Fossil Fuel and Bequests, Climate Change and Fundraising

You may have heard a little chatter about fossil fuels contributing to global warming. There might be something to it. If you are old enough, you remember the oil embargo of the 1970s and if older still, gas rationing during WWII. Clearly the supply of petroleum products will eventually be outstripped by demand. The Jetsons need to hurry up with producing those flying cars!

Meanwhile, for those nonprofit fundraisers with the energy to read this after the Giving Day posting frenzy, a word of caution of about well-rounded revenue sources. Previously I probably mentioned the danger of grant dependency. With one, three, or five year life cycles and the temptation of mission drift, there is a danger of creating programs and projects that are not sustainable. I would also admonish about dependency on corporate support , but we are all only too well aware that it is drying up.

So back to fossil fuels and fundraising. If your non-profit is heavily dependent upon bequests, estate gifts, and memorials, you need to be making new friends and well as remembering the old ones at a rate of 3:1 (source: National Association of Made Up Numbers -- but still a pretty good guess). No more dinosaurs are giving their lives for your petroleum reserve confidence. No more sweet little old people -- I say this as I eagerly approach Medicare eligibility -- are suddenly appearing on your donor roster with an intent to donate for 20+ years. Bequests come from long term relationships not one night stands (just in case there is anyone I have not offended yet).

Donors are not numbers or commodities despite our abnormal love of databases and spreadsheets. Donors are people who have interests, emotions, and a need to interact. Donors are courted, crops are cultivated. Everyone gets tired of being asked for money; people like being asked to volunteer, advise, meet the front line staff, and engage in meaningful ways.

Best of luck on surviving year-end fundraising. If you think you may not survive, I can send you our planned giving brochure...but we hope you feel better!

Arrivederci Roma

So do you think that one day in 476 AD (CE for my progressive but misguided friends) the Goths rolled into Rome, sacked the place, had everyone hang up their togas and started speaking German within a week or so? Not so much.

Let's go back to 69 AD aka the Year of the Four Emperors. This is the first - but not the last -- civil war in the newish (27 BC) Roman Empire. We have the Year of the Five Emperors in 169 AD and it just goes on with disagreements, power grabs, and wars pitting legion against legion, literally bleeding the strength of the nation.

As legions diminished their ranks were supplemented by non-Romans and then replaced by entire foreign armies as mercenary forces.

Alaric , the kind of the Goths, who sacked Rome in 410 had long served in the Roman military under Theodoius, mainly fighting the forces of usurpers.

Fast forward

In 1204 the Fourth Crusade was on the way to the Holy Land from western Europe but made a detour to Constantinople, seat of the still standing Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire . The pillage and destruction of the seat of Orthodox Christianity by Catholic Christians forever weakened the city so that in 1453 it finally fell to the Ottoman Turks.

Next stop North America

You will recall -- as apparently a paltry few current 8th graders now know -- that the French & Indian War was not a conflict pitting French soldiers against Native Americans. It was the French vs the English in 1754 with some tribes siding with the English and others siding with the French (incidentally the larger world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years Wars was fought globally from India to North America to Europe).

Back to Italy

About the time the Mexicans were defeating a French army fighting for a Hapsburg emperor (Cinqo de Mayo) and Jefferson Davis was having terse talk with Abraham Lincoln, the Italians were just getting together. Yes, Italy as a country was only founded in 1861 under Garibaldi. For several hundred years prior the competing city-states - Milan, Florence, Venice, etc - fought each other and were at various times under the control of France, Spain, and others.

So what

What is the common thread? Division within invites conquest from outside.

Do you really want to have to learn to speak Chinese?

It is troubling that left- right, progressive- conservative, urban- rural, etc can't seem to agree on anything at all, but part of that (not all but part) is from an unwillingness to even try. How do you think this will play out in the long run?

P.S. In Rome under Odoacer who deposed the last child emperor in 476 and declared himself king of Italy, some things went on as usual -- the Roman senate continued, coinage, even the Latin language. Many changes were gradual but the movement toward instability and lack of security accelerated over time.

A Museum Without A Gift Shop

Of all of the kings who reigned in Mesopotamia the  name which probably comes to mind most readily is Nebuchadnezzer II  (reign 605 – 562 BC) of Chaldean Babylon.  

Oh sure there is a lot of be said for Sargon of Akkad (reign 2334-2279 BC ) and legal minds will lean toward Hammurabi (reign 1792-1750 BC) of Amorite Babylon, but the widest recognition comes in no small part due to the good work of  generations of Sunday School teachers and Nebuchadnezzer's conquest of Judah, Daniel in the lion’s den,  the fiery furnace temporarily occupied by  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and then of course eating grass for a few years.

What you might not know is that Nebuchadnezzer built probably the first history museum.  Babylon was just re-emerging after years of Assyrian domination and needed an extreme makeover. The new king got right to work – new temple to Marduk the hometown deity, really nice hanging gardens, and a museum among other things.

The museum was dedicated to the history of previous cultures in Mesopotamia of which many had come and gone since the Sumerians basically invented writing around 3,500 BC.  It had statuary, cuneiform tablets, pottery, but oddly no gift shop as far as we know.

This is probably a good time to take a quick look at your sundial or calendar.  Where are we on the timeline of familiar world history?  Fall of Troy about 1,200ish BC, Romulus founds Rome around 715 BC but the city does not rid itself of Etruscan kings until around 509,  the Peloponnesian War runs 431-404 BC, the Zhou Dynasty is running things in China during the reign of Nebuchadnezzer, the Olmecs are winding down in Mesoamerica, and the Buddha aka  Siddartha Gautama in born in 563 in Nepal. Got it? Okay.

What happened before 3,500 BC? A lot but we don’t know as much because pre-history is generally defined as the time before written language. There were surely permanent settlements, agricultural and trade economic systems, spoken languages, etc but the documentation of this come more from archeologists than anthropologists.

NOTA BENE: Just because people lived in cultures without written language doesn’t mean they weren’t intelligent. Are you smarter than a 5^th grader? I hope so.   Are you smarter than someone who lived in 1927, 1834, 1061, 235, or 321 BC?   You undoubtedly have a great deal more knowledge of all sorts of things, but are you wiser, more complex emotionally, better at using available resources, a better problem solver, or more content?  Not necessarily.

But back to the museum.  If we talk about history from 3,500 BC (or BCE, we can discuss that another time) to the midpoint of Nebuchadnezzer’s reign, say 584, that is 2,916 years.  The range from 584 to 2023 is only 1,439 years. True, with steam powering the industrial revolution, the transatlantic cable connecting Europe and American via telegraph and then telephone, the electric light bulb, radio & television, air flight then space slight, and the internet, the rate of change of the past 250 years alone is staggering.  Even so we are all products of our time.

Our time, perhaps a bit more than three score and ten now with modern medicine, is still a blip in a 5,523 timeline (add several more thousand for pre-history living if you really want to feel itty bitty tiny in the grand scheme).

So bravo Nebuchadnezzer and all the subsequent history and natural history museum curators and supporters down through the ages. It is important to be present and live in the moment, but there is so very much to be learned from the past.