4-6 pages double-spaced Business Ethic Paper!!!

A Tale of Two Cultures: Charity, Problem Solving, and the Future of Social Entrepreneurship

J. Gregory Dees

Published online: 17 August 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract Two cultures are at play in the field of social

entrepreneurship: an age-old culture of charity, and a more

contemporary culture of entrepreneurial problem solving.

These cultures permeate activities from resource providers

to front line operations. Both have roots in our psycho-

logical responses to the needs of others and are reinforced

by social norms. They can work hand-in-hand or they can

be at odds. Some of the icons of the social entrepreneurship

movement have spoken harshly about charity, yet most of

them rely to some degree, at least early in their develop-

ment process, on resources that are given out of a chari-

table impulse. The success of social entrepreneurship

requires an integration of values from each of these cul-

tures, in which the satisfactions of giving are correlated

with social benefits of rigorous problem solving.

Keywords Social entrepreneurship � Charity � Social enterprise � Social innovation � Philanthropy

When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them

charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing

the problem and finding a solution for it. Charity

becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility.

Charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only per-

petuates poverty by taking the initiative away from

the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own

lives without worrying about those of the poor. It

appeases our consciences…

—Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and

2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner (Yunus 1999, p. 237).

A Tale of Two Cultures

Values matter. They drive, shape, and constrain behavior.

In this paper, I want to examine a particularly intriguing

interplay of two different—sometimes complementary,

sometimes conflicting—clusters of values that play major

roles in social entrepreneurship. We can think of these

clusters as two cultures, two value systems. One is the

culture of charity; the other is the culture of problem

solving. This interplay has significant implications for the

evolution of social entrepreneurship.

In a famous 1959 lecture, English novelist and physicist,

C. P. Snow, brought the world’s attention to the ‘‘two cul-

tures’’ of the humanities and the sciences—each with its

strengths and weaknesses, but not interacting in constructive

ways, to the world’s detriment. Similarly, over the past

century and a half, we have seen the emergence of two cul-

tures operating in the arena in which private actors respond to

social problems. This split parallels the one between the

humanities and the sciences, between heart and head. On one

side, we have the age-old culture of charity that is tied to

heart and steeped in moral traditions from around the world.

On the other, we have the more modern culture of problem

solving that is tied to head and emerged as part of the sci-

entific, industrial, and now entrepreneurial age. Both cul-

tures have important contributions to make to a successful

society and to the success of social entrepreneurs.

Charity (or some variation on it) is deemed an important

virtue in many moral systems. Though we English speakers

inherit the specific term from Christianity, nearly every

religion, from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism, exhorts its

J. G. Dees (&) Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship,

Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, 100 Fuqua Drive,

Box 90120, Durham, NC, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

123

J Bus Ethics (2012) 111:321–334

DOI 10.1007/s10551-012-1412-5

followers to be generous with those in need. Even secular

philosophers, such as Confucius and Aristotle applauded this

kind of giving behavior as a virtue. Confucius included

charitable behavior as part of ren, one of his five cardinal

virtues, often translated as a combination of ‘‘benevolence,

charity, and humanity.’’ In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aris-

totle places it within the virtue of ‘‘generosity,’’ the will-

ingness to give with the right intention, at the right time, to

the right recipients, which is the lead virtue concerned with

wealth, the mean between stinginess and wastefulness.

Charity is a virtue, consisting of selfless action for the

benefit of another, ideally a stranger. The term is derived

from the Latin ‘‘caritas’’ which refers to ‘‘caring,’’ ‘‘com-

passion,’’ or ‘‘love.’’ The Christian parable of the Good

Samaritan describes the paradigm case. It is a story in

which a person (in this case from a despised ethnic group)

stops to help a traveler who has been injured and robbed,

after many others (including those from highly esteemed

groups) pass the traveler by. The story illustrates the

intrinsic moral value of acting selflessly, out of compas-

sion. Thus, charity focuses on the actor’s caring motiva-

tions and willingness to sacrifice his or her interests. It

makes no reference to the consequences of the act, other

than that the act is performed out of love or compassion. In

fact, personal gain from the act dilutes its moral value, and

raises questions about the purity of the motives.

By contrast, problem solving is a skill, rather than a

virtue. It can be applied toward good or ill. Even those who

would do harm have problems to solve in getting their

schemes to work. It is instrumental. Its value lies in what it

is used to achieve. Its moral goodness is judged by the

results. Its excellence as a skill is judged by the usefulness

of the process in producing results or in producing

knowledge that improves future efforts. Together the

goodness of the results and excellence of methods are used

to judge a particular problem-solving approach.

Social problem solving by private parties does not have

the deep philosophical or religious origins of charity. It was

not nearly as visible as charity until the birth of the scientific

and industrial age. At that point several thinkers, such as

Paine and Condorcet, grew frustrated with charitable

approaches to poverty and began to look for more scientific

and systematic solutions (Jones 2005). In the UK in partic-

ular, and then in the US, the enlightenment spirit gave rise to

professionalized philanthropy, formalized social work, and

more systematic aid programs. The term ‘‘scientific charity’’

emerged to describe this phenomenon (Himmelfarb 1991).

This is when the first tensions between the traditional prac-

tices of charity and those of scientific problem solving started

to emerge. Social entrepreneurship is simply a more recent

extension of this analytic problem-solving thrust. It simply

acknowledges the insight that entrepreneurial efforts can add

value to this process by decentralizing the innovation,

experimentation, and learning process, forming a kind of

‘‘learning laboratory’’ (Dees 2009).

Each of these ‘‘cultures’’ appeals to strong human

impulses and each provides its satisfactions. Research indi-

cates that both the generous acts of charity (Aknin et al. 2010,

2012; Harbaugh et al. 2007; Brooks 2008) and the challenges

inherent in problem solving (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 1996a,

b) contribute to meaningful, happy lives. Yet fusing the two

sets of values is not as easy as it might seem. The culture of

charity has a strong legacy in terms of the norms, legal

structures, and language that shape behavior in the social

sector, a legacy that has helped many social entrepreneurs

attract resources to their causes, but that has also inhibited the

development and effectiveness of social entrepreneurs.

Benefits of a Culture of Charity

The fact that most societies encourage some variation on

charity or generosity toward others is no accident. Charity

benefits both the actor and society.

Many of the arguments for charitable behavior focus on

the psychological or spiritual benefits to the charitable actor;

though, ironically you only get them if you are not seeking

them, but simply seeking (unselfishly) to help another. When

you act with purity of heart, helping and giving can lead to

greater and perhaps unexpected personal happiness. Indi-

viduals may not appreciate this fact without the nudge that

they get from moral norms encouraging and praising this

behavior for its inherent worth. It is acclaimed as a vehicle

for spiritual development—a means for expressing com-

passion, demonstrating selflessness, and loosening attach-

ments to material goods. As sociologist Richard Sennett

notes, ‘‘Caritas means becoming a good person through

making gifts; the act of gift giving combats one’s own dis-

position to sinfulness.’’ But gifts are only one expression;

many other acts of compassion (such as those of the

Samaritan) serve the same purpose. These effects on the

individual also make individuals more valuable to societies

that need a certain degree of altruism to operate effectively.

