“To focus, encourage, and demonstrate”…what the Foundation is (really) all about
by Dale McGowan, Executive Director, FBB
[First appeared in the Foundation Beyond Belief blog]
It’s been interesting to watch news of Foundation Beyond Belief spread around the blogosphere. Most of the descriptions I’ve seen are pretty accurate, but there’s one persistent misconception: that the sole purpose of our charitable giving program is to demonstrate the generosity of atheists and humanists.
Time to fix that broken meme.
Our mission statement includes not one but three main purposes—”to focus, encourage, and demonstrate the generosity and compassion of atheists and humanists.” Demonstrating our generosity as a community is important, but it’s arguably the least important of the three. Far more important is focusing and encouraging that generosity and compassion in the first place.
FOCUS
“I am a humanist,” said Kurt Vonnegut in A Man Without a Country, “which means in part that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.” And most of the time, this is how humanism plays out—in a million individual acts of decency, generosity, and kindness. The Foundation exists in part to create from those million individual decent acts a powerfully motivated community of philanthropic humanists, making the world a better place not in spite of, but because of, their worldview.
ENCOURAGE
As I’ve noted before, when it comes to charitable giving, churchgoers give a much larger percentage of earned income to discretionary causes than non-churchgoers. Arthur C. Brooks (author of Who Really Cares) sees in this statistic “evidence of a gap in everyday virtue” between the religious and nonreligious (p. 40).
There’s a more obvious explanation. Fifty-two times a year, churchgoers pass a plate full of the generous donations of their friends and neighbors and make the decision whether to add to it or not. Non-churchgoers have no such regular and public nudge. So it seems reasonable that the difference in overall giving has much more to do with whether or not you have systematic opportunities for giving than some “gap in virtue.”
One of the central purposes of Foundation Beyond Belief is to create that opportunity, thereby building a systematic culture of giving among nontheists. By doing this, we hope to encourage humanists to be better humanists and to energize a previously under-represented sector of philanthropic giving.
It’s not a zero-sum game, taking dollars that individuals already donate on their own and “putting an atheist stamp” on them. The idea is to create new income for good charities by encouraging the nontheistic community to give more.
DEMONSTRATE
Our worldview makes our virtue no better or worse than anyone else’s. But when we focus our efforts and encourage each other to express the best impulses at the heart of our worldview, that will demonstrate to others the generosity and compassion of atheists and humanists.
Tell your friends and family about the Foundation. And when you do, be sure to mention all three purposes. We’re not just looking for credit—we’re also creating a focused community of giving and encouraging each other to the best possible expression of our inspiring worldview. We think those are things worth doing and hope you’ll agree.
And if you haven’t joined yet, NOW’S THE TIME!
First large-scale secular parent survey
Foundation Beyond Belief has two sides — a humanist charitable giving program, and an education and support program for secular parents.
The intrepid and talented Ute Mitchell (of CFI Portland’s outstanding secular parent program) has signed on as our Foundation’s Parent Community Coordinator. Her first task is taking the pulse of the secular parenting world — finding out just who we are and what parents need who are raising their kids without religion in a predominantly religious world.
I’ve spent the last four years immersed in this topic — talking to hundreds of nontheistic parents across the US and elsewhere, reading, analyzing, hanging out on the PBB Forum — but now it’s time for something more systematic. We’ve created a 10-minute survey to get a better sense of who you are and what you need. The first of several, this one focuses on general questions including parents’ background and current attitudes, family practices, and specific needs. A survey next week will go to existing secular parenting groups to see who and where they are, what’s working for them and what’s not, and what they need in terms of support. Other individual surveys will focus on specific topics including science, dealing with death, and kids’ peer experiences.
Over 400 600 700 1100 1400 1800 people have already taken the survey since it was posted two weeks ago. We’ll close it down shortly and let you know what we find.
Click here to take survey, or under the red arrow in the sidebar.
And if you haven’t yet joined the Foundation itself, now is the time! Our webmaster has installed a brand new, fully-secure donation system (now including a PayPal option) and made several other lovely upgrades to the site. Help us meet our April 1 goal of 1000 contributing members supporting ten charities working to improve this life and this world.
