Design Fundamentals for Meaningful Giving #1: Worldview

The Ten W's for Donors: Design Fundamentals for Meaningful Giving

Consciously or not, every donor comes to their giving with a unique combination of factors to incorporate and accommodate. Why not become more aware and deliberate about the key considerations that shape the design of your giving? The better you understand what’s driving your design choices, the greater your opportunity to land on meaningful giving that truly creates joy and impact. 

 When working with clients as they make plans to gear up their giving I love to help people take themselves through a series of reflections. I've come to call these the Ten W’s for donors: 

#1:  Worldview

#2: Wealth Stance

#3: Wealth Stock

#4: Why

#5: What

#6: Which Way

#7: Where

#8: When

#9: Who

#10: Whatever Else

In this series of posts we'll work our way through each of these considerations in turn.  This is a great way to elevate the impact of your giving out in the world and the sense of fulfillment, joy that it brings to you in the process.  That's what meaningful giving is all about. 

 If you share authority over your giving with a spouse, other family members or a business partner, walking through these design principles together is also a great way to uncover areas of alignment as well as divergence—an essential step in taking your shared decision making to the next level.

Design Fundamental #1: Worldview

It might not come to mind immediately when you think about your giving, but one of the first design fundamentals to explore is your own worldview. A worldview is a set of values and beliefs you use to make sense of the world around you. A person’s worldview typically has both cultural and psychological components.  

The moral intuitions and cultural inclinations that shape your worldview often precede your conscious thought.  The more effort you make to become fully aware of the lenses through which you view the world the greater your opportunity to engage in giving that is deeply meaningful: creating positive impact for others in ways that are powerfully aligned with your personal values. 

Articulating your worldview can be particularly helpful if you plan to work with others to carry out your philanthropy. The more others understand your philosophy of life and what you find meaningful, the better they can support you in finding impactful and fulfilling philanthropic opportunities.  You may even find that in the process of exploring your worldview, you find important opportunities for growth and evolution along the way.

There are all kinds of ways to categorize worldviews.  One of the most useful  approaches posits three fundamental alternatives:

• Traditional Worldview: your vision of a better world is shaped by religious faith and cultural tradition.  Think the Pledge of Allegiance and the Ten Commandments
• Modern Worldview: your vision of a better world is shaped by the scientific method, rational deliberation and debate and a market-based economy.   Think the World Health Organization and the Federal Reserve
  
• Post-modern Worldview: your vision of a better world is shaped by the desire to address inequity on a systemic basis, often grounded in a critique of traditional and modern social constructs for their role in perpetuating oppression and human suffering.   Think the Movement for Black Lives and the Green New Deal

Is there one of these three perspectives with which you most naturally resonate? For the moment, let’s imagine that  you have to pick just one of these perspectives as the most important basis for building a better world.  Which do you value most?  Which do you value least?  What about your own background and life experience most informs your point of view?

 Dialing In Your Worldview

 You might find an additional level of insight about your own perspective by imagining that you get to be the engineer at the mixing board of our public discourse.  Without squelching anyone’s right to free expression, imagine that your job  is to amplify what is most important and valuable about each of these three worldviews while making sure you don’t boost the signal on what is most harmful and problematic.  If your goal was to support  the best possible future for humanity, which people, organizations or viewpoints do you wish could be amplified?  Which people, organizations and viewpoints do you least want to lend a megaphone? 

Here’s another way to get insight into your own worldview.  Try completing these sentences

• We'd all be a lot better off if more people would just start…

• We'd all be a lot better off if  more people would just stop… 

• We’d all be a lot better off if more people understood… 

Two Resources for Assessing Your Worldview 

Assessment #1: On What Basis Do You Envision A Better World?

The Institute for Cultural Evolution offers an online assessment (https://www.culturalevolution.org/worldview-questionnaire/)  that will give you insight into which of these three worldviews (traditional, modern, post-modern) most closely resembles your own. This questionnaire also gives you the chance to explore a fourth alternative, what they call an “integral worldview.”  This perspective is shaped by a desire to embrace complexity and transcend polarization,  integrating key elements of traditional, modern, and postmodern worldviews in pursuit of new approaches to addressing enduring social and political challenges.

Assessment #2: On Which Moral Foundations Do You Rely Most?

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done fascinating empirical research that can help explain the differing ideological perspectives at the root of all kinds of cultural and political conflicts.  He posits six different moral “tastes” which any given person exhibits  in varying degrees:  

1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.

2) Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy.

3) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s “one for all, and all for one.”

4) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

6) Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor.

Source: https://moralfoundations.org 

You can find out which of these moral foundations are most important to you with this online assessment (https://www.yourmorals.org/)

Download the worksheet and continue your reflection

You can download the worksheet that goes along with this post and give yourself the gift of deeper reflection on your own worldview as you gear up for even more meaningful giving.  And stay tuned for the next segment in this series, where we'll look at Design Fundamental #2: Wealth Stance.