In his book Wired for Culture, evolutionary biologist

Mark Pagel, argues that many aspects of human culture,

including altruistic practices such as charity, have devel-

oped because they have survival value for the societies in

which they are embedded (Pagel 2012). More specifically,

one role for moral values is to help us resist narrowly self-

interested behaviors that do not serve the welfare of the

community. This is not the place to review all the

intriguing efforts to explain the role of altruistic and

cooperative behaviors in human society (see e.g., Ridley

1996; Hauser 2006). We know that narrow self interest can

be a strong force and crippling to societies, which require

cooperation and sacrifice on the part of individuals for the

322 J. G. Dees

123

whole to thrive. Moral norms, such as those encouraging

charity, serve as a counterbalance.

We all know the important role charity can play during a

time of crisis, emergency, or particularly pressing need.

Charity also helps to make the societies more resilient and

cohesive. Charitable responses to tragedies not only fill an

immediate need, but can strengthen social bonds and create

goodwill. If we reduce the responses of the social sector to

cold, scientific social problem solving, we will risk turning

all the helping functions over to professionals, which James

McKnight argues can debase rather than enrich our shared

sense of community (McKnight 1995).

By encouraging charity, societies draw on private

resources in a voluntary way, making those resources more

productive for the common wealth. Since resources and

capabilities are not evenly distributed, it can be a net gain

to society when those with more share with those who have

less. Economist, Joel Waldfogel, provocative author of

Scroogenomics, and critic of what he sees as wasteful

holiday gift giving, makes an exception. ‘‘Gifts from those

with plenty to those with little can increase society’s net

satisfaction’’ (Waldfogel 2009, p. 120). His argument for

this is simple. A dollar or an item of value is generally

worth more to the person who has fewer of them than to

someone who has plenty of them. Voluntary giving can

also ease the burden on the state. There are limits to the

ability and willingness of governments to tax wealth for the

purpose of addressing social issues. Moral systems that

encourage private giving of both resources and capabilities

provide a complementary means of mobilizing valuable

resources.

More specifically to this paper, norms of charity create

pools of resources to support social entrepreneurs, many of

whom are also motivated by the same compassionate

impulses that drive charity in the first place. Social entre-

preneurs are motivated to correct harms done by an unjust

equilibrium (Martin and Osberg 2007). Proponents of

charity would point out that Yunus relied on charity to get

Grameen off the ground (taking outside funding for

15 years before the Bank was self sufficient) and that he

has personally engaged in an act of charity through his

work at Grameen Bank in which he did not take an equity

ownership or a large salary. Instead, he insisted that the

poor own the Bank. He has in fact been critical of those in

the microfinance world who would personally profit from

helping the poor (Yunus and Weber 2010, p. 13).

It is often deep caritas that drives extraordinary people

to take on apparently insoluble social problems or to work

in areas that seem hopeless. In some cases, these ‘‘fools’’

emerge with innovations that make an unexpected differ-

ence. Funded by donors who are driven by passion more

than reason, they go where purely scientific problem

solvers, playing the odds, would not go. The world needs

those who driven by compassion to venture where ‘‘rea-

sonable’’ people would fear to tread, who act in apparently

irrational ways, and the drive of caritas can take people

there. It may seem like a waste to rational problem solvers,

but sometimes it is those who are regarded by the main-

stream as wasting their time who come up with the real

breakthroughs, whether they are motivated by caritas or by

the irrational optimism that commonly afflicts entrepre-

neurs (Sharot 2011).

Tensions Between Charity and Problem Solving

Despite these benefits, charitable values can be in tension

with the problem solving values that animate much of

social entrepreneurship. Several of the practical challenges

social entrepreneurs face can be traced to these tensions.

Tension 1: Spontaneous Caritas Versus Reasoning

For many people charity and analytic thinking do not mix.

Thinking can spoil the charitable act. Michel Roux, phi-

lanthropist and founder of Crillon Importers, eloquently

expressed the spirit of this idea when he said, ‘‘Don’t speak

about your giving and don’t think when you give. Just give

both with your means and with your heart. And give

spontaneously. Real charity can happen at any moment in

life’’ (Rosenfeld 1999, p. 110). Scholar Scott Cutler Sher-

show even sees a contradiction in any effort to mix giving

and analysis, which according to his theory belong in dif-

ferent realms of human behavior. In his indictment of the

analytic, results-oriented, problem-solving philanthropic

practices, he says:

The so-called new philanthropy thus operates by

means of an impossible and ruinous combination of

giving and working. In its practice, it displaces the

possibility of more organized and effective means of

comforting the afflicted; and in its implicit theory, it

refuses to follow the gift to its limits by insisting that

even charity be judged by its (psychic and material)

returns (Shershow 2005, p. 134).

Shershow is giving voice to a commonly held view that

charity is about ‘‘giving,’’ and it is not authentic if there are

expectations and calculations involved. Even the Wall

Street Journal made a similar point when it used the

headline ‘‘Strings Attached’’ (Conkey 2006) for a story

reporting on the rise of the ‘‘new’’ philanthropy that views

donations as ‘‘investments’’ looking for a ‘‘social return.’’

A gift begins to look more like a contract when strings are

attached.

The non-analytic, no strings-attached character is part of

the beauty and appeal of charitable acts. Did the Good

A Tale of Two Cultures 323

123

Samaritan calculate the social return before helping the

injured traveler? No, he simply acted spontaneously, out of

compassion. Any calculation would have demeaned the

act.

As a result of this bias against analysis, passion can

dominate reason in charitable activity. Many of the

resources that flow into charitable causes do so without

serious deliberation, due diligence, assessment, strategy, or

commitment to learning. Charitable organizations can act

out of compassion without worrying about whether they are

deploying resources efficiently and effectively. Why

should a charitable actor conduct due diligence? Charitable

virtue does not require it. It requires only the right moti-

vation, ‘‘caritas.’’

When this becomes a norm for the social sector, it can

undermine rigor and effectiveness. Highly successful

business people often leave behind their business disci-

pline, savvy, and demands for results when they sit on

nonprofit boards (Bowen 1994). They seem to think these

traits are not appropriate in this setting. Mario Morino, a

philanthropist and former entrepreneur who is an exception

to this rule, observes, ‘‘For the entire sixteen years I have

been working fulltime in the social sector, a problem has

been gnawing at me, sometimes literally keeping me up at

night. Here’s the problem in a nutshell: We don’t manage

to outcomes, thus greatly diminishing our collective

impact’’ (Morino 2011, p. 1). Because the norms of charity

permeate this sector, organizations have only needed to

show charitable intent and tell good stories to motivate

caritas in board members, donors, and staff, so that they

survive and even thrive, regardless of their impact. Until

recently, few charitable organizations tracked outcome

measures tied to their missions and strategies (Sawhill and

Williamson 2001). Without these measures, it is hard to

learn what is working or how to improve. Without a strong

incentive, such as placing the moral value on outcomes

rather than purity of motivations, the hard work involved in

measuring impact will not be done.

