Whew! What a week of debate! Thanks for the many, many readers who weighed in on the Performance vs. Impact debate. I appreciate the encouragement as well as the criticism and push for more refinement.
But now it’s Friday afternoon and time to continue the newest Tactical Philanthropy feature, the Friday Afternoon Mental Health Break. I thought it would be good for all of us who’ve been trading sharp intellectual jabs to “hug and make up” (watch the video to see what I mean). But actually, the video first caught my attention in relation to the way many people seem to feel that charitable giving is only pure if the giver does it out of pure selflessness. As I put forward in the Stanford Social Innovation Review last year, I think people give to charity out of an urge towards self-actualization.
We can see that giving isn’t a zero sum game through the concept of a hug. Hugs are given to someone else, yet a good hug benefits the giver. For a hug to be given in a way that offers the giver no joy is not more pure, it is a corruption of love.