Volunteering feedback, generosity research

and a neat housing policy story

It’s been about three weeks since I published my essay on individual action and I’ve really been touched by some of the kind, lovely, thought-provoking feedback I received. Thanks for everyone who sent their ideas and reflections, and their suggestions for local opportunities.

Steven, who identified himself to me as someone one donation away from being a 60-gallon blood donor, said to me: “It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.”

Christopher from Colorado sent me this poem, written in 1939 by Bertolt Brecht. He said he has its phrase “Don't put down the book on reading this, man” taped to his office wall as a sharp tone reminder, which I really liked.

Tim from Maine (51) said he recently became a volunteer firefighter for his small coastal town, an experience he describes as transformative. “I’m a full time remote tech guy with a family, and I never prioritized hands-on involvement in my community,” he said. “Firefighting maybe an extreme example, but I am encouraging my children to find their niche before they get old like their dad.”

Emma suggested, “what you really have to do is give enough that you feel at least a little bite.”

These are just a sample. It was also really awesome to have the essay referenced by David French in his New York Times column over Labor Day weekend. I think that drove a lot of new people to see it.

Coincidentally, after the piece came out we learned that there was a forthcoming report on the cusp of publication by major bigwigs in philanthropy on the state of US giving and volunteering. We felt the report was newsworthy and Vox editors suggested I take on covering it. That report, a multi-million dollar research effort, was published today by a group called The Generosity Commission.

I wrote about its findings and some of my general thoughts about it today at Vox, which you can read here. It definitely paired well with the broader themes of my essay, and one of the major sticking points with this report is they’re very concerned about declining participation with nonprofits specifically. As an excerpt from my article:

The authors make the compelling argument that there are many social services we’ve come to take for granted that nonprofits will always provide. And leaders with the Generosity Commission suggest it’s too risky to expect the government, the business sector, or even informal acts of generosity to ultimately fill these roles.

They may be right. But other countries have much less robust nonprofit sectors while still providing social services, and so to convince a clearly skeptical US public, charitable groups will need to think harder about how they tell their story. The case for supporting nonprofits can’t simply be that nonprofits have historically assumed these responsibilities in America, or that Alexis de Tocqueville famously admired them and therefore we should stick to nonprofits out of tradition.

We’re facing something of a Rorschach test right now: Recently, the New York Times published a sobering article on the threat posed by declining volunteer paramedics. The Generosity Commission could argue that this situation perfectly encapsulates why it’s critical to motivate more people to step into these formal volunteering roles that have served American communities for decades. Yet others could reasonably say that in a country as wealthy as the US, we shouldn’t depend on volunteer labor to fill these jobs, and indeed, most other nations don’t.

I found the report interesting, especially their findings that giving to a charity increases a person's likelihood of joining one or more community groups by nearly 10 percentage points; and volunteering increases it by 24 percentage points. These sorts of linkages are new, and seem relevant to the broader conversation going on around civil society and loneliness. Though the report had a lot of unanswered questions too, a bit frustratingly so.

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I had a story out last week on a very cool affordable housing experiment taking place in Southern California. One of the best parts of my job is reporting on new, smart policy ideas, and this one I think represents a trifecta of practical measures that could really scale. I think it also shows how so many of these reforms really are interconnected and work together. You can read that one here.

I’ll be focusing more on the election over the next 7 weeks (!) but I have some non-election-focused stories on deck too that I’m looking forward to sharing with you. Thanks for reading, and remember to send me all your good ideas :D