Just got back from a panel discussion tonight about the power of pro bono design and architecture, and I can tell you that the pro bono movement of designing for good is gathering power. Around this time last year, Emily Pilloton of Project H Design appeared on the Colbert Report to discuss the idea of designing something that wasn’t just good, but would have a good effect on the world. Colbert gave her hell, as he does most good people, and his treatment made her ideas seem a little bit on the fringe.

Ah, but that was then. This is now. John Peterson, Founder and Chair of Public Architecture, moderated the panel I attended. John makes a compelling argument for a simple idea.

Public Architecture asks architecture and design firms nationwide to pledge a minimum of 1% of their time to pro bono service.

Simple, right?  But powerful. There is certainly dollar value there- some $25 million worth of donated services from Public Architecture’s 1% program alone. But there is also human value. John made the point tonight that architectural firms and their clients need to raise expectations about the value we all get back from pro bono work. Not all of it can be deposited in a bank.

As John said in a recent interview he did for our film SHELTER, “The movement that we’re seeing around design for the public good is really coming about because the design profession has a desire, sort of a pent up desire, to serve.”

This desire gives rise to projects that are not only imaginative, but necessary, too, like the Food Chain project by Robin Elmslie Osler and her architecture firm. The Food Chain project, which aims to play a role in eradicating hunger, is a series of ingenious vertical farming walls used for growing produce in urban areas. Other pro bono design stories are told in The Power of Pro Bono, a book about pro bono work from the perspective of both the architects and the clients. It’s published by Metropolis Books.

As architect Eric Corey Freed put it in an interview with me for SHELTER, “For centuries architecture was relegated to special buildings – cathedrals, office buildings, skyscrapers. Many people assume that that was architecture, everything else is building. And what we seen is that we can create designs for the masses, designs that inspire, delight and bring joy to uplift people and uplift the soul. All the power of architecture could be made to reach everybody.”

When you combine that uplifting power with the power of pro bono, you reveal a powerful force for positive change in the world. Design is unavoidable – it’s everywhere and in everything. Why not design for good?

It’s that time of year. You’re sending cards, shopping for gifts, holiday music ringing in your ear, along with compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is what happens when there are so many people hitting you up for something. The emails come fast and furious about tax-deductions you can get, and everyone wants you to “open your heart and open your checkbook.”

Look, I have had a little too much coffee in the past few days, and caffeine can lead to cynicism, so let me rephrase. For one thing, I am one of those people asking you for something. I want you to have a look at my IndieGoGo page for the Shelter movie and consider making a tax-deductible donation to help make the film. But along with a few others, I’m trying to approach this whole charity thing differently. We’re not even thinking of it as charity.

Charity is Being Reframed as Involvement

Things wouldn’t run very well without charity. Governments don’t have the money or the courage to support all their subjects. Corporations can be sociopaths when it comes to serving their stockholders. So in many ways, it’s up to us, ordinary citizens, to turn the karmic wheel.

But this is not about crawling up to people with hat in hand. There’s a new kind of philanthropy that really has me excited – a participatory kind that involves action as well as giving. There’s a storyline to this, and it starts with the (RED) campaign. That campaign was criticized when it started in 2006 because it asked people to be activists by buying things. Was encouraging consumerism a good idea? Well, people were buying things anyway, and if they were motivated to buy Gap clothing or an Apple iPod to fund programs addressing HIV and AIDS, how would that be bad? When a Gap shopper buys a (RED) product, 50% of Gap’s profits go to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. Toms Shoes gives away a pair of shoes for every pair you buy. Charity: Water is bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations and a local business here in LA called Real Food Daily has teamed with Charity:Water to help. You buy a Real Food Daily holiday gift bag, and RFD will donate 100% of the profit to Charity:Water.

Patient Capital

Jacqueline Novogratz as founder of Acumen Fund, has pioneered a concept called patient capital. It means that when you invest a couple hundred thousand or even a couple million in a hospital in India or in technology for cleaner water in Africa, you might not get a monetary return on your investment – you might get a spiritual one. Though it might sound nuts to the bottom-line types, Novogratz has made it clear that there’s a different kind of bottom line to pay attention to – the kind that makes the world a better place.