This problem even exists at the level of sophisticated

institutional giving. Economist Abhijit Banerjee uses the

term ‘‘lazy giving’’ to describe the effects that the culture

of charity has had on norms of international aid. As he puts

it, ‘‘The culture of aid-giving evolved from the idea that

giving is good and the more money the better…and therefore—and here comes the logical leap—one need not

think too hard about how the money is spent’’ (Banerjee

2007, pp. 23–24). This happens despite all the economists

employed by aid agencies.

Lack of disciplined analytic thinking can lead to mis-

guided action, not just wasted money. American pragmatist

philosopher John Dewey, writing around the time that

professional philanthropy was getting off the ground,

pointed out that a person (or an organization) may be

moved ‘‘to labor for the good of others, but because of lack

of deliberation and thoughtfulness, be quite ignorant of

what their good really is, and do a great deal of harm’’

(Dewey 1908, pp. 271–272). Not surprisingly, proponents

of problem solving feel the need to write primers per-

suading nonprofit charitable organizations to make a ‘‘Leap

of Reason’’ (Morino 2011) and persuading high net-worth

individuals about the need to ‘‘Give Smart’’ (Tierney and

Fleishman 2011). These are titles of two of the currently

popular books in the field. The ideas are linked. It is hard to

‘‘give smart’’ if the organizations to which you give are

content with having the right intentions—displaying cari-

tas, and not using reason to manage to outcomes.

As Morino (2011) argues, in an era of government

scarcity, private actors must be more disciplined about how

they use their scarce resources and capabilities to address

social needs if they are to help societies make headway

against pressing social problems. Acts of heartfelt caritas,

as beautiful as they might be, will not do the job.

Tension 2: Sacrifice Versus Investment

The culture of charity views sacrifice as a means of dem-

onstrating that your caritas is genuine. This has resulted in

pressure for misguided frugality that can undermine serious

problem-solving efforts. While pressure to economize is

generally a good thing, this norm has inhibited investments

in valuable capacity building and made it difficult to attract

and retain problem-solving talent.

To deal with complex social problems effectively,

organizations need to invest in building organizational

capabilities through research and development, information

systems, training, and marketing. The emphasis on sacrifice

deters these, even when they are necessary to improve

performance. They are seen as ‘‘overhead,’’ an extrava-

gance. Because of the emphasis on sacrifice, the most

common performance measure for nonprofits (until

recently) was the ratio of overhead expenses to total

expenses: the lower this ratio, the better. Yet, this measure

has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the organization

in achieving its social mission or even its cost-effectiveness

relative to its impact.

In business, underinvestment in R&D, marketing, sys-

tems development, and the like would be a bad thing.

Being lean is good, but only as long as it is guided by the

requirements of effective performance, now and in the

future. Lack of investment in systems to improve effec-

tiveness, or in research and new program development

should be red flags, not positives, even if these activities

are technically ‘‘overhead.’’ The overhead ratio might

make sense if all an organization did was pass along alms

to the poor, but problem solving requires a different cost

structure.

324 J. G. Dees

123

The norm of sacrifice and the false frugality it perpet-

uates also have harmful effects on talent flows into and out

of the sector. Though a vow of poverty may not be required

to work on social issues, the culture of charity still seems to

require those who would ‘‘do good’’ to make sacrifices in

the form of accepting modest (or low) wages and slim

benefits. It honors those who make great personal and

financial sacrifices, and raises questions about the morals of

those who do not.

This leads to an intriguing paradox. Those of us who

live in capitalist societies are content for business entre-

preneurs to make their fortunes, even with trivial products,

as long as the products are not harmful. In a classic busi-

ness school entrepreneurship case Robert Reiss, an entre-

preneur who created a TV-Guide trivia game, made well

over $1 million in two years, and then closed out the game

as interest subsided (Reiss 2000, pp. 281–315). Did this

offend anyone? Certainly not, it was seen as a clever

entrepreneurial success. He produced a fun game and good

returns for all involved, including himself. However, if he

had made this kind of money developing an exceptionally

effective educational program for children in homeless

shelters, the reaction would have been totally different. The

public would have been appalled, regardless of how many

lives he improved. This points to the paradox. We are

happier for people to be rewarded financially for a com-

mercial success (even if it is of little lasting social value)

than we are for those who make the most important, last-

ing, and valuable contributions to society.

I do not want to make light of the ethical issues related

to profiting from the poor, or of the serious incentive

problems that can arise in social ventures that are too profit

driven or that pay excessive compensation not tied in any

way to social performance. The pressure on salaries and

benefits serves a valuable purpose of screening potential

leaders and staff members for their commitment to the

cause. It may also help solve some incentive problems

associated with the difficulties of measuring social per-

formance in clear and timely ways. Low salaries can also

serve to express an organization’s values, its solidarity with

its clients. Nonetheless, expectations of sacrifice can make

it difficult to attract and retain the talent needed to achieve

significant social impact at scale.

Solving social problems is difficult work, requiring

skills comparable to, perhaps even greater than, those in

demand in the business world. Searching for people willing

and able to accept modest or low salaries imposes costs on

social entrepreneurs, as does the turnover when people

leave because their families and financial needs have

grown, and they can no longer afford to stay with the

organization. This is one of the barriers to scaling effective

social innovations—the difficulty of attracting and retain-

ing sufficient affordable and skilled talent.

The norm of sacrifice also has a less direct but important

effect of minimizing discipline and perpetuating poor

performance. It is very difficult to be critical of those

making great sacrifices. Board members who would be

harsh with a for-profit CEO who performed poorly, often

bite their tongue when dealing with an underpaid, yet

under-performing, nonprofit executive director. If the per-

son shows caritas and sacrifice, weak results are often

overlooked. It is notoriously difficult for managers in a

social sector organization to fire a staff member for poor

performance, or give a harsh performance review, as long

as that person demonstrates fidelity to the cause and makes

sacrifices. It seems ungrateful for the ‘‘gift’’ of time and

energy this person has given to be harshly critical. In the

US, we have a saying: ‘‘Do not look a gift horse in the

mouth.’’ This means do not check its teeth to see how old

or sick it might be. Just as gifts are to be given without

strings, recipients are to accept them gratefully without

questions. It is common to be ‘‘charitable’’ with under-

performing employees. As a result, organizations are often

not as effective as they could be.

It is striking that no one would suggest that Goldman

Sachs, Infosys, or Unilever be led by volunteers, or by

retirees from another sector looking for a ‘‘second act.’’

