Faith Works 9-22-23
Jeff Gill
Donation season is setting in
___
Let me share some news with you all in this developing season of donation requests, as they flood into our mailboxes and email accounts.
Nice people can be terrible managers of large, complex operations.
Good managers of large, complex operations can be horrible people on a personal level.
Good causes can be used to front fairly mundane greedy donation harvesting operations.
Bad fundraisers can be excellent advocates for important causes, just not in terms of raising money.
Excellent fundraisers can use a modest amount of good work done to cover for operations that mostly enrich key staff and accomplish very little.
Alternatively, well paid executives can also do good work; poorly compensated ones can also be ineffective leaders — and I'm always wary of any organization head who says too often "I'm not making a dime." They DO exist, but it's broadly speaking a signal to do due diligence.
Donation season is ramping up: my elderly father-in-law's mailbox is JAMMED with appeals. Lots of people give based on fundraising materials. Friends, a modest amount of checking can complicate simple stories, but give you peace of mind at the end of the day.
Full disclosure — I've had to be on clean-up crews for far too many community or faith-based programs that imploded over bad faith, internal controls collapsing, or simple improvidence or malfeasance. All of them had one thing in common: a refusal of smart people to believe nice people doing good things might be either inept, or somewhat scammy, let alone outright lying. Do everyone a favor, and check out some basic info from third parties before you give.
One modest obscured example from many years ago: I was a board chair (hint - if you want to stay out of these situations, never agree to serve as board chair, of anything) & our executive director came to me. Some mail had been misdirected to our address. "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" I took it off that person's hands, went with the materials to the United Way board chair. "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" Once we agreed it was, we had a meeting with our fiscal officers jointly, who said "This can't be what it looks like, can it?" Then we set up a meeting with the agency director who was doing not right things, and he loudly affirmed "This isn't what it looks like!" We had a follow-up meeting with legal representation on both sides; sadly the relevant agency board chair resigned the moment we reached out to them. At the lawyered-up meeting, admissions were made, to what turned out to be about half of what had to be rectified in the end.
Two points: not counting the board chair who likely knew & didn't want to deal with this, there were about five points at which this all could have stopped, and the problem grown to where it couldn't be resolved without dire outcomes. Each stage required facing unpleasant facts.
The other point is I have multiple stories in this vein, from three states. It will always happen where there's not adequate oversight & multiple controls. Which take time & attention… but are worth it in the end.
I'd name some national organizations but I don't have the time or bandwidth to respond to those whose oxes might be gored. This can include anyone from coaches of professional sports teams, to clergy heads of para church organizations, or about smaller programs claiming larger impact than their press kits can really support.
But almost any of them will hit you with multiple mailings annually if you send them a $5 check & your email.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's asked for money, and he gives money (sometimes). Tell him how you decide where to donate at knapsack77@gmail.com, or @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Monday, September 18, 2023
Notes from my Knapsack 10-5-23
Notes from my Knapsack 10-5-23
[EMBARGO UNTIL CONFIRMED on 9-19-23]
Jeff Gill
Spanning centuries, let alone millennia
___
Back in the 1990s, Dick Shiels, now emeritus history professor at Ohio State's Newark Campus and longtime resident of Granville, wondered why Cahokia, and not the much older Newark Earthworks or Chillicothe's Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, was in the front of all the US history intro textbooks he reviewed for his classes.
Dick visited Cahokia, across the Mississippi from St. Louis, and they told him "World Heritage List status from UNESCO made all the difference."
He came back to Licking County with that realization, and went to work starting the Newark Earthworks Center, which was a pioneering effort in its own right. The center helped put on the Octagon Moonrise events in 2005, when the geometry of the octagonal enclosure last aligned with the Observatory Circle and towering platform mound to point at the northernmost rise of the moon on an 18.6 year astronomical cycle.
Once those programs around the lunar alignment were completed, he picked up on the relationships made with the Ohio History Connection, and began pushing for a World Heritage List inscription in 2006.
Seventeen years later, here we are. The effort was not only across two decades, but encompassed myriad institutions and many individuals, crossing boundaries once thought to divide us, such as between archaeologists and today's Native American tribal nations. Now, the leaders of those sovereign governmental units, with historic roots in Ohio before the period of "Indian Removal" in the 1830s, are often traveling back here, and finding a welcome, even bringing busloads of children to Newark, where they can learn about the accomplishments of their ancestors.