Then along comes Jumo, the invention of one of the Facebook founders (not the guy in the movie). Jumo is going to help people social network around causes, using Facebook as a platform. Sure there have been some complaints about it because you have to get sucked into Facebook to use it, but the idea is of building social capital online is unbeatable, just like Habitat for Humanity’s idea of building social capital by having neighbors create a community and build their own homes.

A Sense of Collaboration

Money is always appreciated, but it’s good to know you can give more than money. You can participate in a movement. On IndieGoGo, I’m trying to find ways for you to participate in the making of Shelter. (No, you can’t hold the camera.) But you can influence the creative direction of the movie at screenings, serve on our advisory board, or you can even be in the film if you can think of something to say about shelter. (Can you?)

Photo: Lincolnian via Creative Commons License.

Tapped

Capitalism sucks, right? Well …

Causecast is a group that is using the engine of capitalism to drive social change. (RED) is a cause-driven marketing campaign that has raised millions of dollars, using capitalism to divert corporate marketing budgets to address HIV health issues in Africa. Creative Visions Foundation supports creative activists worldwide. LivingHomes uses a for-profit capitalist business model to build healthy, green sustainable houses. The people who founded or manage these companies were on a panel this week called Changing the World IS My Business hosted by The Writers Junction, Smarty, and Causecast.

The message was simple. You can do well by doing good. Making money is okay.

(RED), for example, is a for-profit business that hired a talented marketer named Julie Cordua. She signed brands like Apple, Gap, Converse, Dell, Starbucks and Nike and got them to buy into the idea (literally – the corporations pay license fees to participate) that a shopper’s purchase would benefit The Global Fund.

Causecast informs you about causes and encourages you to help. Its founder, Ryan Scott, created “opt-in” email marketing and made a bundle, so he knows about capitalism. Capitalism, as everyone on the panel pointed out, is a huge social driver. Why not use it to drive social change? Ryan cited a study that showed that corporate values matter to buyers. According to the Cone 2007 Cause Evolution Study, 83 percent of Americans say that companies have a responsibility to support causes and 92 percent say they have a more positive image of a company that supports a cause they care about.

It’s good for business if a company’s values include supporting a worthy cause.

It’s good for your company if you filter your actions through a clearly-defined set of values. So what’s up with Planet Green? Spurred on by Stephanie Soechtig, the director/producer of Tapped, people are friending Planet Green’s Facebook page to tell them to act, um, a little more green. Facebook — an engine of social change? Another Cone research study has it that 62% of Americans believe they can influence corporations by sounding off on social media platforms.

Big companies may act like infants sometimes, grabbing at an advertiser’s money at the expense of their stated values. Do we really have to be the parent here? Yes, we do, when it comes to helping corporations remain true to their stated vision. Online voices like this one keep corporations real.

Ignorance is power.

In 2000, an investment magazine held a stock picking contest.  More than 10,000 people submitted portfolios, some of them professionals with access to loads of data. One portfolio in the contest stood out:  it was based on collective ignorance. Researchers asked fifty people to pick stocks based solely on whether they recognized the name of the company. What happened? The stocks picked by people who knew little gained in value by 2.5 percent.  The stocks picked by the editor in chief of the magazine, who knew a lot, lost 18.5 percent.

Experts like Jim Cramer are ready to help you become a market expert.  Will you make any money?  Well, too much information (and too much Jim Cramer) can be a bad thing.

“There’s a limit to the information a human mind can digest, a limit that often corresponds to the magical number seven, plus or minus two, the capacity of short term memory.” — Gut Feelings, by Gerd Gigerenzer

Your short term memory is good for about seven things. You’ve experienced this in Whole Foods if you attempt to shop without a shopping list.  You wind up standing in front of the cheese display trying to remember the eighth thing you meant to buy.