Too much is at stake. Yet these ideas are commonplace

ideas in the social sector, and they trivialize the challenges

of serious social problem solving. It is as if working in this

sector is simply an act of kindness and generosity, not a

serious challenge requiring deep expertise. When the goal

is innovative, cost-effective problem solving with large-

scale impact, serious talent, and deep expertise are needed.

It is much more demanding than business.

Tension 3: Giving Versus Markets

The culture of charity also is uncomfortable with com-

mercial or business-like approaches to social problems.

Market-based solutions are problematic. Charging for a

service undermines the opportunity to express the pure

caritas through a gift. Yet, when you charge the poor for a

valuable product or service, they become customers,

empowered to complain, instead of being passive, grateful

recipients of charity. They also feel less demeaned or

awkward about having to accept charity. Using some

market-based methods may also lead to a more sustainable

solutions and organizations. Yet, according to the culture

of charity, giving is superior.

Social entrepreneurs would be thrilled to craft a solution

to a social problem that minimizes or eliminates the need

for giving. Many of them aim for financially sustainable

and socially effective organizations. These solutions are

viewed as superior because they free up philanthropic

resources for use where they will do the most good.

A Tale of Two Cultures 325

123

Completely eliminating dependence on gifts is rare, but it

can be done. Grameen Bank in Bangladesh became inde-

pendent of any outside concessionary funding, but it took

fifteen years. This creates a tension between the ideals of

charity and those of entrepreneurial problem solvers

looking for sustainable solutions.

The problem shows up even in the legal system. Prof-

itable or self-sustaining social ventures do not leave room

for traditional caritas once they reach their financial goals,

but they often require it along the way, especially early on

as the concept is tested, business model refined, and certain

benchmarks reached. Many never reach full sustainability,

always requiring some subsidy, and perhaps giving away

some of their products or services to the most needy. As a

result, social entrepreneurs, including those who want to

find sustainable, market-based solutions, often adopt a

nonprofit legal form or some kind of hybrid structure,

mixing nonprofit and for-profit elements. This poses a

problem because the laws around nonprofit organizations in

most countries are designed for ‘‘charities’’ that are alle-

viating suffering, not building problem-solving business

ventures.

One of the largest NGOs in the world, the Bangladesh Rural

Advancement Committee provides education, healthcare, and

economic development opportunities throughout Bangladesh

(and now in several other countries), and is about 80 % self-

sustaining. Yet, BRAC had to go to the Bangladesh Supreme

Court to defend the social ventures that allow it to operate

without begging for more charitable funds. In a private con-

versation, Dr. Fazel Abhed, founder of BRAC, told the author

that BRAC had to use the precedent of Oxford University

Press (a money-making operation of Oxford University) to

defend BRAC’s use of business ventures. Nonprofit law is just

not accustomed to the idea that good might be done (even

more) effectively through market-based approaches, lever-

aging charitable contributions with earned income.

The law in the U. S., which one might think would be

very progressive on this matter, is conflicted and confused.

As legal scholar Thomas Kelley notes,

For several hundred years, our culture has developed

a vibrant charitable tradition without ever agreeing as

a matter of culture or law on what ‘‘charity’’ means.

In our tradition, and in our contemporary culture,

charity is a compassionate act of aiding the poor, of

distributing alms to the needy, and spooning soup to

the hungry. At the same time, it is a tool for social

engineering and for efficiently producing socially

beneficial results that will lighten the burdens on our

government. These are two very different concep-

tions of charity, but the legal doctrines that govern

charity in the United States do not clearly distinguish

between them (Kelley 2005, p. 2439).

He argues further, ‘‘that the increasing confusion in the

contemporary American law of charity stems from the fact

that our society has moved and is continuing to move

toward a results-oriented, quasi-commercial, social engi-

neer’s conception of charity, while our law has continued

to encourage, and often insist upon, a compassionate

brand…’’ (Kelley 2005, p. 2439). This makes it hard for social entrepreneurs who would prefer to use commercial

methods in their efforts. The culture of charity is still

embedded deeply in the laws in many countries.

Tension 4: Relieving Suffering Versus Solving

Problems

In common practice, charity tends to be a response to

visible suffering, as in the case of the Good Samaritan. This

kind of help is surely of value, but what if there is a pattern

of many travelers getting robbed in this location? Helping

one who is already injured does not do much for the next

one or the next one hundred. Would not it be even better

for society to explore ways to reduce the risk of future

robberies? From a rational point of view, prevention

deserves even more moral praise than helping one victim,

but in the culture of charity, it is the immediate act of

caritas that is most praiseworthy. This morality encourages

people to direct action and resources to visible suffering

rather than underlying problems. Interestingly, it fits our

visceral reactions.

Visible suffering generates a strong sense of empathy

and compassion (Trout 2009). And the emotional satis-

faction of providing relief from suffering can be very

strong and immediate. For this reason, the outpouring of

support after disasters is often dramatic. In the wake of the

Pacific tsunami of 2005, many organizations had more

funds than they could immediately put to use. At least one

prominent agency, Doctors Without Borders, turned away

donors.

However, the emotional satisfaction is not so palpable in

the case of problem solving or prevention efforts—even

when they save lives and are more cost effective than

relief. Consider GeoHazards International, whose mission

is to ‘‘reduce loss of life and suffering around the world in

communities most vulnerable to geologic hazards.’’ It must

raise funds before the fact of an earthquake. Even if an

earthquake hits a city in which GeoHazards successfully

helped develop a plan that saved thousands of lives, these

‘‘saved’’ lives do not have specific names or stories—

unlike those pulled from the rubble after the fact. Caritas

responds to names and faces, not counterfactual statistics.

You will not find GeoHazards flooded with so much money

they have to turn it away as a result of saving so many

people from death and injury, though surely preventing

injuries, deaths, and property loss is better than treating the

326 J. G. Dees

123

injured, feeding the homeless, and recovering the dead

afterward. This points to another paradox: We are willing

to give more to those who treat suffering after the fact than

to those who prevent it or reduce it beforehand.

To be sure, effective prevention, disaster mitigation, and

problem solving can be quite satisfying to those who

engage in it, but the satisfaction is more delayed and muted

than it is with immediate charitable relief. The story of

many travelers who passed safely because of an innovative

protection program is not nearly as moving as the story of

the injured one helped by a Samaritan.

Because charitable action is driven by the strength of

emotive responses, it is susceptible to biases. Critics have

long worried more about charity not extending to people

who are distant or foreign. The modern media have

shortened those distances, but the general problem remains.