Those ancient builders deserve credit, and in the years since, so many people have dreamed and drafted and written and delivered the work which resulted in the declaration and inscription of September 19, 2023, placing the Newark Earthworks on the World Heritage List of UNESCO, now the 25th US listing, along with Independence Hall and the Grand Canyon, Monticello and Mammoth Cave.
Dick Shiels saw an opportunity, over twenty years ago, to add the Newark Earthworks to a roster that globally includes the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge in England, and added just a few days before the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks was inscribed on the World Heritage List, the ancient city of Jericho on the Jordan River. It was a dream to most who first heard it, to see "our local mounds" in such august company.
Brad Lepper had a chance to help add "The Earthworks of Newark, Ohio" to "The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World" as the century turned, and slowly, steadily, more and more people saw that dream as a simple statement of fact: Ohio's ancient earthen enclosures qualify under the UNESCO phrase as having "outstanding universal value." The world has been coming to see them, in fact, for some time.
More will come. Let's be ready to welcome the world, and invite it to stay a few nights and see the rest of Licking County. And another northernmost moonrise in that generational cycle is just around the corner . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to seeing you at one of the Octagon Open House events on Oct. 15th. He's hearing from the world these days at knapsack77@gmail.com, and on Threads @Knapsack77.
[EMBARGO UNTIL CONFIRMED on 9-19-23]
Jeff Gill
Spanning centuries, let alone millennia
___
Back in the 1990s, Dick Shiels, now emeritus history professor at Ohio State's Newark Campus and longtime resident of Granville, wondered why Cahokia, and not the much older Newark Earthworks or Chillicothe's Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, was in the front of all the US history intro textbooks he reviewed for his classes.
Dick visited Cahokia, across the Mississippi from St. Louis, and they told him "World Heritage List status from UNESCO made all the difference."
He came back to Licking County with that realization, and went to work starting the Newark Earthworks Center, which was a pioneering effort in its own right. The center helped put on the Octagon Moonrise events in 2005, when the geometry of the octagonal enclosure last aligned with the Observatory Circle and towering platform mound to point at the northernmost rise of the moon on an 18.6 year astronomical cycle.
Once those programs around the lunar alignment were completed, he picked up on the relationships made with the Ohio History Connection, and began pushing for a World Heritage List inscription in 2006.
Seventeen years later, here we are. The effort was not only across two decades, but encompassed myriad institutions and many individuals, crossing boundaries once thought to divide us, such as between archaeologists and today's Native American tribal nations. Now, the leaders of those sovereign governmental units, with historic roots in Ohio before the period of "Indian Removal" in the 1830s, are often traveling back here, and finding a welcome, even bringing busloads of children to Newark, where they can learn about the accomplishments of their ancestors.
Those ancient builders deserve credit, and in the years since, so many people have dreamed and drafted and written and delivered the work which resulted in the declaration and inscription of September 19, 2023, placing the Newark Earthworks on the World Heritage List of UNESCO, now the 25th US listing, along with Independence Hall and the Grand Canyon, Monticello and Mammoth Cave.
Dick Shiels saw an opportunity, over twenty years ago, to add the Newark Earthworks to a roster that globally includes the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge in England, and added just a few days before the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks was inscribed on the World Heritage List, the ancient city of Jericho on the Jordan River. It was a dream to most who first heard it, to see "our local mounds" in such august company.
Brad Lepper had a chance to help add "The Earthworks of Newark, Ohio" to "The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World" as the century turned, and slowly, steadily, more and more people saw that dream as a simple statement of fact: Ohio's ancient earthen enclosures qualify under the UNESCO phrase as having "outstanding universal value." The world has been coming to see them, in fact, for some time.
More will come. Let's be ready to welcome the world, and invite it to stay a few nights and see the rest of Licking County. And another northernmost moonrise in that generational cycle is just around the corner . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to seeing you at one of the Octagon Open House events on Oct. 15th. He's hearing from the world these days at knapsack77@gmail.com, and on Threads @Knapsack77.
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