The Generosity Crisis: The Case for Radical Connection to Solve Humanity's Greatest Challenges

by Nathan Chappell, Brian Crimmins, Michael Ashley

PRAISE FOR THE GENEROSITY CRISIS

“The Generosity Crisis confronts us with alarming trends in charitable giving. But it isn’t a bad news book about America. On the contrary, it shows us how donors and nonprofits can connect in new and better ways to inflect giving levels and lift each other up.”

— Arthur C. Brooks, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

“A long legacy of nonprofit change-making is woven into our social fabric, and critical to enduring change. And yet, donors have been dropping out of traditional charitable giving at a steady pace. The Generosity Crisis speaks the hard truth, calling on nonprofit leaders to reimagine their relationships with everyday philanthropists. This is a book that should be highlighted, dog-eared, and pencil-scrawled by the time you reach the last pages.”

—Shannon McCracken, CEO, The Nonprofit Alliance

“The need to inspire donors and engage with them more deeply has never been greater. In The Generosity Crisis: The Case for Radical Connection to Solve Humanity’s Greatest Challenges, the authors challenge all of us who strive to transform the world through philanthropy to think differently about how we engage with donors and provide us with a roadmap to achieve lasting relationships with those who support our organizations. A very timely and much needed work!”

—Alice Ayers, President and CEO, Association for Healthcare Philanthropy

“A new approach to philanthropy is urgently needed. Over $1 trillion is sitting idle in private foundations while at least $150 billion is stored in donor advised funds. With multiple crises facing humanity, now is the time to put this capital to good use and ensure a more sustainable and prosperous future for all. There is certainly no shortage of scalable solutions waiting to be deployed by charities. They just need access to capital. This book charts a path forward on how to do exactly that, how to revolutionize giving and overcome the generosity crisis NOW.”

— Michael Sheldrick, Co-Founder and Chief Policy, Impact, and Government Relations Officer, Global Citizen

“The Generosity Crisis provides an engaging depiction of the worrisome implications of the decline in everyday giving in the U.S., proposing the solution of radical connection as a vehicle for building successful and meaningful philanthropic relationships. A fluid read that synthesizes a number of compelling experiences with success.”

—Dr. Amir Pasic, Dean of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University

Genres: Nonfiction, Professional Development, Leadership

272 pages, Hardcover

Published November 15, 2022

About the author

As a thought leader, public speaker, and writer, Nathan is one of the world's foremost experts on the intersection between Artificial Intelligence and philanthropy. Nathan serves as Senior Vice President of DonorSearch Aristotle, where he leads Ai deployments for some of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations.

Nathan’s subject matter expertise has been featured in several publications, including Fast Company, University of Notre Dame and the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy. In 2021, Nathan founded Fundraising.Ai as a member-centric collaboration of nonprofit professionals with a focus on data ethics, data equality, privacy and security, sustainability. Nathan presented the first TEDx on the topic of artificial intelligence and the future of generosity in 2018.

Nathan is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and holds a Masters in Nonprofit Administration from University of Notre Dame, an MBA from University of Redlands, a certificate in International Economics from University of Cambridge and a certificate in Artificial Intelligence from MIT.

Reviews

[Steffanie Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a popular current read among my fellow nonprofit professionals, so I was looking forward to reading it, but was somewhat disappointed. Perhaps due to having three authors, it was hard to get a clear sense of what the intended audience and purpose is. The book is intentionally provocative and spends a lot of time building a case for why nonprofits are in big trouble, but there is a lack of actionable potential solutions provided, other than doing business with the authors' businesses, or an individual-focused solution that does not match the institutional focus on the problems in the earlier part of the book. I do agree that Radical Connection leads to greater success and that society is increasingly disconnected, but I would have liked to see studies cited that show the negative impact of disconnection on generosity. Might other factors also be involved in the decline of giving, such as less discretionary income for the middle class? There is definitely good information here, but if you are a nonprofit professional looking for ways to combat the generosity crisis in your own shop, you will still be looking--perhaps a sequel in the works?

[Liss Carmody · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, this book was a painful slog. I was really quite upset because I felt that I agreed with the central thesis as presented in the subtitle. I suppose I still basically agree with the thesis: that forming philanthropic relationships is important to boost charitable giving overall and more successfully develop individuals into philanthropists on whatever scale. But man. What a waste of a bunch of reading hours otherwise.