As Frans de Waal, a leading primatologist, points out in his

book The Age of Empathy, ‘‘Empathy builds on identifi-

ability, proximity, similarity, and familiarity, which is

entirely logical given that it evolved to promote in-group

cooperation’’ (de Waal 2009, p. 221). Adam Smith even

suggested that poverty alone was not very moving to many

people. ‘‘The mere want of fortune, mere poverty, excites

little compassion. Its complaints are too apt to be the

objects rather of contempt than of fellow-feeling. We

despise the beggar…’’ (Smith 1759, p. 242). Another blind spot for emotion-driven charity is future generations. It

takes education, as well as acts of will, imagination, and

reason to extend caritas beyond those currently living.

Consider longer term environmental issues. Harvard psy-

chologist Daniel Gilbert has argued that our brains are not

wired to detect and respond to long-term threats. If we have

trouble imagining and feeling these threats even with

regard to our own happiness (Gilbert 2006), we are even

less likely to feel compassion for those faceless future

generations who are threatened. Caritas is an imperfect tool

even for addressing suffering, particularly suffering that is

not visible, present, or involving a sympathetic party.

Interestingly, some problem-solving organizations have

recognized these biases and designed their marketing

accordingly. Save the Children is a powerful example of an

organization that has found a way to appeal to common

triggers for caritas while directing the funds toward prob-

lem-solving strategies. Donors ‘‘sponsor’’ individual poor

children. Poor children tend to evoke empathy, even when

they are foreign. Donors get a picture and letters from the

child they ‘‘sponsor,’’ but their money does not go to the

child. It goes to projects in the child’s community that help

the child in some way. Community problem solving is not

as moving to charitable donors, so the children are used.

This technique of using identifiable victims and their suf-

fering has been tested and verified by behavioral experi-

ments conducted by some prominent behavioral

economists, Small et al. (2007). Unfortunately, not all

effective problem-solving organizations have been able to

repackage their value propositions in this way.

This bias toward relieving suffering can also affect the

organizations donors support, showing up as a perverse bias

toward helping organizations because they are struggling.

Need, framed in the right way, pulls at the heartstrings.

Effective organizations that have been successful in building

their funding bases have reported donors or grant makers

turning them away because they are not sufficiently

‘‘needy.’’ Yet, their financial strength may well indicate that

they are well managed and could put the money to better use

than needier organizations that may be needy because they

are poorly run. Nonetheless, donors are often moved by the

plight of needy organizations, and get charitable satisfaction

from helping to ‘‘save’’ them. This almost guarantees that

poorly performing organizations will enjoy longer lives and

attract more resources than is optimal for society.

Tension 5: Caring for People Versus Empowering

Them

Charity is a complicated thing to do well. It can backfire in

several ways, causing more harm than good. It has inher-

ently perverse incentives of keeping the problems it

addresses alive so that future generations can continue to

exercise this virtue. This can lead to a ‘‘charity industry’’

that has a vested interest in problems remaining unsolved.

Charity can also be performed in ways that have unin-

tended detrimental effects on the recipients.

Successful problem solving, in the form of eliminating

poverty, for instance, could lead to depriving peoples of

opportunities to display their charity. Gertrude Himmelfarb

cites an example of a wealthy patron in late Victorian

England who laments that if poverty were cured, ‘‘the rich

would have no one upon whom to exercise their faculty of

benevolence’’ (Himmelfarb 1991, p. 198). Of course, few

of the benevolent rich would openly embrace this view, but

you have to wonder whether it could play out uncon-

sciously and passively. American philosopher, John Dewey

echoed this concern, warning, ‘‘Underlying complacency

with respect to social ills grows up because they afford an

opportunity of developing and displaying the finest vir-

tues’’ (Dewey 1908, p. 348). This was part of what troubled

self-confessed ‘‘contrarian’’ Christopher Hitchens who

argued that Mother Teresa’s charity was not about helping

people move out of poverty. He cited her comment: ‘‘I

think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to

share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is

being much helped by the suffering of poor people’’ (Hit-

chens 1995, p. 11). He became convinced that this attitude

was reflected in the practices of her organizations, helping

the poor to accept their lot.

A Tale of Two Cultures 327

123

This issue has caused some to worry about a ‘‘poverty

industry’’ that has a vested interest in perpetuating the

problems. Writing around the same time as Dewey, just as

‘‘scientific charity’’ was getting off the ground, renowned

economist Alfred Marshall commented, ‘‘I regard poverty

as a passing evil in the progress of man; and I should not

like any [poverty relieving] institution started which did

not contain in itself the causes which would make it shrivel

up, as the causes of poverty itself shriveled up’’ (Marshall

1893). The appeal of Marshall’s principle is clear, but its

effects could be perverse. Few institutions want to shrivel

up. If they were designed as Marshall requires, the leaders

would have an incentive not to address the causes of

poverty. What is more likely to happen is that many

organizations will show some ‘‘progress,’’ but few will

really solve the problems they are attacking. If we want the

organizations to shrivel, we need to find a way to reward

them and their leaders for their success and for the

shriveling.

By contrast, a culture of problem solving would prefer

organizational structures that thrive on success—ones in

which true progress opens more opportunities for the

organization to use its skills. One example would be a

micro-finance organization that follows successful bor-

rowers out of poverty and starts offering more sophisticated

(and profitable) products to meet their changing needs.

Another would be health care service for the poor that can

expand into other offerings (including health insurance,

management of chronic conditions, etc.) after it success-

fully addresses their most basic health needs. The key is to

build organizations so that solving the social problem

opens new opportunities for more problem solving.

Even if charitable givers and relief organizations do not

unintentionally perpetuate the problems they are address-

ing, they may inadvertently exacerbate problems or create

other problems by their very acts of kindness. Charity can

be counterproductive, hurting or demeaning those it was

intended to serve, robbing them of dignity or making them

dependent in unhealthy ways. This has been evident in the

world of international aid, and forms the basis of many of

the criticisms of aid (e.g., Ellerman 2005; Hubbard and

Duggan 2009; Moyo 2009). Writing in the New York Times

Sunday Magazine, Ian Fisher provides a powerful example.

He quotes a rebel leader referring to massive food relief in

southern Sudan in the early 1990s as saying, ‘‘The people

of the area are great farmers, but because there is this relief

food, they did not farm for three years. I could see the

difficulty. It was spoiling people. They just sleep and have

food. It is very bad’’ (Fisher 2001, p. 74). This is just one

example, but it illustrates how well-intentioned charitable

acts can have unintended harmful consequences.

Charity can psychologically harm both receiver and

giver. Anthropologist Marcel Mauss who concludes his

classic work The Gift by commenting, ‘‘The unreciprocated

gift still makes the person who has accepted it inferior,

particularly when it has been accepted with no thought of

returning it…Charity is still wounding for him who has accepted it, and the whole tendency of our morality is to

strive to do away with the unconscious and injurious

patronage of the rich almsgiver’’ (Mauss 1950, pp. 83–84).

