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Fundraising Beyond Transactions: Rediscovering the Logic of the Gift w/ Jason Lewis
40 Plays30 days ago
Most fundraisers have never heard the term “gift theory.” Yet it may explain many of the frustrations we experience in our work.In this conversation,
Jason Lewis and I explore a foundational question: what actually makes a gift different from a sale or a tax?
Jason introduces the concept of “modes of exchange” and explains how societies have historically organized themselves around three different ways of relating: gift, market, and coercion.
We examine how modern fundraising may have borrowed too heavily from sales and bureaucratic models, and why that matters for donor retention, trust, and long-term relationships.
If you have ever felt that fundraising can become transactional, pressured, or overly mechanical, this episode will help you step back and reconsider the moral architecture behind what we do.Topics we cover:
-Jason’s fundraising origin story
-What gift theory is and where it comes from
-Gift mode vs sales mode vs coercive mode
-Why fundraising often feels transactional
-Whether we are using the wrong toolbox in our profession
This episode sets the foundation for a deeper exploration of generosity, responsibility, and the true nature of the gift.
Find Jason's Substack, The Butterfly Effect here: https://responsive.substack.com/
Looking for fundraising coaching? Check out www.abundantvision.net
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast. Whether you are a seasoned professional or a first-time fundraiser, we have the advice you need to take your next step toward major gift mastery.
Meet Jason Lewis
00:00:19
Speaker
I'm your host, Tom Dauber, President of Abundant Vision Philanthropic Consulting.
00:00:27
Speaker
Well, this great pleasure. Today, have the privilege of having Jason Lewis here with me of responsive fundraising, as well as the butterfly effect.
00:00:40
Speaker
Jason, I've been following you on LinkedIn for quite some time. So delighted to have you on. Thank you for agreeing to be part of the show. Yeah, I'm delighted to be here too.
00:00:52
Speaker
And I probably hear that periodically that folks have been following me around a little bit on LinkedIn or my opinions on working out my opinions on Substack or something like that. So I'm glad to take the conversation to another level.
Genesis of Gift Theory Discussion
00:01:08
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, the origins of this conversation he really started last month or so we were chatting, ah you were sharing about some things you're doing with a consulting a group, and then we got on to the topic of the gift.
00:01:24
Speaker
and and what that is and gift theory and all those sorts of things. And um anyway, I appreciate you coming on the show to talk about gift theory. and And we've got a lot of folks that listen to the show that are new to the profession or maybe folks that have moved into the nonprofit world from other roles or for other reasons. And this was going to be really helpful for them. But before we get into all that sort of stuff,
00:01:49
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about your fundraiser origin story. How did you find your way into fundraising in the first place?
Jason's Fundraising Journey
00:01:56
Speaker
What were you doing before this work became part of your life? You know, I've spent my whole time, a whole career in this space. my My wife and I, shortly after we married, went to work for a children's home in the southwest corner of Virginia.
00:02:11
Speaker
Both of us had every intention to work with the children. And um ah my wife was pretty good at it, working directly with the kids. But I ended up being more like like an older brother who did not keep them youngsters in line.
00:02:25
Speaker
And so yeah coincidentally, they offered me the fundraising position. They helped me join the local Rotary Club. They got me a lot of training with an organization called the Christian Stewardship Association. I don't think that organization doesn't exist anymore.
00:02:40
Speaker
um and And fundraising, I'm like a lot of us. I came through the back door. And I was finishing, I was also stumbling my way through college. I was still, my wife and I met met and married before we finished college. And so I was finishing college at the time. And and so fundraising was was new and and it seemed to fit. So it stuck.
00:03:04
Speaker
That's awesome.
Impact of Jason's Upbringing
00:03:05
Speaker
Now, did you grow up in the South? Where were you from originally? My dad was U.S. Coast Guard. So we moved around quite a bit. I graduated high school, Thomas, in...
00:03:17
Speaker
in Astoria, Oregon of all places. Met my wife in Savannah, which is where we were earlier in high school. my my parents retired in South Georgia. Dad had two assignments in Mobile. So we did plenty of, ah you know, if you listen to me long enough, you'll hear that Southern drawl in there. But that's not because I grew up, you know, exclusively in the South. It's just because the Coast Guard had a tendency to be very coastal, and so you know either on the Atlantic or the Gulf. and we spent we had a number of Dad had a number of assignments on the West Coast as well growing up. So, yeah, I've kind of been around. The only place you Europe, you're up in Michigan, right? Ohio. Oh, Ohio. Yeah, that's the one part of the – there's certain parts of the country that don't don't open up to a big, giant ah water source, and so those are the parts of the country that I'm not as familiar with.
