Having served on the CRC board in the past and having volunteered as a trained mediator, I came to greatly appreciate the idea that members of a community can resolve our interpersonal conflicts in ways that promote non-violence, justice, reconciliation and a deepening of connection, without resorting to the sometimes scarring machinations of the legal system. The CRC existed to facilitate those experiences, through its mediation program, educational work with local youth, and its rich history of related efforts in the Richmond area and beyond.

As a mediator, I had the honor of witnessing some magical moments between family members or co-workers where the conversation transitioned from accusation and battling to understanding, compassion and hope for moving forward. As a board member, I had the honor of working with a driven and passionate group of volunteers and staff who believed in what the CRC was about and what it could do for the community.

While the principles and practices of mediating conflict are certainly still available to anyone who wants to pursue them, it's sad to see that a place like the CRC can't sustain itself right now.  My hope, of course, is that this is an ending that will lead to other beginnings down the road.

Many people have given life and breath to CRC's mission over the years, and I'm so thankful for their work.  I'm especially thankful for the careful and surely painful work that the current board members have taken on in reaching the conclusion to lay the CRC down.  I hope that Richmond can find some way to honor what CRC did and stood for in the ways that we carry forward.

While I commend the efforts of those who are seeking to maximize the funds that have a direct impact on the actual aid work, I'm not sure that this particular request makes sense to me.

First, a little background on how processing fees work:

How money gets from here to there

Most donations that any of us give to any organization flow through some sort of multi-step process before the funds are actually available to that organization.  The simplest form, of course, is that I walk down the street to the organization's headquarters and hand them cash that comes out of my wallet.  The cash is in their hands, ready to use however they might need it.

A more common flow is that I write a check and mail it into the organization.  The costs and hassles here are still minimal - I might pay 42 cents for the stamp, I probably had some envelopes laying around, the additional staff time needed at the organization to convert the check to usable funds is probably wrapped up in a deposit they'd do anyway, and their bank probably doesn't charge them for that process.  But still, it's a little more overhead and infrastructure than the cash transaction needed.

Which brings us to credit card transactions and other forms of electronic giving.  When you pay for something with a credit card, there are a slew of institutions involved in making that transaction successful.  There's your relationship with your credit card company that allows you to have the line of credit in the first place.  There's the receiving organization's relationship with a credit card processor, which allows them to take you credit card number and hold some dollars on your account.  There's the credit card processor's relationship with other credit card companies, which allows them to talk to your credit card company to make sure you have those funds available.  And then there's the credit card processor's relationship with the receiving organization's bank, which allows them to deposit your money into the bank account. Similar relationships are in place when you use online payment services like PayPal.

Of course, all of this happens with the swipe of a piece of plastic and some behind-the-scenes bit shuffling, but that doesn't mean that it's not an incredibly complicated series of relationships and many pieces of physical and technological infrastructure.  It's understandable that there are some costs involved.

Do they really need to charge that much?

Now to be sure, I think that the credit card companies and PayPal are making quite a nice profit margin on their operations.  Between the fees they charge the receiving organization for using their services (usually a monthly charge plus per-transaction fees) to the interest and account fees they make off of each credit card holder, it's arguable that they've got quite a nice little racket going.

But this reality doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the transaction is being made for a charitable cause - I use my credit card regularly for things that I think are good and necessary in my life, the life of my community, and the larger world, and they may or may not be going to an IRS-recognized 501(c)3 charity.  If the credit card companies choose to use some of their earnings to give back to the relief effort, that's their choice, but I'm not sure we can demand it within the capitalist context of the financial ecosystem and our on-demand society that allows them to exist and thrive in the first place.

Another angle to this is that there are some very clever, entrepreneurial people out there who have pioneered the technologies and relationships that let you do things like send a text message to a certain number in order to donate funds to a good cause - one that's gotten some attention with the Haiti giving is mGive.  If someone has created a tool that didn't exist before allowing faster, easier donation of funds in a way that raises more money, I think they should be allowed to make a business model around that creation.  Choosing to donate some or all of their proceeds back to the relief effort would be an admirable thing for them to do, but I'm not sure we have a right to be indignant if they don't.