Interestingly, even Christian scholars, Steve Corbett and

Brian Fikkert make a similar point in their book When

Helping Hurts, and they extend it, arguing that it also

harms the giver by creating a false sense of superiority. As

they put it, ‘‘The way we act toward the economically poor

often communicates—albeit unintentionally—that we are

superior and they are inferior. In the process, we hurt the

poor and ourselves’’ (Corbett and Fikkert 2009, p. 65).

They refer to charitable givers as having a ‘‘god complex.’’

Political philosopher Michael Walzer warned of the same

double-edged harm when he commented, ‘‘Private charity

breeds personal dependence, and then it breeds familiar

vices of dependence: deference, passivity, and humility on

the one hand; arrogance on the other’’ (Walzer 1983,

p. 92). One prominent fraternal lodge leader distinguished

mutual aid from charity in a speech to the 1901 National

Fraternal Congress, saying mutual aid is ‘‘absolutely dis-

tinct from charity or philanthropy. It is liberalizing, self-

sustaining, elevating, gives mutual rights, and preserves

independence of character.’’ While charity ‘‘signifies con-

descension, a position of superiority on the part of the

organization, and of dependency on the part of the reci-

pient’’ (Beito 2000, p. 58).

Charity can endanger self-esteem. In a thorough and

classic review of literature on recipients’ reactions to aid,

Jeffrey Fisher and his colleagues concluded that the best

model for understanding responses was one that focused on

threats to self-esteem (Fisher et al. 1982). American phi-

losopher Henry David Thoreau speaks for many when he

says, ‘‘If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to

my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I

should run for my life…’’ (Thoreau 1852, p. 50). It also explains why friends and family who need money, find it

uncomfortable to ask for help and prefer to call it a ‘‘loan’’

even if both parties understand it will probably not be

repaid. Taking a loan is more dignified than taking charity.

Garret Keizer, in a thought-provoking book on the chal-

lenges of helping others, brings this home with a strange

comment that gets at the issue of dignity when he notes:

The central paradox of helping the poor, the vortex

that forms the very mouth of hell, is that our most

humane gestures on their behalf serve to accentuate

their dehumanization. In that sense, feeding the

hungry a turkey dinner is on a par with eating it in

front of them (Keizer 2004, p. 194).

328 J. G. Dees

123

His point, if I understand it correctly, is that serving the

dinner only signals your differences from them. You are

serving; they are receiving. You are volunteering; they are

there out of necessity. It turns out that the privilege of

volunteering to serve the Thanksgiving turkey at a soup

kitchen is often fully booked well in advance, primarily by

families who want to teach lessons to their children. The

purpose is to show the children the faces of poverty,

stimulate their caritas, and make then thankful for what

they have, compared to those less fortunate. The clients of

the soup kitchen are the show for the day, the object lesson.

Tomorrow, the family of volunteers goes shopping at the

mall, lesson learned, and the clients of the soup kitchen

return for another meal.

The significance of this can be lost if you have not been

on the receiving end of charity or do not know someone

who has. I did not fully appreciate it until it touched a

family very close to me. This family was designated as one

of the ‘‘neediest’’ families in their church parish one

Christmas. They were both surprised and humiliated when

the reverend and church members arrived bearing gifts. Of

course, they smiled, expressed thanks, but felt shame, as

neighbors saw the entourage arrive. I do not doubt that the

church committee felt pleased and had no idea of the

humiliation they caused. This family never felt comfortable

in that church again and left not long afterward. Did the

church committee look into helping anyone in the family

find a job or even temporary employment so they could buy

their own gifts (ones they truly needed)? No. They might

even have offered odd jobs around the church. It would not

take long for someone to earn what those ‘‘neediest fam-

ily’’ gifts cost, but then that would have deprived the

church committee of the warm glow they had in selecting

the gifts and delivering them.

These kinds of effects are left out of the simplistic

equations of people like Waldfogel, mentioned earlier, who

sees an automatic gain when gifts are made from those with

plenty to those with little. Sure, a dollar may be worth more

to a person with few than to a person with many, but the

transfer can be sufficiently humiliating as to negate much

of the value of the gift, and it can create a false sense of

pride and satisfaction in the giver. Should we count as a

positive the smug self-satisfaction derived from the illusion

of having done good when you may have actually humil-

iated someone while providing little value?

Some recipients have openly rebelled against being the

objects of charity. A powerful example is the disability

rights movement, as chronicled in Joseph Shapiro’s book

No Pity. He describes how the disability community shifted

from dependence on charity to a focus on independent

living. This was illustrated powerfully by the story of

activist Evan Kemp, Jr., who had muscular dystrophy

(Shapiro 1994, pp. 20–23). In 1981, Kemp shocked the

world by strongly and publicly criticizing the Muscular

Dystrophy Association (that his parents helped found) for

running its annual telethon in a way that treated people

with muscular dystrophy as objects of pity. He found it

demeaning. According to Shapiro (1994), the principles

that guided the early disability rights movement were

‘‘Independence. Self-sufficiency. Mainstreaming. Disabil-

ity as a social problem.’’ This contrasts with disability as a

charitable cause. It starkly contrasts with language used by

Shershow, quoted earlier, when he was defending charity

as a pure gift and referred to ‘‘comforting the afflicted.’’ It

is hard to imagine Kemp or others in the disabilities right

movement embracing the idea that they are ‘‘afflicted’’ in

need ‘‘comforting.’’

Nobel Peace Prize winner and social entrepreneur

Wangari Maathai makes a similar point reflecting on the

images of Africa portrayed in fundraising appeals and by

aid agencies. She mentions the image of ‘‘an emaciated

young girl with a distended belly on the cover of a UNI-

CEF magazine,’’ and she worries about these images

‘‘stereotyping all countries south of the Sahara as places of

famine, death and hopelessness’’ (Maathai 2009, p. 78).

She also suggests that when Africans see these images

representing them as needy and charity-dependent, ‘‘A

dangerous and unfortunate process ensues that subtly and

perhaps unconsciously affirms to Africans their inability to

be agents of their own destiny. Eventually, it may destroy

the sense of confidence they should and must have to make

progress’’ (Maathai 2009, p. 79). This goes beyond

embarrassment to a kind of disempowerment.

Thus, the culture of charity, even when well intentioned,

can lead to actions that perpetuate the problems it is

addressing and that create new problems in the psycholo-

gies of both charitable actors and the recipients of charity.

Both of these are antithetical to problem solving.

Toward Alignment of the Two Cultures

Despite the challenges that the culture of charity poses for

the growth of problem-solving social entrepreneurship, the

spirit of charity is needed to bring sufficient passion and

private resources to the table. Replacing caritas completely

with rationality would be counterproductive. Social entre-

preneurs and other problem solvers often rely, to some

extent, on the caritas of resource providers and underpaid

staff members.

It appears that rational deliberation can dampen the

willingness to give (Small and Loewenstein 2003). This

may not be surprising; rational people might not believe

they could make much of a difference, or they may not

want to give without knowing more about how their money

will be used. This may be the right rational response, but if

A Tale of Two Cultures 329

123

it leads to fewer resources being available overall, that

could pose a serious problem even for problem-solving

efforts—since they seem to benefit from charitable giving

to some degree.