00:04:08
Speaker
That makes total sense. Yeah, yeah.
Baseball and Fundraising Analogies
00:04:10
Speaker
Well, before we jump in further, when you're not fundraising, when you're not consulting, when you're not teaching all the things that you do, what do you actually do with your free time? What helps you disconnect and recharge?
00:04:24
Speaker
Yeah, so my we've lived in York, Pennsylvania, Thomas, for 18 years. My younger daughter will be 18 this year. We moved here right around the time she was born.
00:04:36
Speaker
And we have been fans of the York Revolution, which is a small independent team, a team in an independent league. So these aren't the teams that make it. These are, this is, this is outside the farm system, right?
00:04:49
Speaker
um Are we talking baseball? Yeah, baseball. Baseball, yeah yeah. Yeah. So that's what we do. I'm answering your question about, you know, what do I enjoy doing when I'm not consulting and not teaching? Usually I spend, baseball season will start here in about another four to six weeks and we'll spend...
00:05:06
Speaker
Six months at the ballpark. Wow. Is this one of those teams that plays the Savannah Bananas and all that sort of thing? No, the Savannah Bananas, well, I think they're part of an independent arrangement too. They're not part of the farm system and they're not part of the – we have about – with what's called the Mid-Atlantic League, it's a league with about 12 or 15 teams.
00:05:28
Speaker
in and around mid mid-Atlantic. But those guys, I suspect, if they're part of an official league or perhaps part of a team in the in the south in the southeast. But, you know, it's funny you mentioned that when I was in high school in Savannah, they were the ah the team that actually played at that stadium was the Cardinals.
00:05:49
Speaker
cardinals And then they became the Sand Nats, and then they became the Bananas. um And so i've I've been in that stadium where those guys play quite a bit back in my high school and college years. so Oh, that's awesome. little bit of history there with that team. a lot of folks don't know that that team has some history that before they were Bananas, they were...
00:06:13
Speaker
Cardinals and Sand Nats. Well, it seems like that rebrand has worked worked for them. Yes, it has. It definitely seems to have worked for them. And being as fond of Savannah as my wife and I are, it's I'm embarrassed to say that we haven't gotten back down there to see a game. But if we were in the area, we'd certainly go.
00:06:31
Speaker
You know, there's an interesting segue here, Jason. ah You know, the Savannah Bananas, they changed their approach to the way they were doing baseball, and and they've had a lot of success. And I think today we're going to talk a little bit about how different approaches in fundraising can really transform work as well, right? Yeah, yeah.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah, we're going try. We're going to try. I'll be gentle. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. So like I mentioned before, and we were just having a simple conversation about gift theory.
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah.
Introduction to Gift Theory
00:07:05
Speaker
And to my surprise, I've actually never heard of gift theory before. Right, right. Now I think I know why. I think I've been doing a little more reading, a little more thinking. I think I know, i think I've been exposed to some of this stuff, but just not with the same terminology. Yeah, yeah.
00:07:20
Speaker
But I'm sure that 100% of my listeners, unless they follow you, probably have not heard of it. yeah Tell us what gift theory is and why it should matter lives. So the most of us, the first place most of us can encounter gift theory, which is just basically the theoretical frameworks, the way we think around gifts differently than like we think about commodities or taxes, any kind of finance. The first place, Thomas, that most of us would encounter that would have been if we took a sociology class or like an anthropology class in college.
00:07:54
Speaker
That would have been the first place we would have encountered it. um And we would have, our sociology or anthropology professor might have referenced something called modes of exchange.
00:08:06
Speaker
And modes of exchange is just this notion that, or this recognition that throughout all of human history, going all the way back to the most primitive forms of, um all the way back ah to when human beings were organizing, essentially, society, they essentially had three different modes.
