Engagement is AWE-generation
Thoughts on looking for awe, inspired by a field trip to a partner organization
Mackenzie Poole, UWCI’s Major Gifts Director, organized a team “field trip” to the Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center, a longtime community partner of United Way of Central Indiana. We were there to learn about how they are applying the Center for Working Families model. Here are some of the thoughts in my mind when we learned about a person who changed their lives after working with the team at MRNC:
Imagine if we could replicate T.’s success story around in all of Central Indiana? With the support of our donors, how many T.’s could we empower to get out of poverty’s reach?
We left the visit excited, energized, feeling like we were on a mission.
What was that feeling exactly, the one that made us realize we’re onto something with our work in support of our CWF partners?
I think collectively we were experiencing what psychologist Dacher Keltner describes as one of the expressions of awe: acts of moral beauty. Awe, in his definition, “is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” What we experienced at MRNC was “other people’s courage, kindness, strength, or overcoming.”
Acts of moral beauty can be profoundly meaningful, whether we are observing those acts, committing them, or enabling them.
Jim Hodge, who recommended Dr. Keltner’s book to me, set me on the path of thinking through how awe applies to our work. You may remember his Hodgism “going from Money to Meaning.” This is the idea that through making a gift, somebody can experience profound purpose in their lives. It is not a big leap to think of one of our roles as fundraisers, creating meaningful engagement opportunities, as a way we enable donors to experience awe.
Some examples I’ve witnessed of this meaningful engagement/awe-generation:
The donor who told me his work on the board of an access to justice organization brought him intimately in touch with those seeking legal aid, and really feeling he could make a difference by making this aid free.
The meeting of a couple with a first-generation student scholarship recipient and hearing their story about how profoundly their study abroad opportunity changed her life.
The donor’s visit to the pediatric neurologist at an academic hospital who shows the donor new innovative ways they’re treating young patients with debilitating epilepsy and how they normalize their lives.
A donor’s two week mission to a former conflict zone to volunteer by handing out emergency supplies, bags of rice, etc.
These engagement opportunities, in truth, awe-generators: they make the cause real and connect donors to something vast that transcends their current understanding of the world.
I know, it sounds like I’m ridiculously overstating things once again.
But I don’t think I am.
Track back your own motivations for giving to something you care about. Track back your experiences of seeing someone do something good, right, just. I’m sure you can relate to the feeling of awe you experienced in those moments.
I would encourage you to look for ways in which you can turn the donor’s interests into opportunities to see the action they can empower, experience the good work being done, get intimately familiar with the cause and with those who it benefits.
Who knows, you might experience awe from moral beauty when they make that gift that goes above and beyond (Ruth Gottesman, what a story).
It’s a privilege to be tasked with generating opportunities for others to feel this emotion, and you know what, this may be the true joy of asking.