Episode 289: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Relationship to Philanthropy
It's another great day right here on this edition of Around with Randall. An inside look at the Hallett household. I was having a conversation with my kids about the seven deadly sins. And while I won't get into all of the details what goes on in my house, I did think about it as I was talking about this with them, a little bit about what this might mean for philanthropy.
And so today's edition is a look at the seven deadly sins and how they relate, maybe consequences or the things that we can do to overcome them. And then in the end, a little bit different tactical solution that will have to be kind of self-driven. So where did this all come from? Well, in a lot of history you hear the term seven, the seven deadly sins.
And where it originates from, there was work before it was first kind of codified by Pope Gregory the First, and then really written about by, by Saint Thomas Aquinas was it has a religious connection to the seven different route kind of vices that create moral failure, that when we look at ourselves and look at the environment around us, these seven things, we're really designed as an intent to diagnose, not to condemn, to figure out how we can become better people.
Kind of the underlying disposition that shapes behavior. And these sins function as kind of distortions that lead to bad judgment and a bad sense of priorities in our life. And, well, I'm not going to get into the religious context of this because it can be applied in a lot of different ways. It tends to tell us when we look at them.
And as I was talking about with my kids, helping them to better understand how they can evaluate themselves, how they can be the best versions of themselves, that if you can avoid these seven areas, not every day, not every moment of every day, but in general, you can learn a lot about yourself and how you can be a better person and make the world a little bit better place.
So let's kind of start as we tend to at the very top. So there's kind of the background, the history. What are the seven deadly sins? Maybe you're listening going I think I've heard the term, but I don't know what they are. Well, there are seven. Let me list them and then I'll kind of talk to you for just a moment or two about what they are, what they mean, and then kind of walk you through how they maybe relate to philanthropy.
So the seven are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. And maybe a definition of what those are would be helpful. Pride deals with arrogance, deals with the know it all. Not able to realize that there's more knowledge out there than they may actually realize. Thinking they have all the answers. Greed has to do with the ability not to share, to never in some ways take from others.
And this doesn't mean from a fever or a criminal perspective. Maybe it's emotion that they're taking, but greed deals with not sharing. Lust deals with the ability to, or the lack of ability to be satisfied that there's always more that I want. Lust, I think sometimes from a common vernacular, has more to do with love and sex. In its initial thought, it was more about a wider perspective, about this continuous desire to satisfy oneself in lots of different ways and deals with resentment.
And in some ways I would connect it to Maslow and the idea of or the lack thereof. Know how not able to be self-actualized. Have done a podcast on Maslow because I use him at awful lot and kind of figuring out how people operate and what some of the maybe the values that they bring to the table. Gluttony.
I think from again, a common vernacular deals with more with food as we think about it, but it's really not in its original sense. It was more about the ability to be satisfied, or the lack thereof, of being satisfied that there's never kind of along the same lines as greed. That's an obsession with this idea of just always trying to figure out how do I get more not worrying about other people wrath is about anger, about disappointment, about, you know, you know, negative emotions coming out in ways that have obviously very strong consequences.
Sloth I think a lot of people think of that as dealing with cleanliness or appearance. In many ways. It actually has a wider perspective about no self-respect that we can, because your value set may be a little bit different someone else's, but that doesn't make either one of you kind of that sloth. What it is, is that it's you don't value who you are and what other people are in that process.
And so as a result, it shows up kind of in some very negative ways. So the seven deadly sins pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth.
What does all this have to do with philanthropy? And that was kind of the connection that I was making laying in bed after everyone had gone to sleep, which is pretty normal in my house, where I'm the last one up, kind of either having the television on, just kind of sitting there thinking or watching something. In this case, just thinking.
And I talk to my kids about these seven deadly sins. But wow, how does this connect to philanthropy? And it became kind of an interesting, I'll say, journey for me to put it into context in each. How do each of these actually affect us in our industry, in the nonprofit world? So let's start at the top, right. This is where we have an really overconfidence of our leadership status, our brand.
