Gathering Meaning

The holidays can have many layers when they involve not only your family but a community full of families looking to you to make theirs thankful, merry, and bright. As is the case for our personal holiday moments, we want to know how to make it about the people, not just the event. But when the needs are abundant, and the work is overwhelming, it can be challenging to be present.

Survival mode can lead to missed opportunities because we are utilizing all our resources to handle what is right in front of us. Sometimes, what is facing you are very long lines of people or cars to pick up holiday offerings to help make the season at least positive. Other times, you manage the end-of-the-year giving with the hopes that you don’t miss out on any of the giving cheer that every other non-profit around you is also striving for.

People and patterns tell us a lot when we pay attention. Observe what you do, why you do it, the results of those intentions and actions, and who is doing the same work around you. What are the people themselves telling you with the patterns they display and the pictures they paint with their words? Why do these details matter? Because they can help you to determine what you should be gathering in and giving out, but in a different way than you might think.

These people-gathering times are information-gathering opportunities. But a question that can drive what you seek to learn is, “How are you going to use what you learn?” What you desire to know will determine the questions you ask and how you ask those questions.

To that end, let’s examine some typical holiday season patterns for the nonprofit world and consider additional approaches for observing the layers of life the people coming to you can shed some light upon. 

Gathering Resources and People
Gathering the dollars and physical goods needed to give away is often the ongoing top-of-mind thought for the leadership of a nonprofit. But this is true, especially during the holiday season at the end of the year.

If you think about it, it can be a competitive atmosphere in the nonprofit world to see whose voice and story can be the most prominent. Prominence opens the floodgates. Smaller nonprofits only wish they had the resources to build a platform and find a voice big enough to match the bold, booming messaging of the largest and seemingly most successful. Difficult? Yes. Impossible? Absolutely not.

No one usually wakes up to success. Strategic intent is built over time and through clearly intentional activity that gets you there. Hamel and Prahalad note, “The goal of strategic intent is to fold the future back into the present.” But the pursuit of that future isn’t through “unfettered ambition.” [i]

Your total resource investment—time, energy, money, brain power, heart—will go somewhere. So, in this holiday season of your nonprofit or agency work, what are you gathering people for, and why are you specifically providing them what you provide?

Here’s a tough question: What does successful gathering and giving look like for your work? Something has to guide what you measure and why you measure those given “things.” The more precise you are on what success means for your work, the greater your chance of accomplishing it.

Using reports to tell your story to donors can empower you to gather resources so that you can provide every kind of supportive empowerment you do throughout the year. CharityTracker has a robust Reports feature that can empower this work beyond typical spreadsheets.[ii] Use these reports as a team to think through the nature and results of your giving. Big-money donors like to see deeper and more transformative impact. Do your reports show such results?

How many years have the measures shown in your reports remained the same? I’m not saying the numbers aren’t growing. Is the story those reports tell about resources you give and people you serve a story of lives being made stronger, healthier, more stable, and even visionary? That kind of storyline happens on purpose. To be “on” purpose means you must know what that purpose is and build on that platform.

Gathering in the people you serve isn’t necessarily difficult when what you offer is greatly desired or needed. If you have it and they need it and know you have it, they will usually come. Sometimes, the challenge is getting the word out when you are in the less visible nonprofit stage. Getting the word out means you or someone from your organization needs to get out.

Walk streets handing out flyers, attend neighborhood meetings, attend nonprofit and agency gatherings where networking and sharing occur, and set up appointments with business and government leaders who have proven to care about and for their community. The list goes on, so get going!

Giving What You Have
What are you giving? You can probably provide me with a quick list of your offerings easily. My question is about that basic layer, but it is more about what those resources lead to. The effects of the resources are also part of what you give. In what ways are they helping? How do you define help? What is your giving leading to for that person or family’s life?

One aspect of this season for me is awe and wonder. These broadening experiences create vision for me. Vision is vital for progress in life. Just as strategic intent (vision, in other words) is a guiding force for your organization, it is for individuals and families.

These times of connecting with people provide an opportunity to stir up vision and hope in a way that moves them forward. What if they lay in bed that night thinking about the time you invested with them, talking about the days, months, and years ahead? That conversation could lead to some new dreams to pursue and a belief that they can happen. That is a gift.

Another aspect to consider in your giving is who else in your community is giving essentially the same resources. Is it unnecessary duplication?[iii] Sometimes duplication is necessary to cover the needs. The gift of vision-stirring can never be overdone, in my opinion. What exactly are the needs of the people and the community? The next holiday season of giving may need an adjustment, which means the months of gathering before the season will need to be different.

