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“But tonight, here I am. And I feel — I feel that notwithstanding the past that my presence here is one additional bit of evidence that the American Dream need not forever be deferred.

We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community. We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present, unemployment, inflation, but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America. We are attempting to fulfill our national purpose, to create and sustain a society in which all of us are equal.”

- from the 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address by Barbara Jordan

“When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

~ Audre Lorde

“By giving, you are focusing on what you have to offer others, inviting more abundance into your life.”

- Mbali Creazzo, who inspired the 29-day Giving Challenge

“Very often, when campaigns fail, it’s not because people didn’t give, it’s because they weren’t asked. In fundraising, asking is the name of the game.

The problem is, only for the rarest person is asking for a gift easy. For most of us, the discomfort is so strong we’ll invent 100 excuses to procrastinate.

Despite any training, despite any inspirational send-off, asking will always be the biggest challenge.

What can temper the fear to some degree is keeping in mind that prospects, who are usually more sensitive than we expect, respond favorably to solicitors who are dedicated and genuinely enthusiastic about the causes they represent.”

- from Guidestar’s: 20 Biggest Fundraising Mistakes

One of the saddest lines in the world is, ‘Oh come now – be realistic.’ The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were realistic. They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and gave them horses to ride.

-Richard Nelson Bolles, What Color is Your Parachute?

Homage to the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (deity of Compassion in Mahayana Buddhism)

With body speech and mind in perfect oneness
I send my heart along with the sound of the bell
May the hearers awaken from forgetfulness
And transcend the path of anxiety and sorrow

May the sound of the bell merge deeply into the cosmos
In even the darkest places
May living beings hear it clearly
So that understanding lights up their hearts
And without hardship they transcend the cycle of birth and death.

For full passage, and a description of the sangha (or community building in Buddhist practice), click here.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mold our lives and the lives of those who spring from us”.

– Sam Butler, The Way of All Flesh

“Where there was desert, [Stef Wertheimer-Tefen] could see vast neighborhoods. Where there was poverty, he could see the unlimited human resource of collective imagination…he reframed everything.”

- Tojo Thatchenkery

“We live in this mysterious world as if we understand it and so wonder becomes lost. We live as if we know more than we don’t know and that isn’t true. Each moment of our lives we stand at a crossroads: we can reduce the profound to the mundane or we can intuit the continuous and vital mystery through which we move.”

- G. BlueStone, A Life of Wonder from Maverick Sutras

“Follow your passion with persistence, magnified by intense preparation. Use compassion and courage to weave a strong web of connections. Use focused excellence to drive achievements and gain wisdom. It is through the combination of all these things that your power will reveal itself.

{Preparation¹⁰ (Passion + Persistence)}
{Connection¹⁰ (Compassion + Courage)}
{Excellence¹⁰ (Achievement + Wisdom)}
= Power
{P₁¹⁰ (P₂ + P₃)} + {C₁¹⁰( C₂ + C₃)} + {E¹⁰ (A + W)} = Power”

- Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President

“With token recognition, donors may see their contributions as transactions, but donors who receive more personal recognition better understand how their gift impacts an organization’s work. That moves them away from transactional giving to larger philanthropic contributions.”

Peter Fissinger
Campbell & Company, President

“Short is better, fun is great! While the issues we’re working on are serious, we don’t always have to be serious in our communications. It’s really important to provide ways for people to celebrate with you.”

- Mary Beth Hanson, Communications Director
Women’s Foundation of Minnesota

The bottom line is that we need to realize that our current conventional money is not value-neutral. We now have evidence that complementary currencies create different types of relationships than conventional currencies do. We can promote competition, greed, and scarcity, or cooperation, generosity, and abundance with our money systems. The choice is ours.

- Bernard Lietaer

“People say to me, ‘How can you smile?’ Then they realize ‘there’s got to be something more to life than meets the eye if a guy without arms and legs is living a fuller life than I am.’”

- Nick Vujicic

“Luck has nothing to do with it, because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours, on the court working for my one moment in time, not knowing when it would come.”
— Serena Williams, eight-time winner of the Australian Open

“Be positive and work hard. I think it’s possible to overcome anything, if you’re willing to work at it.”
— Sheryl Swoopes, three-time WNBA MVP

“Acceptance of one’s life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.”

- Paul Tournier

“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”

- Albert Einstein

Recession = the act of withdrawing or going back. Comes from the Latin word re + ceder which means moving back from a point, to rest, to recoup, to gain perspective.

Recession has a quality of gestation and waiting, waiting for the waters to recede before making the next move, practicing patience and embracing the cyclical nature of time.

Let this economic recession work for you- and go within….

- Elizabeth Husserl R.

“Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy
Ba da da da da da da, feeling groovy

Hello lamppost, what’cha knowing
I’ve come to watch your flowers growin’
Ain’t cha got no rhymes for me?
Doo-it in doo doo, feeling groovy
Ba da da da da da da, feeling groovy

I got no deeds to do
No promises to keep
I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me
Life I love you, all is groovy”

- The 59th Street Bridge Song (listen here), Feelin’ Groovy by Simon and Garfunkel

“And God saw every thing that s/he had made, and behold, it was very good.” – Genesis 1:31

Or for the atheists,”The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudoscientific charlatans.” – Richard Dawkins

”When we share our stories, we change our collective stories. The world is an expression of our collective narrative. . . At this moment, we are poised to change our collective narrative . . .”

Deepak Chopra, The Happiness Prescription

“There has never been a better time to explore ideas and methods to bring forth places of great strength in your work and philanthropy.”

- Tuti Scott

The Rain Stick by Seamus Heaney

Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rash, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
a sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand time before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

(from The Spirit Level, poems by Seamus Heaney)

“Nobody has all the answers. Knowing that you do not know everything is far wiser than thinking that you know a lot when you really don’t. Phony expertise is neurotic. Fortunately, once the symptoms are recognized, the cure is easy: stop it.”

#71 from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching adapted by John Heider

“People aren’t either wicked or noble,” the hook-handed man said. “They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”

- from The Grim Grotto, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.

- from The Gift by Hafiz

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”

- Audre Lorde

There are things
We live among ‘and to see them
Is to know ourselves’.

- George Oppen from Of Being Numerous

The eye of the Sea is one thing and the foam another. Let the foam go, and gaze with the eye of the Sea. Day and night foam-flecks are flung from the sea: of amazing! You behold the foam but not the Sea. We are like boats dashing together; our eyes are darkened, yet we are in clear water.

- Rumi