The R Word

When making Pittsburgh the place to start my family’s life in America almost 11 years ago, I thought of the famous business mantra: Location, Location, Location.  The famous L word!   In the for-profit world, business gurus would swear that everything goes up or down depending upon this concept of location.

Getting back to the Steeler Nation…shortly after moving to Pittsburgh, my wife and I together with our two kids were invited to a neighbor’s home, who later became close and dear friends of our family.  During dinner, our new friend mentioned that she wanted to introduce us to “her” elephant.  Sure that I was losing something in translation, I did not give it too much thought.  Shortly after dinner we were introduced through a series of pictures and mementos, to the elephant the family had adopted through the Pittsburgh Zoo.

“Adopting” an elephant should be considered here as an understatement. We were introduced to one of the most special relationships, richly and well-thought through by the Pittsburgh Zoo. This family was embedded in this beautiful relationship with an elephant they had adopted through the local zoo; visiting, celebrating birthdays, taking care of, comforting in times of sickness, having parties and whatnot.  I want to admit that we joined one of these “take care” visits and saw firsthand how much this relationship really means both to the family, the team working at the zoo and to (as you would probably guess) the elephant too.

Just in case you have any doubts… I am as serious as can be about the intent, the performance and the relationship ingredient entrenched in the success of the Pittsburgh Zoo’s marketing and fundraising. I look to this example and I think that there is something here that we can learn about from them…

A few years after that occasion I became aware of the amazing philanthropic undertaking Oprah Winfrey started in South Africa by creating a “dream school” for girls.  I have seen various videos about the process of putting the school together, which is a leadership school for teenage girls.  Oprah may have had in mind to put together a Carnegie Mellon-level college for impoverished girls and started a journey of building a magical relationship; networking with fragments of families in vastly remote and distant villages in South Africa to reach young women, many of which had no hope left in their sick body and devastated soul.  Realizing that running a school, very much like her own TV show, requires a top-notch professional team behind the scenes, Oprah started to build (in Africa!) a professional team of educators, all directed to the masterful achievement called the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy.  Not only saving the lives of young women by giving them an academic and professional future they would have never been able to receive in their part of the world, but would most likely not be able to achieve elsewhere in the world.

There is more than one way of looking at Oprah’s amazing philanthropic achievement in South Africa– Conviction, Passion, Care and more.  None of these (to my mind) completely explains the success of putting together something which is as amazing as this school. Oprah’s achievement in my mind stands on her amazing ability to see through …

I am sure you noticed that I am leaving both of these stories incomplete, giving you an opportunity to either see it or argue it.  Get it or avoid it.  Maybe this is exactly the point in a relationship.  You either see it, or avoid it; you either get it or argue it all the way through.  I am certainly not writing this blog to preach about how you see or define what a relationship is.  What I am trying to do, using two of many examples I could give you and avoiding examples that I have been personally associated with, is to relay to you the incredible power of relationship in philanthropy.  I would like for you to view the power of relationship-based philanthropy in a slightly broader way than maybe you typically do.

Let’s accomplish this by using this blog to ask a few questions.  In your line of work in philanthropy, what role does relationship play? I know….many of us will answer that we build (you know foster, promote and all the other “nice words”) relationship with our supporters/donors, customers etc.  This is nice.  I like this answer.  But this is not good enough, not in this age and time when people adopt elephants and your work here is outshined by the lives that are being changed so beautifully in Africa! (I know…it may be hard for you to read this…don’t give up, keep reading!)

Let me take the question couple of steps further… who exactly is the relationship between?  On the one hand, inside your organization, is the answer clear or is it confusing?!  Is it one person?  You?  Or your CEO?   Is it coordinated among your team members?  Are you competing with each other in the relationship with your donors? (Oh My God – I am so surprised….)

In the relationship you are fostering, are you including those your organization supports…your recipients?  A good example is that the zoo who supports the elephant decided that the best way to build relationship is between the elephant and the family in Pittsburgh and not a relationship between the veterinarian who works at the zoo and the family. Think about this and what this means in your line of work and your organization.

Going back to relationship and what it stands for in your organization, if I asked if you are the same in relationship with your constituents as those of the Oprah’s Leadership Academy, would you say yes?  I bet your answer would most likely be no.  You are different and special because of your unique work, mission statement, your team and most likely first and foremost in your leadership and constituents.

I would like to add to the thought of the connection between your uniqueness and how you shape your relationship-based philanthropy with one final suggestion in this blog…if relationship means something that keeps your work and organization together.  Consider asking yourself and your team to harness your achievements in everything that you do to create a relationship mission statement. What makes you unique in your relationship?  Answer this question and create such a document. This document creatively created, reviewed, and periodically revisited by your team in this era of social networking is going to be your organization’s imprint of a relationship mission statement.

You know intuitively and practically how important relationship is to everything you do. You also know that it should not be scripted…one size does not fit all in a philanthropic relationship.  Before I bring this blog to its conclusion, allow me to close with a bit of caution.  Do you just want to read all about the amazing things other organizations have been able to achieve through the powerhouse of relationship-based philanthropy (and the methodology) that I have had the privilege to work with in the past 15 years?  The better option for you is to create your own extraordinary imprint in the amazing world of relationship-based philanthropy.  Know how to do it yourself?  AWESOME.  Don’t know?  There are enough of us who have been in this for some time, even though it is a relatively new methodology, who can and will guide you as you create your own imprint on it.

Whatever you decide to do, and however you go about challenging yourself in the pursuit of better relationship-based philanthropy, you will come out of this process with bigger ears without turning into an elephant!

Yours,

Michael Steiner