The holidays are also a time when people need hope. You being there to see them and meet them is a gift. In essence, you hold out hope to many who walk through the holidays in a vacuum. What you give is a tangible resource and a tug on the heart. Part of what you and your team give is yourselves. Don’t take that lightly. Take it very seriously, and be sure the “self” you are giving is a gift. As a team, hold each other accountable to the atmosphere of attitude in this intense season.

One last but important word here. Beware of going through the motions of giving. The holidays can lead nonprofits to become giving machines. Intensely busy people can give things and little time. Why not find a way to provide more than what is expected? You have more than what is in your hands. What about what is in your heart?

Gathering Meaning
Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, describes what motivates people in their work. One of the factors he unpacks is purpose. “The most deeply motivated people—not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied,” he says, “hitch their desires to a cause larger than themselves.”[iv] That is the space of meaning.

The meaning of information doesn’t always lie on the surface or in the amalgamation of as much data as possible. Interpretation of information impacts our response. Let’s look at two streams of information:

• Stories from the Data
• Stories from the People

Beyond measuring how many people you give resources to, what do you know about the people? Do you know their stories? Why do they need your assistance? Please don’t assume that because you see someone frequently, you know them well. You may know last year’s story, but do you know this year’s?

One of CharityTracker's features that your team should strongly consider and utilize is “Outcomes.” I’m not going to invest a lot here to unpack the whys and hows of that feature since I have a blog focused on Outcomes. The story this data can tell you will be a bit more contextualized to the journey of a given individual or family.

Sometimes, mass distribution can miss the opportunity to prepare for the following year. The conversations you have in these months can inform the year to come, providing detailed guidance if you sit with the problem-defining and solution-designing journey long enough.[v]

Set up your process to capture some story. What if you have some people from your team or volunteers known to make people feel safe ask, “Sometimes the holiday season is difficult for people. How are you?” “How is this season different from last year for you and your family?”

Yes, the demographics of the people you serve need to be gathered and utilized in strategy development. If you use CharityTracker, that information was most likely collected during previous visits. But often, the holiday season brings out new people. Consider the difference in rent and food prices this year compared to last. That will put individuals and families in lines who haven’t been there before.

The other part of their story is what is going on in their heart at that moment. For many, the holidays are a tough time of the year. It could be their first without a loved one. That person’s departure from this earth might be why the person in front of you needs your assistance.

If you aim to find something new, you will. I’m not saying to make it up; I’m inviting you to create the space for stories to gather.

What if you have some people from your team or some volunteers known for making people feel safe asking a different kind of question? In an unhurried way, they could approach some in the line, noting and asking, “Sometimes the holiday season is difficult for people. How are you?”

‘Tis the season when neighbors' needs are highlighted and responded to at the highest for the year. Let’s ensure meaning from the busy.

Action Points

• In this holiday season of your nonprofit or agency work, what are you gathering people for, and why are you specifically providing them what you provide? What does successful gathering and giving look like for your work?
• Who are the people from your team known to make people feel safe? Have them ask those you are serving a new question or two to gather some new information. A couple of examples: “How is this season different than last year for you and your family?” or “Sometimes the holiday season is difficult for people. How are you?”
• Utilize the Reports feature of CharityTracker to learn more about your work. Click here to learn more about Reports.
• Ask yourself and your team, “Why do we want more information from the neighbors we serve? What do we want to do with it? In what ways do we need it to inform us?
• How should/will next year look different for our work?

[i] Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad, Strategic Intent. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Press, 2010.
[ii] https://vimeo.com/208909765#t=3968s. NOTE: Simon Solutions, Inc.'s development team continues to sharpen the capacities of the CharityTracker Reports feature as our communities and networks express design needs.
[iii] One of the strengths of a shared case management database like CharityTracker is the community-wide strategic coordination of resource distribution. Reducing unnecessary duplication frees up resources to be allocated in other ways in the overall community development strategy.
[iv] Daniel Pink, Drive. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009.
[v] Invest some time in two blogs exploring the Simply Available approach to solution creation: https://www.charitytracker.com/en/blog/what-you-see-the-problem, https://www.charitytracker.com/en/blog/what-you-see-part-2-the-solution.

Do you desire to strengthen your CharityTracker or OasisInsight network to new levels of collaboration and impact? Reach out to Chuck today to schedule your conversation: chuck@simonsolutions.com. 

Dr. Chuck Coward serves as Community Impact Specialist for Simon Solutions, Inc. Chuck has invested over 35 years in fostering human and community development from a variety of places and roles, including as a pastor, non-profit Executive Director, Director of Development, businessman, consultant, university professor, The Struggle Coach, and the founder of Entrusted Foundation. Serving to make people and communities stronger is his great passion. Chuck is the proud husband to Anita, dad to four, and granddaddy to eight.