00:08:24
Speaker
of exchanging goods and services and relating to one another. um And we've done that through gifts or gift gift through like an economy that's sort of centered around gifts. We've had economies that are very centered around something that looks like taxes,
00:08:42
Speaker
or things that look like taxes and then like what we're all very familiar with in this very present day world very centered around commodities so you know when we talk about when you or i or our colleagues talk about being in a very capitalistic or market-driven society we're talking about that commodity-driven sort of way of and what the sociologist or and anthropology professor would have been trying to get us to understand is is that there's been moments in time you know just Even in some cases, just going back a couple hundred years, there have been places where that role of the market and the commodity hasn't been as strong or central to the way that we ah you know organize ourselves.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah. Tell me, so I'm, you know.
Gift Theory's Relevance to Fundraising
00:09:35
Speaker
What's the usefulness of this? where does Break this down. So what does that mean for the executive director at a small million dollar budget nonprofit? mean It doesn't mean much of anything for the executive director at the small mom and pop rescue mission or charity. the idea that this guy wants to talk about this notion of gifting doesn't probably make a lot of sense. I think those that makes probably the most sense to at least give it some credence and to sort of ponder it are those of us who've been in the fundraising space long enough to know that we've got lots of
00:10:07
Speaker
Lots of issues. We've got lots of things we like to complain about, talk about how things don't go right. You know, I shared with you when you and I first met, I said I hosted a podcast for five years and I hosted fundraisers like you and I are doing this here today. And I listened for five years to fundraisers tell me all the rights and wrongs and all the different ways that we should fix everything that perhaps isn't so right about this situation.
00:10:32
Speaker
thing that we call the fundraising profession. And what's interesting, what I started to pick up on, sort of almost rather coincidentally, not really necessarily looking for it, is I started to realize that the one thing in the whole sort of kit and caboodle when we talk about what fundraising is all about, the one thing that fundraisers never really sort of seem to want to talk about is the gift itself and whether the logic of the gift or this notion of gift theory
00:11:03
Speaker
and has any utility has any value in terms of answering some of our questions and setting the expectations for how these relationships work or you know uh yeah Well, and we've got a lot of ground to cover, but just to set the table, yeah the dots I think I'm connecting. so you know You're a newcomer to GIF. I am, right. So so we're learning together.
00:11:32
Speaker
but Give your listeners the... yeah Thomas is a newcomer to gift theory. So gift mode's about mutuality, right? Yeah. So the one author that I shared with you, she's a sociologist, historian at Princeton. And she takes this, she and she would sort of be in this category of folks who understand. She wouldn't describe herself as a gift theorist. Mm-hmm.
00:11:58
Speaker
uh natalie zim and davis is the the she
Practical Implications of Gift Theory
00:12:00
Speaker
uses this term gift mode sales mode and coercive mode and these are modes of relating um which is the the lane you know so it's it's taking this notion of gift theory and it's saying that we can relate to one another as if we're organized around sales or taxes or coercion or we can organize relationships around the notion of a gift um and uh most of us are pretty familiar with that we think about christmas time that we understand what how i get how the gift sort of organizes things but i oftentimes say that the gift if you were involved for example growing up in a local church a local church is a essentially a gift economy in many ways so um
00:12:48
Speaker
We don't really pass around, know, commodity exchange doesn't really work inside the local church, and we don't generally collect taxes inside the local church. And so that's probably the most familiar that a lot of us would have with a gift economy and needs do get met i mean if you and i think about our involvement perhaps in a local church or a religious organization needs do get met and we don't we don't use prices there's no price nobody has to be you know there's no kings or queens you know setting tax rates and and yet the economy in a local church tends to work yeah
00:13:30
Speaker
the The thing when I think about gift mode or mutuality, it strikes me that it's based on mutual recognition and trust. Yeah. we're We're focused on relationship, belonging and shared meaning. Yeah, I got that right.
00:13:45
Speaker
And the participation voluntary, relational rather than transactional or compelled. When I put those things together and I think about them like that, what comes to mind is training that I got years ago yeah on donor-centered fundraising. Yeah, yeah, sure.
00:14:03
Speaker
you know And so initially when I came across this, you know it was compelling and interesting to begin with, but I'm like, boy, this is so foreign. Why is it so foreign? And and when I began to think about it like that, i it began to connect some dots like, okay, this I agree with everything Jason is saying about giving,
00:14:21
Speaker
But yet I've not heard about it in this way. think a lot of the thrust of this does relate to a lot of those trainings that are out there about fundraising from a donor-centered perspective, or even some of maybe Julie Emlin's work around stewardship, ah potentially. I don't know. ah Does that sound right to you, Jason? but Maybe halfway. The gift... I'll take it.