Given that both charity and problem solving have

important roles to play in society, we appear to have two

choices to minimize the tensions. One is to partition them

off into separate realms, so that people do not get confused

as to which applies. The other is to find a way to bring them

into greater harmony. Partitioning is hard to do since many

charitable organizations are moving into problem solving.

The lines are blurry. In any case, it is not clear this would

help social entrepreneurs. In the absence of caritas, how

would social entrepreneurs attract the resources they need

at the times when the ‘‘returns’’ they can provide are

mostly social? Some amount of caritas may be needed to

motivate this giving, especially with the uncertainty that

most new ventures face. Alignment seems like a better

choice. What we want to do is channel the charitable

impulse toward more effective, more promising problem-

solving efforts, and we want to minimize the harmful

norms of charity.

This will not be easy because charity provides imme-

diate satisfaction for the actor. This is supported by psy-

chological and neurological research, as previously cited.

We are culturally and biologically wired for this kind of

altruistic behavior. Obviously, it is not so powerful that

everyone is devoting his or her life to charity work, and

strong arguments have been made that most of us fall way

short of what we could or should do (Singer 2010;

Rosenberg 1994). But it is still a powerful force. By con-

trast, social problem solving provides a deferred gratifica-

tion, one that has to be earned, quite often after failure and

frustration (Harford 2011). If the level of challenge is just

right, one might experience the joy of ‘‘flow’’

(Csikszentmihalyi 1990) at times during the process, but

the general rewards of social problem solving are not as

immediate, complete, or certain as those of charity. The

financial rewards are generally modest, if any. And the

psychic rewards of successful social problem solving may

not flow through to the resource providers as effectively as

they do with charity. The reward of charity happens in the

act of giving. It does not have to await any consequence.

The rewards of problem solving come primarily with

success.

Steps Toward a New Culture

The challenge then is to change the social sector culture so

as to encourage more ‘‘smart’’ expressions of the charitable

impulse and, ideally, to provide as much satisfaction for

this activity as possible, so as to compete well with the

immediate pleasures of relieving suffering of an

identifiable victim. It has to become admirable and grati-

fying to engage in intelligent problem-solving efforts, even

when they fail, as long as they were smart and lessons are

learned. Perhaps, over time, with the benefit of neuro-

plasticity, even our immediate brain responses will shift to

mirror what is culturally reinforced.

I suggest a five-pronged strategy, but with no illusion

that these are the only or even the most effective steps we

can take. These are offered to stimulate discussion and

guided by the principle that we need to shape motivation

and reward changes in behavior.

1. Emphasizing the Importance on Problem Solving

through Education, Religious Authorities, Role Mod-

els, and Media. New generations are growing up with

deep interests in global and local social problems and

less dedication to old norms of charity. This presents

opportunities for educators (formal and informal) to

engage them in a way that reinforces the power of

problem solving and smart giving at an early age.

There is a movement now to teach more empathy in

the classroom, but this does not go far enough. It needs

to be supplemented by learning how to go beyond the

most immediate triggers of empathy to identify serious

social problems and solve them. Students need to learn

about empathy gaps, biases, and shortfalls. They also

need to learn problem-solving skills and see these as

equally important as relieving the suffering that causes

empathy. They need to see how to channel their

expanded empathy skills into problem solving, not

potentially injurious charity. The impulse when you

feel someone’s pain is to relieve it immediately. In

many cases, that is too limited a response. Teaching

the joy and value of creative problem solving is a

crucial piece to changing the culture to be more

supportive of problem-solving efforts. We need a

parable of the ‘‘Better Samaritan’’ who not only helps

the traveler but also sets up an effective crime

prevention program to keep future travelers safe.

Education needs to warn about the potential harms

caused by common norms of the culture of charity.

It is very helpful if religious leaders, such as Protestant

Christians Corbett and Fikkert mentioned above,

endorse problem-solving approaches. Recently, Pope

Benedict IV (2009) has delivered an encyclical on

charity. Because caritas is deeply rooted in Christianity

and the Catholic Pope is a leading authority on

Christian teaching, it is valuable that his letter is clear

in its embrace of the combination of caritas and

rational, strategic problem solving. He says clearly,

‘‘In view of the complexity of the issues, it is obvious

that the various disciplines have to work together

through an orderly interdisciplinary exchange. Charity

330 J. G. Dees

123

does not exclude knowledge, but rather requires,

promotes, and animates it’’ (Pope Benedict, Sec-

tion 30). He goes on to quote predecessor Pope Paul

VI who said, ‘‘the individual who is animated by true

charity labours skillfully to discover the causes of

misery, to find the means to combat it, to overcome it

resolutely.’’ Many other religious and secular leaders

reinforce the message that true charity should embrace

problem solving.

It is also helpful to make role models out of problem

solvers and their financial supporters. This requires the

cooperation of the media who need to treat stories in

this arena seriously, not just as heart-warming human-

interest stories. To some extent, magazines running

features such as ‘‘top social entrepreneurs or innova-

tors or investors’’ can help, but they can backfire if

their lists are not put together carefully with solid

rationales for who is on the list and how they are

ranked. Critics are always ready to pounce. We need

dynamic, attention-getting stories about ingenious

innovations and effective social change. The digital

New York Times runs a ‘‘Fixes’’ column that was

designed, in part, to play this role. Also the Dowser

website, developed by David Bornstein, one of the

authors of the Fixes column, serves this purpose.

However, it is not easy to break the tradition of simple

heartwarming stories or scandals when it comes to

charity coverage. It will take time, but engaging the

media in serious coverage of social entrepreneurship

that is engaging, respectful, and critical could help

tremendously.

2. Making Performance Information More Available and

Visible. The warm glow of charitable acts may dim if it

becomes apparent that the organization you support is

not effective. With more so-called ‘‘charitable’’ orga-

nizations moving into problem-solving modes of

operation and institutional funders focusing on where

their money is having the greatest impact, there is a

movement toward producing and providing more

social impact performance information. We do not

yet (and may never) have meaningful common metrics

to compare social impact across all types of organi-

zations tackling all types of problems with different

kinds of strategies. However, we can get relevant

performance information in individual organizations

that allow them and their supporters to make informed

judgments about effectiveness. The recent publication

of two popular books by economists who engage in

rigorous evaluations is helping this cause by showing

the value of this work. These are Dean Karlan and

Jacob Appel’s (2011) More than Good Intentions and

Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee’s Poor Economics

(Banerjee and Duflo 2011).