Full launch at last
Foundation Beyond Belief — a non-profit charitable and educational organization created to focus, encourage and demonstrate the generosity and compassion of atheists and humanists and to provide a comprehensive education and support program for nontheistic parents — is alive.
Foundation membership is now open, and our first slate of beneficiaries is in place.
And what a slate it is. There’s an organization of scientists committed to biodiversity, another providing health care to marginalized communities on five continents, and a secular alternative for addiction recovery. There’s a non-profit bringing safe drinking water to five countries in desperate need, an advocacy group for refugees fleeing war, and an advocacy group for asylum seekers fleeing torture. There’s a scholarship fund for GLBT students who have been disowned by their families, an organization protecting children in war zones, and another protecting the environment by working toward “greener” buildings and cities.
Selecting these has been a challenging and powerful experience. In the end, we chose a wide range of organizations in size, budget, mission, and scope. Members will now in turn choose which of these organizations they will support with a percentage of their monthly donations—which in turn will inform our future selections.
It’s a chance to watch the evolution of humanist philanthropy.
No more words. Time for pictures:
Now go. Join up.
UPDATE: As is to be expected with a site and project as complex as FBB, we’ve had some technical hiccups. If you’re having any trouble signing up, give it a couple of days and our brilliant webster Airan will have it all ironed out.
Hey bloggers, we need ya!
We’re getting ready for a big blog bonanza to announce the full launch of Foundation Beyond Belief on January 1.
An estimated 1.4 zillion bloggers will receive the text and video for the announcement on December 29 to be posted on New Year’s Day.
If you’d like to help make the big cyber-yawp that announces the Foundation to the world, go here to give us your contact information and we’ll send you the post on the 29th.
Thanks!
Evolution is candy! And so is volunteering.
Nothing seems to come out of Charlie’s Playhouse — whether blog post, newsletter, toy, shirt design, or just plain idea — that isn’t clever and fun. Yesterday Charlie’s boss Kate Miller announced a new project called Ask the Kids:
The 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s amazing book On The Origin of Species is coming up this month. To celebrate, we’re starting a conversation about evolution with kids everywhere…
We’re asking parents to pose one question to their kids: ‘What is evolution?’ …and let us know the very first answer.
Kids’ first thoughts are wonderful — charmingly wrong, spot-on accurate, or revealing what is really important. (“Evolution is candy,” said one 3-year-old.)
We’ll weave their answers into a short, fun video and release it to the world on November 24th, the 150th anniversary of “Origin of Species.” Your kids will be the stars!
Deadline is November 16, and there are parental releases to be signed and such, so don’t put it off! Click here for more.
IN OTHER NEWS: Application forms are now online for volunteer positions with Foundation Beyond Belief. We’re looking for
MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANTS to build the Foundation’s membership prior to the full launch on January 1 launch. Especially seeking those with knowledge of/access to Unitarian Universalism, Ethical Culture, local and/or national atheist and humanist organizations, general parenting groups, Atheist Nexus, or existing forums or groups devoted to our cause areas.
CHARITABLE GIVING ASSISTANTS to assist our Charitable Giving Coordinator in gathering information about potential featured charities, managing and organizing charity nominations by members, and working with featured charities to select video, graphics, and text to present the best information for members during the feature period.
FORUM MODERATOR beginning January 1, 2010 to manage an active forum for discussion of our ten charitable categories, philanthropy in general, and humanism.
SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR with significant experience as a user and/or administrator of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Atheist Nexus, YouTube, etc. to monitor, coordinate, and update the Foundation’s many social media accounts.
PARENT EDUCATION COORDINATOR to help plan and execute the first stages of our program of parent support communities nationwide AND to establish a parent resource center on the website (Informal volunteer position to start. On January 1, 2010, we hope to open a formal search and convert to a paid quarter-time position.)
PARENT EDUCATION RESOURCE ASSISTANTS to staff our online parent resource center (including downloable documents, curricula, reviews, and family ideas for our parent education program) in conjunction with our Parent Ed Coordinator and Webmaster.
PARENTING COMMUNITY LEADERS to form groups of ten or more nontheistic parents in their local communities with a dual social and educational purpose. Leaders will receive training from me via web-based conferencing and financial and material support to get their communities off the ground.
