listen if Sarah Jaffe is going to bait me into threading basically a chapter of my dissertation, then I guess you can all learn about how TOMS shoes, (RED) merch and KIVA fucked us all up about giving. https://twitter.com/sarahljaffe/status/1272940492007882752

Let's start with Kiva, the website that put faces and names to what was in fact a pooled fund of microcredit loans. Kiva, like DonorsChoose, lists specific borrowers, with photos and bar graphs showing progress to goal on each loan.

But that personal touch backfired when...

In 2009, a reporter "revealed" that Kiva listed borrowers whose loans were already approved. In other words, donations didn't make or break their loan.

The backlash to this (pretty neutral) "expose" showed how much people wanted to "select" who would receive "their" $25.

A particularly revealing comment: "Kiva…proactively misled users...with quotes throughout the website that spoke of loans going to specific lenders…that was part of my initial fanfare of Kiva. In plain English, I really felt I was enabling the poor business owner that I chose."

Whoomp, there the proverbial "it" is. I, the Kiva donor, don't want to be a donor and give up control, like some chump -- I wanted to shop around for the most appealing/sympathetic/rewarding beneficiary.

Or this, from Lauren Bush Lauren (W's niece) saying she created FEED bags bc white ppl need something in return for feeding Rwandan kids:"I don’t want to go around and beg people for money…it can’t be just an emotional sell, people have to buy a product that they’re proud of"

Bobby Shriver, creator of (RED) merchandise, explained that people buying things is the best way to combat AIDS. He told the NYTimes, "We want people buying houses in the Hamptons based on this" (bc, again, personal satisfaction = sustainability of commitment)

You're getting it, right? Giving, a thing that puts our resources in SERVICE to other people, should ACTUALLY be gratifying to US. Not just warm fuzzies, but with the power that comes with CHOOSING who benefits from our largesse, and ideally some STUFF that signals our generosity

TBC, this conflating of donating with shopping, service with gratification, humility with ego, happens at WAY bigger scale w big funders. We absorbed terms like "return on investment," "quantifiable results" from finance/tech people whose entire lives revolve around such ideas.

In fact if you want to see something truly fucked up, here's a screenshot from the Robin Hood Foundation's video on their grantmaking, titled, "Metrics",with v/o that says,

"we keep a careful watch on the performance of our investments.”

Back to us plebes: even we are susceptible to appeals to OUR discernment/power, expressed through $. An op-ed by @ashleywhillans @DunnHappyLab & Eugene Caruso shows messages like "you can save a life" are more effective than "let's save a life together." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/opinion/sunday/how-to-get-the-wealthy-to-donate.html

What about Patreon and Kickstarter, you ask? I'm a lil more chill about those, personally, bc they operate more like pre-sales/subscriptions, which are perfectly fine ways for creatives to make a living. less "you're changing the world" than "you're paying for my creative labor."

But all of these conflations of "purchases" with "gifts" are part of the same paradigm shift, in which our humility and partnership is replaced with our sense of agency, discernment, validation, and satisfaction.

Where does that leave us re MN Freedom Fund/BLVC/RTB's transparency? I said it earlier, will again: demands for proof of immediate impact enact the consumerist, what-do-i-get attitude. It undermines the ways giving can reinforce our solidarity with others. https://twitter.com/AmyTheSchill/status/1272933547062579200?s=20