Backbone > Life in the Balance

The Gift of Uplift
By Susan Piperato . Photos by Roy Gumpel

There is a 600-pound gorilla sitting outside our door which only a few people have noticed,” says Tom Munnecke. The Californian scientist-turned-entrepreneurial philanthropist is speaking metaphorically, but the gorilla he sees out there is no less menacing in its symbolism than it would be in the flesh. What the gorilla represents, Munnecke explains, is “the fact that we are the first generation of the first species in the multibillion-year evolutionary timeline that is now directly affecting the future of evolution on earth. This is not an optional assignment; it is already happening, whether we like or not. By omission or commission, we are shaping the future of life on earth.”

For Munnecke, the solution is a new kind of philanthropy known as “uplift”. Munnecke explains uplift as “better, more inclusive” than traditional philanthropy, which involves donating large sums to a given project or cause but not actually getting your hands dirty. Uplift still involves donating money, but it also calls for personal involvement, through volunteerism, lending emotional support to a project via e-mail, adopting personal sustainability, and performing simple acts of human kindness. “Money is not necessarily the best way to make the world a better place,” Munnecke says; uplift instead involves “mutuality and reciprocity, and allows discussion of the myriad ways that we can do things which will make the world a better place.”

Munnecke explains the choices set before us, represented by the gorilla, in terms of what philosopher Isaiah Berlin called the two kinds of freedom: “freedoms from” and “freedoms for.” “Once you have reached a certain level of freedom from hunger, money, housing, you become free to look at ‘freedoms for’—now what can I do with my life?” he explains.

That’s where the concept of uplift comes in. Munnecke says he often opens workshops with “an introductory appreciative inquiry question: ‘Introduce yourself in the context of your most meaningful act of generosity.’” Among the answers, he says, “No one has ever mentioned money. It is all about personal contacts, someone who cared, or some surprising relationship.… Certainly, financial gifts are a critical aspect of development, but I want to work on a broader foundation. For uplift to really work, it has to be mutually transforming for both the helper/donor and the recipient/doer.”

If you’ve ever been concerned about a problem in some far corner of the world, but felt helpless because you couldn’t rearrange your life in order to go there, or donate large sums of cash, you’re a candidate for uplift. Largely an online phenomenon, uplift simply requires concern, and whatever you can contribute financially and/or personally. A little bit from a lot of people goes a very long way. By “scaling things down to ever-smaller, more reciprocal interaction,” uplift-style philanthropy requires lesser amounts of money, Munnecke explains: “One million people making a $1 gift in which they feel the effects of the generosity can be much more uplifting than a single gift of $1 million.”

Munnecke has been involved in forming several online organizations offering uplift, including GivingSpace.com, “an informal think tank for ways of thinking about self-organizing, self-propagating mechanisms of uplift.” As a healthcare systems software designer in the early 1990s, Munnecke awoke to the need to actively work to change the world. Finding “anything I did with computers to make [healthcare systems] more efficient would only make it get worse faster,” he began exploring new ways of thinking, including the Web and Complexity Theory. But it wasn’t until February 2001 while visiting a poor village in India that Munnecke had the kind of pivotal “do something” moment that he says calls people to uplift.

“I went with a doctor to the hut of a woman who had a two-week-old, 2.2-pound baby,” he recalls. “The mother refused the doctor’s offer to provide free medical care for the baby because it was a girl child. The doctor was on my left, the very agitated and angry father was on my right, and the mother and child were in front of me, the mother smiling for my camera while she intentionally let her child die that afternoon.”

Greatly disturbed by the experience, Munnecke devised his own personal uplift question: What is the simplest thing I can do that will have the maximum uplift for humanity? “It’s quite a question to begin the day. The simple part is the real kicker.” In the end he’s discovered his experience is typical of uplifters. “A number of the people I have run into have had their own ‘do something’ moments, frequently describing travel, an encounter with a child, particularly seeing their eyes, and mentioning the words, ‘I had to do something.’ I think there is a real thirst in the world for people to have outlets for taking actions which are uplifting to the world. So giving someone an opportunity to give is in itself a gift.”

Resources:
Action Without Borders (www.idealist.org) features 36,000 nonprofit and community organizations in 165 countries, which can be browsed according to name, location or cause; volunteer opportunities around the world and at home; the largest nonprofit career center online, including jobs and internships, which lets you post your own profile; and connections to like-minded people around the world.

GlobalGiving (www.globalgiving.com) was founded by Dennis Whittle and Mari Kuraishi, after together creating the World Bank’s Development MarketPlace, in which groups and projects compete for grant money, in 2000. “It changed my life,” says Whittle. “We saw people who deserve success, but are excluded for reasons that are not rational. We realized innovation and ideas are never hard to come by, they just need exposure. We had the feeling we were part of unleashing the potential of humanity.” GlobalGiving allows public individuals, companies, and affinity groups to find, fund, and track online development projects around the world.

The Giving Game (www.givinggame.com), launched in October by Pay It Forward Foundation board member Brien Moakley, allows for one-on-one uplift. Giving Game cards can be purchased through the site or downloaded and printed for free. Get a card, devise a kind deed, and register the card. Once the deed is done, give the card to the person you’ve helped, who then re-registers the card, helps someone else, and hands over the card. Registration allows tracking kind acts around the world. To obtain cards, e-mail info@payitforwardfoundation.org.

UpSpace (www.upspace.org) features a prototype by Munnecke (and others) of an “uplift academy.” Related Web sites include www.september12.org, an experiment of “scalable small things,” and www.lovetoiraq.org, which follows a workshop that looked at positive activities with regard to Iraq. Bliss Browne’s work on “Imagination as a Movement” can be found at Imagine Chicago (www.imaginechicago.org). For Munnecke’s writings for Triggering a Cascade of Uplift, a book being published by Case Western University, visit www.munnecke.com.