Renewal Becomes Part of Christians for Environmental Stewardship

Renewal, the organization of young evangelicals concenrned about caring for the environment, announced Friday night that it has become part of Christians for Environmental Stewardship, which now includes three distinct minstries that focus on young peope: Restoring Eden, Creation Care Study Program, and Renewal. Its a good move that will provide some stability to Renewal, which is seeing turnover of its young leaders. CES is headed by longtime activist Peter Illyn, who operates Restoring Eden; and Chris Elisara who runs CCSP, the terrific overseas study program for collegians.

The First Ten PR Secrets for Non-Profits: #4 Be Authentic

When you engage in public relations as a non-profit organization, every move must be strategic and thoughtful. The road to visibility can be long and arduous, and there is nothing more important than your integrity and your reputation. For more than three decades, we have been providing counsel and service to organizations and public figures in the Christian and non-profit sectors. We’ll unfold ten things we’ve learned.

#4 Be Authentic

Public confidence in charitable organizations is vital to assuring vibrant future for the work these groups do to address the world’s most important problems. The primary challenge of the public relations function that supports these organizations is not to spread information or to trick the public, but to encourage integrity and fortify the resulting good reputation.

That’s why I hate when people (including some in the profession) call public relations work “spin,” which gives the impression that PR practitioners are an impediment to the truth, rather than advocates and purveyors of truthfulness. (Of course, some are not. There are unprofessional clods in every profession.)

Unfortunately, public confidence in charities remains at contemporary lows. A March 2008 survey conducted by Brookings shows:

1. Charitable confidence has not risen significantly since it hit bottom in 2003. As of September 2002, 37 percent of Americans reported having “not too much” confidence in charitable organizations or “none at all.” As of March 2008, 34 percent gave the same rating.

2. Americans remain skeptical of charitable performance. Only 10 percent of the Americans interviewed in March 2003 said charitable organizations did a “very good job” spending money wisely; 17 percent gave the same rating to running programs and services, and being fair in decisions; and 25 percent gave the same rating to helping people.

3. The considerable drop in the ratings of helping people poses a serious challenge to the sector’s distinctiveness as a destination for giving and volunteering. As of October 2003, 34 percent of Americans said charitable organizations did “very good” in helping people; in March 2008, only 25 percent gave that same rating. This statistically significant drop is the most troubling finding in the survey.

4. Estimates of charitable waste remain disturbingly high. As of March 2008, 70 percent of Americans said that charitable organizations waste “a great deal” or “fair amount” of money. This figure has risen 10 percentage points since October 2003. Although Americans estimate that big business and government waste even more money, charitable organizations seem bound and determined to catch up.

Confidence in organizations must start with good governance. The public relations team can contribute by supporting the following:

• Be authentic in your characterizations of problems and your ability to address them.

• Encourage investment in performance, to be sure you can do what you want to do and say you will do.

• Match or exceed promises with performance—under-promise, over-deliver.

• Use realistic and common sense language rather than just flowery and visionary language in describing what you will accomplish.

• Don’t spin. That’s not the job of public relations, despite the way it is often characterized.

Reputation influences all the goals you set—gaining access for your programs, capturing both the attention and loyalty of donors, attracting and retaining the best employees, and finding strong program partners. Reputation also is a critical factor in how well you can weather a crisis.

While this may seem obvious to some, the best way to maintain a good reputation is to be authentic in your programs, public statements, fundraising, and financial practice. Tell the truth. Don't present your organization as more than it is, and don't try to be more than you can support with quality.

Jim Jewell

Happy White Elephant

We're going to have a Christmas party with our small group this Thursday, and per tradition we'll be having a "white elephant" exchange. An exercise in re-gifting. But where did the term "white elephant come from?

One of our small group friends, John (actually there are three John's in our small group; we call them 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John) wrote yesterday to provide an explanation:

White Elephant
The term derives from the sacred white elephants kept by Southeast Asian monarchs in Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. To possess a white elephant was regarded (and is still regarded in Thailand and Burma) as a sign that the monarch reigned with justice and power, and that the kingdom was blessed with peace and prosperity.The tradition derives from tales which associate a white elephant with the birth of Buddha, as his mother was reputed to have dreamed of a white elephant presenting her with a lotus flower, a symbol of wisdom and purity, on the eve of giving birth. Because the animals were considered sacred and laws protected them from labor, receiving a gift of a white elephant from a monarch was simultaneously both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because the animal was sacred and a sign of the monarch's favor, and a curse because the animal had to be retained and could not be put to much practical use, at least to offset the cost of maintaining it.

Now we know.

Jim Jewell

Gerson: The scandal is about bad scientists, not global warming

Mike Gerson hits the right notes on ClimateGate. The scandal hurts scientists but has little to do with the real evidence of global warming.

Time Out for Bad Behavior? A Balanced Analysis of ClimateGate

As climate change skeptics yearn to make bad behavior by some scientists into ClimateGate, and climate change pessimists try to look the other way in the face of bad publicity, my friend and colleague Rusty Pritchard, the president of Flourish(and a Christian, economist, and scientist), provides a clearheaded and even humorous analysis of the stolen-yet-troublesome email scandal.

Jim Jewell

The Gift of Good Land by Wendell Berry in Flourish Magazine

On the 30th anniversary of its writing, Flourish magazine is publishing Wendell Berry’s The Gift of Good Land, a penetrating examination of the Christian stewardship of God’s creation.

It is a wonderful counterpoint to much of the silly politics and commentary leading up to the Copenhagen summit, and it is a profoundly spiritual challenge that provides deep questions about the faithful and responsible life, questions that serve the Christian far more than anything we will read in the papers and blogs in the days of Copenhagen.

In The Gift of Good Land, Berry writes:

The difficulty but also the wonder of the story of the Promised Land is that, there, the primordial and still continuing dark story of human rapaciousness begins to be accompanied by a vein of light which, however improbably and uncertainly, still accompanies us. This light originates in the idea of the land as a gift—not a free or a deserved gift, but a gift given upon certain rigorous conditions.
It is a gift because the people who are to possess it did not create it. It is accompanied by careful warnings and demonstrations of the folly of saying that “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17). Thus, deeply implicated in the very definition of this gift is a specific warning against hubris which is the great ecological sin, just as it is the great sin of politics. People are not gods. They must not act like gods or assume godly authority. If they do, terrible retributions are in store. In this warning we have the root of the idea of propriety, of proper human purposes and ends. We must not use the world as though we created it ourselves.