any of the organizations involved in making this happen.
Why was this? What made it happen? I think it was a combination of things. Consistent public information. . . The media carried this constantly. This was a great service. They followed it so doggedly and so prominently. And people were writing letters to the editor daily. There were articles almost every day on the editorial page, in Barney Brantingham's column, on the editorial page, and the front of the second section. TV stations were constantly after us for updated information.
An examination of the Santa Barbara News-Press confirms the strong media support. Weekly front page articles during the early part of the campaign turned into articles almost every other day during the final two weeks, accompanied by editorials and letters to the editor. Moreover the stories were regularly accompanied by a shaded box providing information on how to cooperate. Many of these stories seemed orchestrated to create excitement about the property and campaign, describing the beauty and value of the property, the community concern over the years, and the excitement generated by the campaign. Barney Brantingham, a local columnist who for many years has become a kind of insider's voice about town life devoted a number of columns to supporting the campaign. He was also directly in contact with SWAP. The newspaper was deeply involved in boosterism on this issue, presenting the property and the campaign as matters of civic importance, pride and part of our way of life.
Similarly the community events weekly, The Santa Barbara Independent, in the January 25, 1996 issue which announced the possibility of the land purchase and the campaign to raise funds ran a long cover-page feature story on "The Twenty Greatest Environmental Hits of Santa Barbara," clearly setting the stage for a new mobilization in the tradition of the city rebuilding of the twenties and the response to the '69 oil spill. The local TV news also carried the story regularly and the cable company posted frequent announcements on the community bulletin board that accompanied the program schedule scroll.
The kind of excitement supported by the media was enacted in the community by neighborhood meetings run by SWAP, leafleting campaigns, individually arranged fund raising dinners in homes and in restaurants, children selling apple juice for five dollars a glass at the entrance of the property, and pledge tables at the organic markets, specialty foods stores and the supermarkets. Small gifts generated by such activities provided somewhere in the range of a million dollars. Many of these smaller gifts actually reflected individuals "giving at their highest potential. People who really cared about this. We had a lot of small gifts but also a lot of gifts of $1000 or more. This really captured the public imagination."
Over 1.1 million dollars was provided by two major gifts and several local foundations provided several other substantial grants. To seek this money Sally Walker used a small edition showbook prepared by the Trust for Public Land. About thirty copies were made of this twelve-page collection of photographs, maps, and letters of support. The book displays the natural beauty of the land and its importance to the community life.
Sally Walker comments "We needed to show the beauty of this place to seek gifts from people who had never walked the property.
It helped that it [the property] was on TV... . Photographs of the serenity and the beauty of this property were very important for Michael Douglas' gift and the other major anonymous gift."
Also very important to the major givers was the excitement and support expressed to that point through community fund raising.
Sally Walker comments, "The reason that these two 600,000 dollar gifts came was because it was clear to everyone that there was so much will in the community to make this happen."
When asked to characterize the motivations of two major givers, Sally Walker commented
Very quickly this project came to mean more than just a piece of land, it came to mean. ...it became a community identity issue. It was a 'my God, what does this community stand for.' It came to embody community spirit. It came to embody a lot of things for people. It came to embody empowerment--about people feeling empowered to dramatically do something on their watch....it was just waking up to this realization that all the great environmental victories in our community were won in the past by people on their watch, and what were we going to do on our watch.
And in describing the meaning of this campaign to the larger community she commented
What kind of community do we want to be--that is really what you want people to think about when you are doing environmental fund-raising. What kind of community do we want to be? Who are we? What do we care about? What is important here? And that as individuals we have the ability to make a tremendous difference. And the Wilcox property made that clear. We have the ability to make a difference. That feeling and tone was carried and it sustained this project in a way that no one really before had seen. Maybe back in the past when some of the big environmental issues had come, but this involved a lot of fund raising. It didn't involve lobbying a city body or a county body and winning it by going to city council and county board of supervisors meetings. This was won in the hearts and minds and homes and wallets of the city residents.
Conclusions
The Wilcox property campaign provides a striking example of how individuals and a community can be moved to extraordinary giving when the issue becomes one of the maintenance and advancement of a communal way of life--building on individual and community values and the psychic rewards for doing good but moving beyond that to investing in the kind of community and life-style one wants to live in. Contributing to creating this set of meanings for the campaign was the long history of acts that have protected the environment, created a way of life that recognizes the environment as a key element, and have established a tradition of community action and commitment. This set of meanings was also fostered by the support of the forums of community life (newspapers, television, city government, politicians) which saw themselves as part of the community and as potential strong agents in continuing the tradition of action. Individuals and activist groups carried through these meanings, traditions, and opportunities to engage wide public participation and to tap the resources of individuals in a position to make major gifts. All these forces worked together to create and mutually support a set of meanings that extended beyond the boundaries of normal gift-giving.
There are elements of this association between gift-giving and way of life in the more usual fund-raising efforts of the Community Environmental Council. In a few instances CEC was able to draw on the engagement of the participants with a way of life, as when the board of directors was transformed from a group of community activists into a group that also was a source of giving and the center of a network of potential givers, as when prior garden volunteers gave to allow their work of earlier years to continue, and when people engaged in the building and architectural trades and committed to an environmentally sound development of those industries gave expertise, clout, money, in-kind gifts and contacts in an energized and committed way. CEC's Corporate Council and the Community Indicators Project hold great promise in building an even stronger connection between community life and environmental causes.
Yet the example of the CEC also suggests that activism and engagement with a way of life does not always lead to financial support. Volunteers and activists who gave of their time and attention did not necessarily give money. Only if they were engaged in activities that drew together their value commitments with the concept of investment in community life did substantial giving result. The emotional satisfactions of doing good and healing ruptures can be experienced as private acts of private virtue, quite independent both of one's community. Similarly one's way of life can also be seen primarily as a matter of individual choices and individual means. But when the way of life is seen as the consequence of community endeavors and as therefore a community responsibility, individuals can come to see that personal investment in a way of life means investing in communal projects.
While good-sounding words about communal investment in communal life cannot in themselves create a communal culture and create real projects that build the communal life, particularly in a society so deeply committed to individual action, individual values, and individual advancement, if we are aware of the great rhetorical potential of unfolding events that can draw people into their personal stakes in communal action, we can develop a rhetoric that makes the value of communal investment stronger and more visible. And the people who buy into the communal investment can receive very powerful psychic rewards, indeed.
References
Bazerman, C. "Some Informal Comments on Texts Mediating Fund-raising Relationships: Cultural Sites of Affiliation." Working Papers. Indiana Center on Philanthropy, 1997.
Easton, R. Black Tide: The Santa Barbara Oil Spill and Its Consequences. New York: Delacorte Press, 1972.
Kelly, K. "From Motivation to Mutual Understanding." Critical Issues In Fund Raising. D. Burlingame (ed). New York: Wiley.
Molotch, Harvey, William Freudenburg and Krista Paulsen. "History Repeats Itself, but How? City Character, Urban Tradition, and the Accomplishment of Place." Manuscript, 1997.
Santa Barbara Independent, January 25, 1996.
Santa Barbara News Press, December 1, 1995 - March 11, 1996.