In this Issue:

• • Giving That Matters Beyond the Bottom Line
  • Expanded Perspective—To Life!
  • Apply Now: ECRF 2025 Scholarship
  • Can Struggling Houses of Worship Be Turned Into Housing? Not Always

By Meredith McNabb, Associate Director of Education, Lake Institute

What makes a gift better or worse? For many secular organizations, the conversation might stop at simply “bigger is better.”  But for religious organizations, we know that there’s almost always more to it than that—especially when scarcity thinking isn’t clouding our view. For religious congregations and organizations, there are strong considerations of how a donor’s gift helps them feel that they’re truly a part of the membership or the good work being done. There is also often a particularly religious aspect of the gift, where making the gift is, in and of itself, a part of one’s religious practice. Consider Jewish givers living out the right kind of life through justice-minded tzedakah, Sikhs practicing their core value of selflessness through dasvandh financial giving and service, or Christian givers embodying discipleship through tithes and offerings.  

There can also be times of year or types of gifts across religious traditions where gifts are more traditionally given or may be particularly auspicious for the giver or for the recipient—where there’s a special blessing or meaning or just an additional layer of goodness to the gift being made in a specific way. For so many religious organizations, the bottom line looms large, and we can miss both the opportunity and the meaningfulness of helping our constituents understand and participate in those kinds of gifts.

Memorials and Anniversaries 

On the local and personal level, givers often find that special blessing or meaning when making gifts in honor of loved ones and in celebration of cherished commemorations. When religious organizations make it easy to offer gifts in honor or memory of a loved one, and can help facilitate acknowledgement of that gift, it allows givers to do something meaningful at the same time as they express their generosity and their care. Especially as people seek to downsize or otherwise simplify their possessions, a charitable gift in someone’s name creates a triple-blessing opportunity for the giver to express generosity, for the honoree (or their family) to feel the giver’s care, and for the organization to further their good work.   

Commemorations of local events and anniversaries are another way in which gifts can mean more than simply making a contribution. 25th, 50th, 300th anniversaries for a congregation’s founding or for marking a significant milestone (a clergy leader’s 20th year in service, or a building’s 5th or 75th anniversary, perhaps) create a meaningful way for people to celebrate and to be a part of the goodness of the moment. There’s a saturation point to this for any religious organization, of course—the blessing of it may wear thin if there’s a 20th, a 21st and a 22nd anniversary giving opportunity…but religious congregations and institutions shouldn’t let a good anniversary go to waste. It creates a moment for givers to reflect, to express gratitude, and to celebrate.   

Religious Observances  

Within one’s religious tradition, there may also be seasons and sacred observances where giving is integral to the spiritual practice of the giver, and their gifts offer extra layers of blessing to the giver and the recipient.   

Most well-known, perhaps, is giving during Ramadan for Muslim givers. As Rafia Khader, now Director of Religion Programs for Chautauqua Institution, wrote for Lake Institute at Ramadan in 2019:  

One of the many oft-repeated acts of worship is giving for the sake of God. Ramadan is a popular time for Muslims to pay their annual zakat (purifying alms), the third pillar of Islam. Zakat is required of every Muslim of financial means and is typically set at 2.5% of a person’s wealth and income. While zakat does not have to be paid in Ramadan, given the month’s most blessed status, many Muslims including myself do. 

While I try to give throughout the month, I usually reserve the bulk of my giving (including my zakat) to the last ten days. If there’s a possibility to get an additional reward of 83 years of worship, I’m going to take it! 

 (To learn more about the tradition of the last ten days of Ramadan and the particular weight of an act of worship—like giving—on Laylat-al-Qadr, read Khader’s full reflection here.) 

For Christians who observe Lent, the 40-day period of spiritual preparation before Easter, fasting in various ways is perhaps the best-known spiritual practice of the season (i.e., “giving something up for Lent”), but almsgiving—making charitable gifts to help the poor—is also deeply tied to the season’s religious observance. Some tie their giving directly to their fasting, using the money they save by not consuming coffee or sweets or giving up a whole day’s meals, for instance, to make extra gifts to those in need. Some choose to make outright gifts in place of fasting or otherwise not directly connected to it.  

While different traditions have different spiritual practices associated with giving during sacred seasons and holy days, religious organizations of all kinds within those traditions can help support their givers in those practices by creating social media posts and offering education and invitation into making these kinds of meaningful gifts associated with the religious observance.  

Cultural Practices  

Secular (and simply generalized) Christmas giving has become a part of global culture, but the origins of generosity around the Christmas holiday center on Saint Nicholas and focus on charitable giving. As Andrew Romanov writes for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America:  

Famously, St. Nicholas is also said to have aided a poor man who had three daughters but no dowry for them. At the time, remaining unmarried meant that the daughters would have fallen into lives of poverty and public ridicule, and so Nicholas decided to secretly help them. He went to their house under the cover of night and tossed three purses filled with gold coins through the window.

 (To learn more about the Saint Nicholas tradition of generosity, consider visiting the St Nicholas Center here.) 

An increasing number of Christian congregations seek to emphasize charitable giving in the face of juggernaut Christmas spending as a way to help their congregants and visitors to be blessed by the spiritual practice of generosity. Some have offered “reverse Advent calendars” in which, rather than receiving a treat each day, one offers an item or other support for those in need each day leading up to Christmas. Others have established a sacrificial practice of giving away their Christmas Eve collections to support those in need beyond the congregation itself.  

Catholic priest and philosopher Henri Nouwen wrote in A Spirituality of Fundraising, “We truly believe that if their gift is good only for us who receive, it is not fundraising in the spiritual sense.”  He invites those who encourage charitable giving to consider how the act of giving is good for the givers themselves, and those considerations stretch across religious traditions.  

So, we return to where we started: what makes a gift better or worse? In whatever way we invite giving to religious organizations, the donors are more fully connected to their faith. Do they feel inspired because of the gift they gave? If so, it probably wasn’t because of a bottom line but because of a change of heart.