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, I'll give you maybe half of that. So the more you understand the way that a gift works, a gift is supposed to work both ways. It's supposed to work both ways. Yeah. And so at any given time, in a gift economy or in a gift relationship, you and I would not play the role of a donor or a giver and a receipt. We would not play those roles directly.
00:15:07
Speaker
in isolat so you know There would be times when I would be equally on the receiving or giving end as the other. And so when I look at donor-centered fundraising, I say, okay, I see an individual who's who's giving, but I don't necessarily see how it translates into receiving. So if you if you work that out, and i'm sure I'm sure there's plenty of examples of folks who would be very true donors.
00:15:30
Speaker
donor-centered thinking that would say there are ways that we um the other thing is is i think we tend to lose some of the obligation the gift the gift is there not to be about the transaction or the amount that is being exchanged it's there to form a relationship it's there to actually form this this bond most people who write about the gift and they're making reference to kind of where we're at here would talk about almost like it's glue like it's an adhesive that sort of sticks this together okay
00:16:06
Speaker
When I look four out of five first-time donors don't renew, something in it, no matter how much you sprinkle donor-centered language on it or something else, something's not clicking. They don't understand, or we don't understand, or something's getting, because I think there ought to be some sense of obligation that says, okay, once we enter into this relationship, we're in this for the long haul.
00:16:31
Speaker
I don't think donor retention should be as hard as it is, And I think it's because we've let the donor off the hook using more of a commodity consumer-like logic that says, you know, if the donor wants to walk into Walmart and buy something, but that wants to shop over at Target next week, that's okay.
00:16:51
Speaker
I don't buy that when I think of the gift. The gift relationship is more, you know, it's more sticky. Yeah. Yeah.
Writing on the Morality of Gift Theory
00:17:00
Speaker
So you shared with me an article from your substack called The Moral Architecture of the Gift.
00:17:07
Speaker
What was happening in the nonprofit world? What are you seeing presently that made you feel like you needed to write about this?
00:17:18
Speaker
And... When I launched that podcast six or seven years ago, I had written a small book and I had written a book in response to what I thought were some of the the overriding challenges that our sector the fundraising community was being confronted with. And then subsequent to that book coming out and listening to all these conversations, I started to just sort of have to be, I was sort of forced into making sense of,
00:17:45
Speaker
all these other things that maybe we haven't gotten right. And articles like the one you're referencing, I started to do my homework ah on how did the fundraising profession evolve over time. And if you look at the fundraising profession, it evolved over the, throughout the 20th century. The people that we would sort of credit as being sort of the earliest, sort of the pioneers in our space you know Very late 19th, early 20th century folks who are trying to make sense of what it is we're trying to do in a rapidly growing and expanding consumer economy. And instead of picking up the logic of like the gift, we just did a lot of borrowing of the logic of the commodity.
00:18:35
Speaker
And so you see it, you see one of the things I was hearing on that pod fast track to the podcast. And I'm listening to these fundraisers. One of the number one complaints that I heard Thomas was fundraising is so transactional.
Critique of Modern Fundraising
00:18:50
Speaker
I just heard it every couple of interviews, you know we would be having conversations, not unlike this one. And they just kept some fundraising is so transactional. I've already picked on the donor retention rates, but you know here we are, this profession that's evolved, sort of become quite a legitimate career path in last couple of decades. But at the same time, we keep seeing these reports that, you know whereas 20 or 25 years ago, two-thirds of Americans were giving, now we're less than half
00:19:21
Speaker
You know, so, you know, what is it we're doing? know, and I'm just saying, hey, maybe we just grabbed the wrong toolbox or the wrong sets of tools or draw. Maybe we drew some conclusions about who the donor is.
00:19:41
Speaker
And it's consequently led us to where we find ourselves today. That's all the time we have today, but be sure to tune in next week to hear the next part of this exciting conversation.
00:19:52
Speaker
Now, if you've enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to subscribe and give us a five-star rating on your podcast provider. I'm your host, Tom Daubert. Thank you for joining me as we journey together towards major gift mastery on the Abundant Vision Fundraising Podcast.