If you go with intuition, on the other hand, you tap into something much deeper. Many believe that intuition comes from higher powers. If you listen to it, you will be guided by God, by a universal energy source, or if you are trying to pick stocks, by Warren Buffett.

That may be true, but scientists are learning that intuition accesses the unconscious mind, and that part of the mind is really smart.

A research study has suggested that gamblers who trust their gut instincts are more likely to pick up subtle visual cues from the dealer and other players. To make winning decisions they let the unconscious drive for a while.  Less information turns out to be more – especially when things turn unpredictable.

When you are working with an unstable system, like the stock market or a gun battle or both (“How was work today, honey?”) having too much on your mind will slow you down. The noise between your ears blocks the wisdom of the subconscious.

This was explored in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. If a police officer in jeopardy has to think too much, the bad guy shoots him first. If a baseball player performs differential equations in his head to calculate the trajectory and velocity of an incoming fly ball, he’d never catch it.  (I think this is the Mets’ problem.)

“Woman’s intuition, as everyone knows, is a true faculty that most women possess in a form far more highly developed than anything the random male ever acquires.”

Ashley Montagu, The Natural Superiority of Women

Women are good at intuition and men are bad at it. You think so?  Not so.

In another study, Dr. Richard Wiseman showed 50,000 people photographs of a person smiling. Only one was of a real smile. The other was of a fake smile. Using their intuition, men were able to guess which smile was real 72 percent of the time. The women guessed right 71 percent of the time.

I’m going to sell some stock soon, but I think I’ll wait until Warren Buffett is smiling.

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I went to yoga the other night. The room was filled with so many acolytes their yoga mats were about a micron apart. It was like boarding the subway in NYC during rush hour and getting an intimate view of your neighbor’s armpit. Only in yoga it’s more exciting because the people are half naked and their sweat flies on you when they flail. That class lasted about 45 seconds for me. I had to leave. I don’t do flailing.

After suffering from downward dog withdrawal and getting a $61 parking ticket (“And things were going so well!”) I had plenty of time to reflect on the valuable lessons learned. This is kind of a game we play, trying to extract a valuable life lesson from every event no matter how annoying. (“A bee stung me on the ass. What valuable lesson can be extracted from that?”)

Why was I annoyed enough to bail out of that class? Well, for one thing, I have issues with sweaty strangers violating my personal space. But I also don’t like cults of personality.

Some people actually come to a yoga class for the yoga, but a male teacher can become popular and female students will don the appropriate Lululemon yoga gear and crowd into his classes, never admitting out loud that they have a crush on him. Movie stars get people to buy tickets, usually not directors or scripts. Cults of personality. Charisma is king. But Arnold Schwarzenegger’s charisma isn’t enough to run this state, and charismatic people like Tony Robbins or Suze Orman can seem to me to be style over substance.

Let’s face it, though, charisma is a powerful force – maybe even a hit of life force. It can draw people in, pay the bills, get your message across and your cause followed.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
–Groucho Marx

Groucho aside, most people want to be members of something. They like leaders to help them join the tribe. Yoga people are their own tribe, and Vegas gamblers, and Michael Jackson fans. In Seth Godin’s book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, he describes how connecting with others is a powerful tool for shaping consumer desire and even changing the world. He and others have pointed out that your tribe has nothing to do with geography, your religion or blood type. It can be fellow Facebook users, Syrah lovers, devotees of Nike running shoes or iPods. In a fragmented world we look to tribal leaders. Charismatic leaders, like Steve Jobs of Apple, can really drive a consumer brand into becoming a movement. There’s that word again: charisma. Maybe it’s the mojo in leadership. Maybe, despite myself, I’m going to extract a lesson out of that crowded subway car of a yoga class.

Thing is, there’s more yoga being done because of charismatic teachers. Apple has inspired a generation of designs that matter. Charismatic social entrepreneurs like Jacqueline Novogratz fund the businesses of the poor by first listening and then building supportive communities around local entrepreneurs. Charisma, backed up with a plan, can really change the world. Ok, I get it. Just stay out of my space in yoga class.

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