Unsiloed / Can you hear me now? 4
Two of the corners of my life in which I am the least siloed — in which perspectives and opinions bump against each other more than anywhere else — are family and Facebook.
In most other ways, my family and Facebook are different, even antithetical. My extended family’s mix of perspectives is a received fact, and one for which I’m grateful, especially as a parent. (More on that eventually.) By contrast, the diversity of my Facebook friends results from my own choices.
Another difference: Families don’t often talk openly about beliefs and opinions. As Stephen Prothero put it, they do religion like mad but rarely talk about religion. Facebook, on the other hand, is all about sharing opinions (and every other thing that crosses the cortex. Seriously, pass me one more goddam virtual mojito and I’ll pour it on your motherboard).
I’ll get to family later in the series. First Facebook, in two parts.
I’m a Facebook Slut. I climb into friendhood with anyone who asks. My 600+ Friends fall mostly into five groups: Family, K-12 friends, College friends, Post-college friends, and Readers of my books.
It’s interesting that those five groups are roughly arranged in both the order I entered them in life AND in increasing order of siloing. The older I get, the more they’ve reflected my own choices. My extended family is mostly religious, though they vary in intensity. My K-12 friends mostly differ from me in religious and political views, but not as much as family. Friends met at Berkeley are about half secular and half religious, though almost all politically progressive, as are post-college friends. And readers of my books are naturally pretty secular and (as far as I can tell) mostly progressive politically. See how the silo narrows from left to right?
It’d be easy to cull this list down to a comfortable silo of 400 who would tend to nod at my every Facebook status and post and link. But I’ve been in enough of those situations to know it’s not good for me. Makes me lazy. Gives me the queasy feeling I used to get as I stood in chuckling clutches at this or that atheist meeting, basking in the glow (at last, at last!) of people who saw the world as I did.
It’s helpful at first. Then it gets really old.
About two years ago, my writing and my speeches to like-minded groups began centering on the need to spend a bit of our seemingly boundless other-critical energy on a peek in the mirror. An example was a post titled “Six things Christians do (much) better than secularists.” Some loved it — others were pissed. I considered that a good sign.
I continued in my talks to humanist groups around the US, noting that churches ironically do humanistic community better than we do, and that we can and should fix that. Then in my first announcement about Foundation Beyond Belief, I pointed to the statistical fact that the average individual religious believer gives more to charitable causes than the average nonreligious individual — and was met again with both support and outrage. Never mind that I was making the larger point that it’s pretty clearly a structural problem, not a moral one — that churches have created a “culture of giving” by providing regular and easy opportunities to give. Still a bitter pill for some. And again, I thought that a fine thing.
So I guess I’m involved in a two-part communications project here. I want to hear and be heard more effectively outside of my silos, but I also want to stir up the complacency within my silos. I’ve been doing the latter out loud for a couple of years now. As for the former, I’ve been doing it but not sharing the experiment, until now.
So again — Because of my slutty tendencies, Facebook is one of my main opportunities for adventures in unsiloed communication.
No, I’m NOT talking about deconverting anyone. Haven’t spent a lick of energy on that in years. I realized that people will think about worldview questions on their own schedule and under their own control or not at all, and that active attempts to force the issue usually drive them the other way. No need to “give” anyone reasons to believe or not believe. The reasons are scattered all around our feet, just a click or a thought away. At best, we can spur each other’s curiosity —How interesting, an ethical atheist. How fascinating, an intellectual evangelical– by dismantling preconceptions. And the best way to do that is by being out and normal.
(Funny thing — since I stopped trying to change people’s minds, I’ve started receiving emails from people whose minds I’ve changed. Lots and lots.)
Facebook is one of the places I can be out and normal. It’s also possible to use Facebook to create a silo, of course, and I know many people do just that, consciously or not. Befriend a like mind here, defriend an unlike one there, and pretty soon we’ve built ourselves another echo chamber.
As a result, unlike my more siloed corners, I know when I post something on Facebook that it will be seen by several of the most prominent atheists and humanists in the world AND my wife’s extended Baptist family, by Republican neighbors AND Democratic friends — by hundreds of people I love and respect, including many who see the world in a profoundly different way from me. It causes me to take just that little extra bit of care to be accurate, to be fair, but also honest — to be myself, but also to improve myself. I’m not interested in pandering — instead, I try to say things of substance in such a way that I can be heard by multiple human audiences at once.