Once performance information is widely available, it

could challenge the culture of charity, but steps need to

be taken to make sure it is visible and easy to find. It

should become a norm to expect to see it with

information about an organization. This could be

facilitated by refining evaluation sites, such as Charity

Navigator, and/or developing respected evaluators,

analysts, or intermediaries that could credibly rank or

certify organizations, as Consumer Reports does for

various products, or J.D. Power does for automobiles,

or Morningstar does for mutual funds. The good news

is that more people and philanthropic institutions are

demanding it. The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently

ran a feature entitled ‘‘To Lure Baby-Boomer Donors,

Charities Must Prove Their Results’’ (Berkshire 2012).

(It would be great, if the Chronicle could only stop

calling every nonprofit a ‘‘charity.’’ But that illustrates

the power of this word and its culture.) For those with

little time, prescreened investment options might be

made available. An example is Innovations in Poverty

Action’s Proven Impact Fund, which consists of

organizations with programs that have been rigorously

evaluated with positive results.

3. Making Smart Giving and the Leap of Reason ‘‘Cool.’’

I am not referring to promoting the books, but the

concepts. Once performance data is more readily

available, institutional donors may be hard pressed to

ignore it, unless their boards choose not to hold them

accountable for impact. However, for it to matter,

organizations and individual donors need a good

reason to use it as well. Organizations need to adopt

a data-driven, analytic value system that blends the

passion that attracts people to the cause with a

rationality that will improve performance. For indi-

vidual donors, it needs to become ‘‘cool’’ (socially

admirable) to be smart in your giving and ‘‘uncool’’ to

give to a poorly performing organization (without a

compelling reason). Bannerjee’s term ‘‘lazy giving’’

might find its way into the lexicon for those who do not

do their homework. However, in light of the findings

on deliberation, we want to be careful not to dampen

the spirit of giving by placing too much of a

deliberative burden on givers, making it easy for them

not to give. Not giving or low giving would have to be

even less cool than just lazy giving.

Of course, simply creating a new lexicon will not be

enough, it has to be adopted. This requires a concerted

marketing campaign by those of us who care about the

impact and the future of effective social innovation.

Social media could be used to ‘‘ripple’’ these concepts

through different networks and communities. Stanford

professor Jennifer Aaker and marketing consultant

Andy Smith have recently published a book describing

A Tale of Two Cultures 331

123

‘‘the dragonfly effect’’ (Aaker et al. 2010) as a means

for driving social change. I will not summarize their

strategy here except to say that the core steps involve

focusing on a concrete goal, then getting attention,

engaging others, and taking action (or rather getting

the others take action). With social media, we have

culture-changing tools now that were not viable even a

decade ago. Terms like ‘‘lazy giving’’ and ‘‘smart

giving’’ could quickly become part of common

vocabulary when backed with powerful stories, and

reinforced with opportunities for action.

4. Engaging Supporters in the Problem Solving. One way

to share the satisfactions of the problem-solving

process with supporters is to draw them into it. The

easiest way is to bring them along vicariously through

a blog about the challenges, progress, and even

setbacks of the process—celebrating each victory and

each lesson learned. However, in an age of social

networking, organizations can also actively engage

donors in problem-solving efforts at key junctures,

through various collective innovation and problem-

solving efforts, asking for their input on ideas, issues,

or priorities. This has to be handled in a way that

manages expectations and does not invite interference,

but there are mechanisms for soliciting input in

constructive ways allowing donors to comment on

input from each other, or asking them to comment on

or respond to ideas emerging within the organization.

For instance, you could pose a problem and invite

innovative solutions to be judged by an independent

panel (so your organization is not to be blamed if a

particular donor’s idea is not among the winners). For

instance, when I took a leave to work in the

Appalachian region of the US, we developed a

website, called Business First Stop, for entrepreneurs

in the region, but we had trouble driving traffic to the

site. We could have sponsored an online competition

among various donors to our parent organization to

come up with low-cost, innovative ideas for getting

more traffic to the site, with local entrepreneurs as the

judges.

5. Improving the Affective Positioning of Problem Solv-

ers. Even with all this, making the case on rational

grounds is not enough to motivate high levels of

engagement and effective action. Passion is still

crucial. Problem solvers must appeal to those factors

that also drive charitable behavior, linking these to the

potential benefits of problem solving. This can be done

by personalizing the activities and (potential) benefits.

We have already seen the example of Save the

Children putting a sympathetic human face on its

problem solving. Kiva does this with micro-credit by

identifying specific borrowers. This is affective

(emotion-driven) positioning and must be done care-

fully not to engage in any deceptive practices that

could easily backfire. And, it is particularly challeng-

ing for preventative efforts and for efforts directed at

helping less sympathetic groups. Here the appeal will

have to be more creative. For instance, with preven-

tion, focusing on someone who is suffering because

she did not have the benefit of the program might be

the best—as when a lung cancer victim speaks out for

smoking cessation programs. If you are helping ex-

convict drug addicts kick their habit and re-enter

society, having a graduate of the program who is now

successful and looks more like the donor population,

rather than a current participant, might work. In the

absence of anything else, it might be possible to

connect the donors to individual problem solvers,

giving them a personal connection to the work being

done. Because even poorly performing organizations

can engage in affective positioning, this step clearly

needs to be coupled with the other steps to make the

link with performance stronger. But given the power of

emotions in this field, especially empathy, it is unwise

to ignore it. A good way of visibly conveying the

suffering that is prevented, minimized, or sustainably

relieved can help illustrate the value of the problem-

solving effort in a way our brains appreciate more than

numbers.

While taking these steps, we need to keep in mind that

there is a role for spontaneous charity and relief work,

especially after disasters or in response to an injured

traveler. Perhaps more importantly, deep heartfelt charita-

ble activity often drives the kind of irrational ventures that

take on extremely difficult problems in hopeless arenas.

This kind of irrationality can be good for the world.

Occasionally, it generates a surprising innovation with

widespread benefits.

Concluding Comments

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton wrote a book called

Giving (Clinton 2007). What was particularly striking

about this to me was that many of the examples in the

book, and certainly many of the activities of the Clinton

Global Initiative, the flagship program of the Clinton

Foundation, are examples of innovative problem solving,

not simply ‘‘giving.’’ This is a book about hard-headed

social problem solving being marketed as a book about

warm-hearted giving. It is a book that is making an effort to

align the culture of giving and the culture of problem

solving. The subtitle helps make the link. It is ‘‘How Each

of Us Can Change the World.’’ President Clinton knows

332 J. G. Dees

123

that effective social problem solving by private citizens

typically requires significant giving of money, time,

expertise and more. As I have argued, even many profitable

social ventures have relied on subsidies early in their life

cycle. Unless we find a way to marry the cultures of charity

and the cultures of problem solving, social entrepreneur-

ship will suffer. By taking some deliberate steps, aware of

the strong cultural, psychological, and neurological factors

driving human behavior in this realm, we can craft strate-

gies for moving in the right direction.

Acknowledgment The author thanks the Skoll Foundation for its generous support of this work as part of a larger project.

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