So, the main problem is that the entire 236-page book is just clumsily written. It reads like an undergraduate finance major's essay in all of the worst ways. Poor sentence construction, sloppy, trite phrases, and general clunkiness are pervasive. Further, the substance of the book doesn't really support this treatment: it has the feel of a powerpoint presentation that was filled out with anecdotes and fluff to get it to book length, including all the awkwardness and repetition that entails. I could have scratched my eyes out every time the authors made sure to mention Ben & Jerry's and Bombas by name when referencing the case studies they'd written in earlier chapters. Also, this is more of a pet peeve, but it became increasingly obvious that the authors had latched onto their keyphrase 'radical connection' and then overused it into oblivion, including in places where the demonstrated activity was actually more transactional than relational in nature. The word 'radical' got tossed out in a few other contexts as well where it really wasn't warranted.

Throughout the book, the authors unfortunately fail to really support or justify their conclusions. The writing is full of examples like this - when discussing corporate CSR initiatives, they casually mention that employees who support the CSR missions of a company are also the best employees in an objective sense. When discussing legacy philanthropy they suggest a direct line between philanthropic connection in parents and their children (despite providing examples earlier of philanthropically-minded parents who do not foster that characteristic in their kids). All kind of unsupported dubious claims like this. Just... citation needed, my guys.

The focus of the book also wandered around quite a lot, touching on nonprofit management and fundraising, corporate CSR, mission-driven corporations, and personal giving. It was pretty unclear who the target audience was meant to be which was honestly pretty funny considering how much emphasis was given over the course of the text to identifying personalized marketing initiatives.

Anyway, reading this book made me grumpy; I do not recommend it. I'm sure there are better books out there about charitable giving, its decline, and how we might reenvision that landscape. But anyway, this one was very unimpressive.

[Madeleine · Rating 1 out of 5]

this books narrative and analysis is all over the place. it’s primary emotional device is pathos-laden stories that do not meaningfully connect to its argument (ie long anecdotes to argue that nonprofit events can help a man and woman find lasting love and pass it on to their family for generations to come). the analysis relies on nationalistic myths of US superiority, alleging that the US is “at risk” of losing its state as the “most generous” country, without meaningfully examining how the US nonprofit sector relies on a lack of state support of social services, health care, and education — as well as exceedingly narrow definitions of what constitutes generosity. its argument seemed to be that to foster “radical connection” nonprofits should look to CSR initiatives and the big data/AI/personalization ability of large corporations, but it looked so much towards CSR that it didn’t effectively analyze its true applicability to nonprofits, casting it as a given. lucy bernholz writes about how CSR has by and large benefited corporations, not nonprofits, and the examples in this book led me to agree further — for instance, it cites efforts such as “red nose day” where most giving comes from customers rounding up their gift, transactional exchanges that keep data and relationship housed with the corporation and that have actually been attributed to a decrease in charitable participation. no race analysis whatsoever and very little proposed solutions.

[Joseph Kirkenir · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to take away from this book. There were no real actionable steps.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book argues that philanthropy is in decline as it becomes the domain of the ultra-wealthy while average people are giving less. Unless charity organizations learn from the business world and provide improved giving experiences for their donors, utilizing personalization and investment in long-term relationship to create radical connection, all will be lost by about 2050.

4 stars for the concept, which included many valid concerns about the inadequacies of common fundraising methods and mindsets. I also agree that radical connection is essential.

3 stars for execution. The authors seemed to focus on making sure each of them could share an equal number of stories, but did not give enough attention to tying each chapter into the overall point.

Based on the excellent podcast interview with two of the authors that prompted me to buy the book, I had hoped for more.

[Valerie Sherman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had hopes that this book would be a how-to in fostering "radical connection" (no, I'm not going to capitalize it like we're Germans with nouns, or like the authors of this book) with prospects, but it was disappointing. As others have noted, the authors seem to conclude that corporate philanthropy is both the enemy and the future. As others have also noted, lots of typos and other construction issues that an editor could have helped with.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this book was actually the most helpful to me as a professional fundraiser. Setting up the stage for why a connection to philanthropy matters and helping to understand the changing landscape of caring for causes, helps me rethink what I do on a daily basis. The book fell short in the second half that outlined how to build a radical connection by staying very superficial in my opinion.

[Lindsey A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good content and readable. Lost points for a few things: The authors did a little too much patting themselves on the back. Lots of typos-- poor copy editing-- and a very tone deaf summation of one woman's sexual abuse as her stepfather's "untoward overtures"....

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really valuable information and conversation tools to help reimagine a path forward

[Alex Nobel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author brings up a lot of interesting points about what has driven people to give and trust less. Good read to understand how “radical” connection can be used to improve all facets of life.