Next week I’ll give a recent example — a Facebook exchange that illustrates what I think I’ve learned about hearing and being heard.
Foundation Beyond Belief website goes LIVE!
Y’all have been SO patient. At last it’s October 1, and thanks to your generous support in the recent Fund Drive, the pre-launch website for Foundation Beyond Belief has gone LIVE!
This site will carry us through to the full launch on January 1. During this period, you can sign up for membership, watch a video about the Foundation, learn about our first featured causes as they are announced, nominate charities for future consideration, donate to the Foundation itself, apply for volunteer positions, and follow the development of our multi-author blog.
In January we get the whole magillah: a vibrant social network, a discussion forum on these great issues, a full slate of beneficiaries to support, and a member profile panel so you can distribute your monthly donation as you wish.
But for now, let’s get our oars in the water. See you there!
Oh, you beautiful people
The Foundation Beyond Belief Fund Drive finished gorgeously. Including direct contributions outside of the ChipIn system, we came within two percent of our goal, raising an astonishing $8590 from 194 contributors in two weeks.
It’s one thing to hear people expressing casual interest in a new idea and quite another to see them digging into their resources — especially during the current economic unpleasantness — to make it happen. And that’s just what you did.
There’s something startling and moving about the realization that this is money freely given in support of an idea. It’s one thing to give to an organization with a track record, but there’s something special — overwhelming, really — about seeing this kind of support in advance.
So a heartfelt thank you from the Board, our volunteer staff, and me. We’ve had plenty of willing feet on the pedal. Now, thanks to our donors’ generous support, we have gas in the tank to finish out 2009 and launch on time.
What’s that you say? You missed the drive? Or you want to donate again? No worries. A brand-new widget seems to have grown in the sidebar for ongoing donations to help us pay for logo design, bookkeeping, and all sorts of other necessary things both sexy and unsexy. Thanks for considering it when you can.
Last Day — let’s bring it home!
We’re in the final hours of the Foundation Beyond Belief fund drive. As of 10AM noon 8PM on this the final day, we’ve raised an amazing 81 percent 85 percent 90 percent of the funds we need to see us through to January 1!
It’s getting exciting now. The Board has selected two of the featured causes for the launch and will announcing them (and the rest) beginning in October. Both the website and brand new logo are under construction. And our publicist is feverishly working on a promotional campaign that will swell the ranks of our membership.
Thousands of atheists and humanists coming together to make a positive change in countless lives around the world–THAT’S the vision we’re building here. And it’s working because of your generosity in this fund drive.
If you haven’t chipped in yet, I hope you’ll help us reach the goal. Click on the ChipIn! button in the sidebar to give whatever you can manage. Thanks for your support and encouragement.
Dale
(NOTE: The widget says the drive ends Sept 2 — that means midnight tonight.)
That’s what I’M talkin’ about!
After watching the Founding Fund Drive for Foundation Beyond Belief slow nearly to a stop at 37 percent of the goal, we are now back on track with a bullet. In a single day, the generosity and commitment of our supporters sent us tearing through the halfway point. As of Wednesday morning, we’re 54 percent of the way home.
We’re not finished yet, but we’re now within striking distance of establishing the first-stage web presence for this pioneering effort in humanist philanthropy on October 1. At that point members will begin registering, setting up personal profiles, learning about our first slate of beneficiaries, and planning their monthly donation strategy.
Donations received between October 1 and December 31 go to the Foundation itself to help fund the first year of operations. When the full site launches on January 1, members will begin distributing their monthly donation among ten cause areas, forming groups, debating causes, following a brand new blog — and making a profound positive impact in the world.
The renewed vigor of the Fund Drive has energized everyone working for the Foundation and redoubled our determination to justify your trust and do this thing right.
Look for a normal, non-Foundational post tomorrow soon. In the meantime, many thanks to those who have donated! For those who were waiting for the drama of the final stretch: THE END TIMES ARE UPON US! Help us reach the goal that will put the Foundation on solid ground by donating through the ChipIn widget in the sidebar.