It makes assumptions that donors will just give to us because it's who we are. It's what we deserve it. And then if there's a resistance to a lot of feedback internally that maybe from staff or particularly externally from donors, the consequences of having too much pride in the nonprofit space is, is that we have weak listening. We don't go into things telling or listening to people what they want.
We tell them what they should do or what they think, what we think they should do to help us, that it creates stalled relationships. And we miss transformational giving opportunities because we're too busy talking at people than with people. The corrective discipline that can help us when we think we recognize pride in ourselves, in the work that we do every day, or in the organizations in which we represent, is really about listening externally, listening to donors.
And this goes back to something I talk about constantly around the kind of moves management process is, is that we have two years and one mouth. We should use them proportionally, that we miss these transformational gift opportunities, because we're too busy talking at people and not listening to what they actually want to do, and then connecting it back to really what we're trying to do.
We're kind of helping them accomplish their goals internally. It's about humility and leadership and listening to the team to foster an environment that really employees can get behind and feel great about, and aligning with the mission. So pride is the first. The second is greed. Well, how does it show up? There's a, to me, a fixation on revenue that we really don't spend a lot of time thinking about the consequences of what we're asking about when we set monetary goals, either what the donor's intent actually is or if we look at it internally, the ability for us to understand that we need to engage philanthropy more strategically, to find out are the things we want
to do philanthropically actually possible. It's also the idea of over solicitation that we just keep asking people. I had a friend of mine recently talk about, and I wrote a blog about this, that he's either out or coming out very soon, that the organization kind of put an edict out saying, hey, whatever the well screening is, just ask them for the top dollar amount in the first meeting or two.
That's greed. I mean, that's out now. Crazy that we stretch the idea of philanthropy and gratitude to more of, well, they owe us the money. The consequences are incredible. Disconnect in donor fatigue and attrition because people say, I don't want to be a part of this. And then what ends up happening is, is there's lost gift revenue, probably the major gift and planned gift and principal gift levels, because people don't feel as if you actually care what they think.
To do this, we have to balance our metrics. Think about it more longitudinally. We have to think about the donor lifetime value that they can offer us. If we actually build a meaningful relationship and listen to them along the way, and that we have strict adherence to the idea that we're going to honor someone's gift in the areas that they want us to, and not try to be a little bit shady around what we think we can do with it.
Greed. The third is lust. How does this show kind of show up in our organizations? And maybe for you on a professional way in the world of nonprofit philanthropy? This is about chasing the shiny object that we're looking for, the headline gifts, that we prioritize certain prospects over the costs that come from these particular relationships. This is the idea of we have to have these certain amount of people, certain number of people, certain specific people involved in our organization, because that's going to elevate us in meaningful ways rather than working with the people who actually care about who you are.
So you end up with a misalignment of funding of volunteers. It's a neglect of a mid-level giving program because, frankly, they can't deliver the kind of the profile that the organization needs. Or once it's really about this idea of how do we get on the backs of others to make us look better. By the way, internal leadership that was kind of one of my premises would be the shortest management class ever.
There are two kinds of leaders. Those that get on the backs of others look taller, or those that cause other people to rise, groups of people to rise. And as a result, they everyone rises and so does the manager. So it has internal consequences as well. How do you fight this? Well, you have a stronger rigor for qualification.
And what do I mean by that interest not capacity. Who are the people that actually care about what we do? How do we build more long term transformational relationships? You can't get to plan giving without trust. How do you build more plan giving conversations? Because you've built the trust over time, and in doing so, you're really aligning some kind of I'll call it scoring mechanism, but aligning the donor's interest with institutional priorities, not the other way around, not the idea of institutional priorities.
And we should get our donors to believe in them. We get the donors interest first, then we figure out can we help them do it, what they want to do. In doing so, what we get is less lust. We worry more about the other person, the donors, the prospects rather than ourselves. Lust. The fourth here is envy. How it shows up is kind of a tactical way of benchmarking against organizations who really aren't like us.
