Giving Thanks
Chances are there’s not a U.S. Agitator reader online or reading The Agitator today.
You see, it’s Thanksgiving. The preeminent day in the U.S. The one holiday all Americans seem to agree on and celebrate. Even celebrate to the extent of traveling thousands of miles, paying exorbitant airfares or increased gas prices for horrendous road trips, all to be with family members they normally avoid like the plague.
Every U.S. school kid learns that Thanksgiving is a feast day with origins in the Massachusetts colony of the Pilgrims, religious dissidents fleeting persecution in Europe, who purportedly were saved from starvation by the Native Americans who came to their aid that first winter in 1621.
Sadly, not every school kid is reminded that the generosity of the Native Americans on that first Thanksgiving was then reciprocated by a multi-century campaign of ethnic cleansing aimed at wiping out those same Native Americans. No good deed goes unpunished.
But, I digress.
While Americans stuff themselves today — the main dish being turkey and U.S. style football — and falsely vow they’ll never visit their dysfunctional family again, the rest of The Agitator readers should be counting their blessings and sharing them with each other.
To get us started, I give thanks for:
- Tom Belford, who for the past eight years has had the patience and persistence to read reams of good and bad stuff, and just plain nonsense, in order to distill from it the goodies he delivers most mornings while this errant sidekick is allowed to rant heedless of the publication schedule.
- Our fellow editors and writers — see the Blog roll on the right hand of The Agitator home page — who take hours out of their week to share good and valuable insights.
- The teaching missionaries of our profession — folks like Simone Joyaux, Tom Ahern, Nancy Schwartz, Pam Grow, Lisa Sargent, Kivi Leroux Miller, Gail Perry, Marc Pitman, and so many more — who work tirelessly to advance and provide top notch advice to those organizations who can least afford it.
- The heretics and iconoclasts like Kevin Schulman and Josh Wichard over at DonorVoice, and Caity Craver and Ben Miller at DonorTrends, and Jeff Brooks at Future Fundraising Now — all committed to challenging and bettering the business-as-usual approaches in our trade.
- The folks at SOFII who tirelessly and miraculously collect, archive and showcase the best of which our craft is capable.
Each day their work is a reflection of why we do what we do. We are also blessed with:
- The countless volunteers who give up their days, evenings, weekends and vacations and sometimes their very lives to practice what the organizations they work for preach.
- Those very special pros and volunteers who today are bringing kindness, compassion, medicine, shelter, hope to the beaten down, the tortured, the frightened, and the destitute millions so easily ignored and forgotten.
And, I give thanks for:
- The under-appreciated folks called fundraisers, who so often without resources or experience bravely and tirelessly tackle the task of rolling the rock uphill to meet often-impossible goals they had no voice in setting.
- Those rare and few board members who do not check their brains at the board room door and have the insight and guts to challenge the status quo.
Most of all I especially give thanks for:
- The millions and millions of donors who month after month, year after year, invest their compassion and trust in making our world a better place.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Roger
P.S. Wherever you’re reading this, as you count your Thanksgiving blessings, please share them in ‘Comments’ with us.
14 responses to “Giving Thanks”
Behavioral Science Q & A
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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Great post Roger on this day of Thanksgiving 2013.Enjoyed you drilling down on some very inportant points for those of us who try to make a difference for the people we serve through fundraising daily.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your devoted staff,keep up the great work,we are in a noble profession and with all the “challenges”we have much to celebrate on this day of Thanksgiving here in the USA.
Thank you, Roger and Tom, for keeping us on our toes, for calling out the BS in the profession, and for all that you do. Where would we be without you guys?
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to you – Roger and Tom – and my gratitude for sharing your insights and wisdom with all of us throughout the year. And in honor of this special day, Gobble Tov!
Great post. I’m thankful for the past full year of retirement from the day-to-day grind of pushing that proverbial rock uphill. After years of frustration, stress and discouragement, I have learned to love my profession again as a volunteer and consultant. Thank you, Roger, for constantly reminding us that we do noble work in the face of daunting odds and challenging circumstances. You helped me to stop feeling like a victim and to find the warrior in me again. It’s good to be back!
My fully functional family laughed out loud as I read portions of your post during our Thanksgiving morning . . .
Roger,
Thanks to you and Tom for The Agitator.
You are a class act!
And I am grateful for the Agitator. Without your pointing and prodding, I wouldn’t be pushing my organization to do more, try new things, or invest precious time in the things we are doing, but not well enough.
Blessings, kids. Eat well, think well, and come out fighting.
Well said and Happy Thanksgiving all. Now off to hobnob with my completely dysfunctional family.
What???
Re: Thanksgiving. “The preeminent day in the U.S. The one holiday all Americans seem to agree on and celebrate. ”
Really?? So all AMERICANS don’t agree on The 4th of July?
We all pause and give thanks for The Agitator among other things …
Roger,
Splendid of you, as always, to actually say the words that cross so many of our minds, and often go unsaid. Thanks to you, for giving public thanks for so many of the things that keep us all in this profession- hugely generous donors, committed colleagues, voluntary partners of all stripes, causes that inspire us, heretics, iconoclasts, villains and heroes of our profession, all those who do show up for work every day and drive so much of what happens in the Voluntary Sector, and of course, all those faithful friends and family who think we’re dysfunctional.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thank you, Roger and Tom. Thanks for agitating. Thanks for probing and prodding. So many of us have so much to be thankful for. And so many others have so little. We are fortunate to be part of philanthropy – to make change. Peace, Simone
Thank you Roger,
Simone and Tom introduced me to your blog. I read it religiously.
I am thankful for the people we serve and those who teach me how to do it. You and your team included.
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.