Refocusing on the bigger issues

When we give money to a relief effort, we expect that that money isn't going to end up in the pockets of the people in need of help.  It will be used to buy things and services that help them, and it will be used to fund the infrastructure needed to get those things and services delivered.  Donation processing fees may not be as tangibly or obviously necessary as the cost of a supply airlift flight or medical supplies, but they're still a part of that infrastructure and ecosystem.

Again, I'm not saying that credit card / electronic transaction processing fees or the whole credit system is fair or just - I suspect that is not true at all.  But calls to change it should be focused on the broader industry practices and the culture that enables those, not the temporary diversion of fees charged during charitable giving.  And those calls are out there - major retailers (e.g. 7-Eleven) have launched campaigns to fight back against the fees they're paying to accept credit cards, and there are plenty of private and governmental efforts to cap interest rates on cards.

If you're interested in these issues and like watching glowing rectangles, I highly recommend the Frontline special "The Secret History of the Credit Card" and the film Maxed Out.  I also suggest you talk with the people who run the businesses and organizations you support, and ask them how credit card processing fees affect them - you may find yourself writing more checks or even handling cash more often.

What happened?

I honestly didn't expect anyone to really notice the challenge, but a few people did, and "retweeted it" [what's that?] to their own Twitter followers accordingly.  In the end, I had 10 new followers in that time period, about a 7% increase in my relatively modest following.  Who knows which of them came because of my challenge and which would have followed me anyway; it doesn't really matter.

Today I'll write a donation check for $20 to the Boys and Girls Club.

As I said, this was just an experiment to see what would happen.  I think there are some great opportunities to "harness the power of social media" for charitable giving campaigns, especially with great tools out there like Fundable.org, and I look forward to playing around more with what's possible.

Thanks to all who noticed the challenge, stay tuned for others like it.

One aspect of board culture that seems to be in total chaos everywhere is how a board member can leave a board of directors before their natural term is up in a positive and professional way. Based on my own experiences - sometimes as a board member who did a poor job of leaving early, sometimes as a board leader who was disappointed in how others parted ways - I've some unsolicited advice to offer:

1. Don't Board Fade. Board Fading is the practice of slowly and quietly starting to disengage from the life of the organization. First you miss a few meetings, then you miss a few more without even sending your regrets, then you stop paying attention to the e-mail listserv, and then you just stop caring altogether. It's a common and tempting practice in the world of ridiculous conflicting priorities, but it leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth, I think. If you find that you cannot serve out your duties as a board member, confront that head on and do something about it.
2. Don't Resign by E-Mail or Voicemail. Ultimately, boards are still groups of people who have relationships with each other as they work to achieve some common goals. I think we owe each other the courtesy and care that comes with talking face-to-face about the things in our relationships that are difficult. To resign from a board with an e-mail or voicemail message is not only unprofessional, it does not provide any closure. You should take the time to meet with the board president or some other representative, and talk about why you're leaving, what kind of relationship you'd like to have with the organization in the future, and what could have been done differently. If you still want to put your resignation in writing for everyone else, that's fine.
3. Don't let past board members become ghosts. If you're in a leadership role on a board that someone is leaving early, or even if you're not, the resignation discussion is not the end of the process. The person was originally on the board for a reason, and so it's worth it to find out why their board experience didn't match up with those original expectations. Your development efforts will also benefit from finding ways to maintain contact with the former board member, so that they can remain an informal spokesperson for the organization, and continue to offer their own support (volunteering, financial contributions, or otherwise). Just because they can't come to board meetings any more doesn't mean they can't still participate.
4. Don't speak ill of your former organizational colleagues. Or, at least don't speak ill of them to others without first communicating your concerns directly to them first. Like all relationships, just because there's a shift in its status, it doesn't mean that you're free to be reckless in your comments about it to others. You may find that you have other connections to those people that matter to you in the future, or that another organization you want to join will hear about how this parting of ways went and what was said. If you have concerns about how things were handled, work that out with the person(s) involved, don't gossip about them.

That's what I've got for now.  The theme here, of course, is to try to live out organizational relationships with the same intentionality, humanity and sensitivity that you would use in personal relationships.  I think we sometimes forget that organizations (even the largest corporate enterprises) are just groups of individual people, most of them trying to do the best they can.

If you have experience in the parting of ways with an organization's board of directors or similar kinds of "endings," feel free to share the practices and principles that you think should help shape those acts.