I'm working on a project right now, a capacity kind of overall assessment, development, audit. You can call it a couple of things. And that's one of the things that I have really spent some time working with the client, as well as what I'm writing in terms of a report, helping them better understand who they're actually compared to. And while I think the chief officer has full understanding of exactly why the kind of what I would call benchmarking peers that I've chosen, there are a couple of people in the organization who are not like, well, we should be compared to so-and-so.
And I'm like, no, that's envy. You're not who they are. You don't have the discipline. They do. Whether it's alignment of priorities from a strategic planning perspective, where philanthropy is an active, engaged part of the process to the fact that you don't have the right measurables, you have too many internal hurdles. The point is, is that when you have envy as a driving force, you have strategic drift, meaning you can't execute on really what needs to happen.
And you have diluted cases of support because we're trying to compare ourselves over there. And all of a sudden philanthropy kind of comes in and says, but we can't do all of those things. So you don't get to specific outcomes, just kind of general ideas. And there's a lot of internal confusion. This is where in terms of what I would call corrective discipline or connective, a corrective kind of positioning is about creating clear values of who you are and figure out who are other people like you, and then use data to inform kind of a anchoring in the planning process, because that's when philanthropy is at its best, when it's aligned.
And that means that when you do some type of benchmarking, you have an educational process. One of the things that I did in kind of the report, rough draft at this point that I think is helpful, is I really got into why I chose the benchmarking comparisons. And as this has been kind of just at the beginning stages being rolled out because I spent some time doing that, I think it's helpful because we've been able to shoot down some envious.
Well, no, we're more like that. No, you're really not envy this idea of little South Asian, low understanding about who you are and where you can actually go and be. Gluttony the fifth is really about worrying more around what we look like rather than what we are. What do I mean by that? Well, it's really focusing, I think, in some ways on overbuilding events because we get a lot of marketing coverage, but we're not actually raising a lot of money, or we have campaign structures that consume an immense amount of resources, because that's going to make us feel good and make our volunteers feel good, but they don't actually deliver results internally.
It could be something as an overburdening of staff with reporting requirements and whether that's, you know, all the reports we have to do so that we feel good or actually not having the empathy and understanding from a leadership perspective to know what edicts are being made, but how they are not connected to the people making them. Remember my story a second ago about a friend who works at an organization where they've said, just go ask for the top amount in the well screening?
Well, that was an edict from people who aren't actually on the front lines of any of this. And so the gluttony in this case, idea of more and more and more and more without the consequences or understanding of what's possibly involved. So what you end up with are higher fundraising costs, turnover, you have staff burnout, and you have reduced net revenue because you're chasing shiny things rather than doing the basic work.
And those shiny things make you look good. So you think, but don't actually deliver the results. Gluttony. Wrath. Anger. This is about conflict and friction. And frankly, more often than not, this actually derives from inside organizations rather than outside. It's about the internal friction, the misalignment between development finance, compliance, program leadership, organizational leadership. It's a defensive series of reactions that can come when we actually ask our donors what they think, but we don't like what they say.
It's siloed execution, meaning very little alignment. It's slow decision making cycles because everybody's got a voice. So we can't ever seem to get to the end result because everyone's power grabbing. We're too worried about what's for us rather than what's best for the organization. And it damages donor relationship, experience and trust. This is one I wrote a book about fiber and vulnerability.
The whole book is basically about Roth, about power structures that are too worried about how I can be seen in a positive way, rather than what's best for the organization. I tell a lot of stories in my book around my experiences where I didn't think about it at the time, but Roth reared its ugly head because there was a misalignment between finance and myself and how we best serve the organization.
This is where, from a corrective kind of or overall program discipline, we have to have clear understanding of rules, and we have to build trust internally that we have to work on. This may be extreme, but constructive conflict resolution to put the organizational direction, mission and objectives first and our own personal fiefdom second. And we put donor centric responses and donor centric relationships.
If philanthropy is going to drive something at the forefront of who we are and what we do, Roth has a way of eating from the inside out. And as a result, how we make this kind of cross-functional work and prioritization, prioritizing the right things important in our planning and daily life helps mitigate the outcomes that can be negative.
Roth. The final one is sloth. And this is about, again, not about how you look, but really about no self-respect. And in many ways, I think of this as all about, particularly with donors, about stewardship, that we don't follow through. We're transactional. We got their money. They don't need to know more about us. And I don't feel like I have a responsibility to do this internally.
It's about passive portfolio management that we're not actively engaged with finding the best people for us to tell the stories with, or we got gift officers, and in this case, it would be legitimately saying and being correct. There are better people for me to talk to, but I can't get in my portfolio what the outcomes are lapse donors, unhappy gift officers, certainly a reduction in transformational giving at the principle in and plan giving opportunities or or categories.
And it's kind of an idea or directional declining engagement with the people that we need the most, people who believe in us the most. And this is where we have two things that we need to do. Number one is we need a better moves management rigor. And I don't mean it like you got to get more people from qualification to cultivation.
What I'm saying is, is that we honor the relationship that we have with our donors, and we meet them where they are and help them go where they want to go. And what this does is create more outcomes that are positive for the donor, which actually, if we do this correctly, means greater outcomes for the organization. And then finally we are stewarding like crazy.
We are always trying to figure out ways in which we can cause people to realize at the highest possible levels, how important they are not to just what the gift was, but to the goals that they had that our organization can help them achieve. In doing so, you reduce this, you reduce the idea of no self-respect. And that's the seventh sloth.
All of these things are exhibited in multiple ways every day. And if we go back to what was said by Saint Thomas Aquinas when he spent a great deal of his life writing about this and talking about this centuries ago, that it isn't meant as a condemnation of who we are as an organization or as people, professionally or personally, what it was meant as, and I think we don't serve it in this way, is a diagnostic, meaning if we can see these things, can we adjust to become better?
Life's journey professionally, personally or organizationally isn't about where you are now. If we do this correctly, it's about what you can be. And these seven deadly sins are really about identifying challenges and finding solutions. Which brings me to the tactical, which is incredibly short, probably won't have ever done because I can't do it, but I can tell you how to do it.
Go look at yourself professionally if you want. Personally, organizationally. Most important, look at each one of these things as kind of described and kind of rate them on a three prong approach. We have a problem. We're probably neutral on this one. We are doing this one well. And then in each one, even the ones you're doing well, find corrective solutions.
Think about how to be better. We all have challenges in our life. We all have fault. I like to tell people constantly, and I don't think I've ever said this on one of the podcasts, but it's really true. I make more mistakes every day than most people make in a month. The question is, do you make the same ones over and over?
Are you willing to improve to get better? This is about a continuous discipline rather than a one time correction. This is about finding ways forward, not evaluating and saying you're just a terrible person, a terrible professional, or a terrible organization. Leaders can use this framework with their boards, with their with their donors, with all kinds of different options to figure out how do we get better, what we do, and when that happens, then philanthropy in your organization can avoid the depths.
The worst parts of the seven Deadly Sins. Don't forget to check out the blogs at Hallett Flames. There be two per week, right? A lot of different things from personal to professional things I read. They don't quite reach the level of a podcast, but might be worth something Hallettphilanthropy.com/blogs or if you'd like to reach out to me, it's podcast@halletphilanthropy.com.
We need less sin, and I don't mean that in a personal way, but in a professional way. The seven deadly sins in our organizations that serve as non-profits you, me, all of us, no matter what position you hold because our communities need the things that you do that make your community better. Remember my favorite saying, some people make things happen.
Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened. If you're able to evaluate your organization and yourself in an honest way, using the seven Deadly sins as kind of a diagnostic marker to figure out how I can be, how we can be, how this organization can be better, then you are someone who's making things happen, and the end result will be you'll take care of more people and things in your community that are wondering what happened, and that is worth your time.
It's worth the effort because you are and can do it even more so, changing lives and your community for the better. Don't forget, I look forward to seeing you the next time right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall. Make it a great day.