Saturday, May 3, 2014
Hindsight is 20-20
Many things can be said over the debate last Tuesday. I,
personally, was in one of the groups who was not backing any
individual organization and were just asking questions. Watching the
other groups support their own organization and attack the others,'
in all honestly, made me feel ridiculous for the entire class. I
think we can all agree that the debate in class was extremely
non-productive, and much more emotional than intellectually based. I
was going to write about the different debates that occurred, and how
some of them seemed biased and incredibly unfair to specific
organizations, but I felt that it would be too rude to the individual
people. Instead, I would like to write about different solutions that
we could have implemented to make sure that the debate does not
devolve into every group bashing the others' organizations and ideas.
The fact that this is hindsight is what makes it possible. It would
be impossible to predict all the problems that came up or would come
up if these ideas were implemented. So for next semester I give the
following ideas for change. First of all, there is the question of
whether or not it is okay for debate to be constrained. In other
words, are there certain things, which we will not allow to be said
because it is unfair or bad for the overall conversation? What would
these be? Constraining debate can cause only productive debate to be
said, but there are some obvious negatives to this. If certain ideas
and comments cannot be said, than we as a class might lose out an a
number of useful thoughts. More so, censoring ideas might stifle
conversation, and stop people from saying whats on their mind,
because they perceive it to be non-productive while in reality it
poses a very serious question. Another option, which was said by
Professor Campbell was to create group with only one person from each
group in the team so that no one group is too fired up. This would
have also allowed us as a whole to be able to make decisions without
quite a bit of uproar. A third idea would be to have every group
present a plan for the money to be split instead of for a specific
organization so that there are a number of well formulated and
thought of plans before we even start a discussion. Instead of
getting 24ish people to a discuss a plan together. Without some
changes people will only vote based on emotion of the conversation.
Personally, I got confused and ended up voting for whichever group
did not act too outwardly obnoxious and loud. I also heard people
around me voting against organizations, because they did not want to
see a specific group “winning” so to speak. If you have any other
ideas for changes that would support future debates or just plain
disagree with the overall idea please comment?
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Itai, I agree with you about the formation of the groups in class. I think the debate would have been more productive and had less yelling if we were in groups with one or two representatives from each organizations. As seen from our final group presentations, when paired with people representing different organizations, it was relatively easy to come to a consensus about the organizations and how much money we wanted to give to all of them. I think that Professor Campbell realized this within the first couple minutes and I'm sure that next year's debate will be a little more productive and civilized.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I can't say that I was surprised or expecting something different from our debate. Like we've said all semester, philanthropy is emotion constrained by reason. Our initial narrowing down of the organizations from the application list was emotion: "Who would we like to support?" After that, it was all reason. We analyzed every little thing about each of the organizations from their impacts to the way they handled their money. The final presentation was a chance for us to recommend organizations that we thought were the best and we all decided to support CHOW, Family Planning, Mom's House, and possibly CEO. So before the debate even happened, we had already came to a consensus as a class about the "reason" for each organization; they all had great impacts, were transparent, were cost effective, etc.. The only thing left to talk about was the "emotion" part: which organization do we feel aligns the best with our core values? And how do I persuade the class to give the most amount of money to my organization that I feel most strongly about? That was exactly what happened in our debate.
As a class, our core values were providing basic needs, family, education, and equality which made the debate just a heated discussion about what was more important: feeding people, providing health and education, providing refuge and education, or providing education and job placement. There is no right answer to which one is more important so it came down to how each individual felt about each organization. For me, I ranked each organization based on how well they aligned with my core values because they all fit our criteria based on "reason", which is why I made my proposal.
In hindsight, although the debate was intense and may not have been as productive as it should've been, what we did as a class was truly remarkable. We gave a total of $10,000 to CHOW, Mom's House, Family Planning, and CEO which will go towards improving Broome County and impacting the lives of many. I'll never be able to say the same thing or touch as many lives in any other class here at Binghamton so I'm glad to have been a part of it.
Chalie and Itai, I agree with the point that both of you made about the formation of the groups contributing to the overwhelmingly emotional tone of the discussion in class. We had all just spent a significant amount of time evaluating our respective organizations, and that investment of time and energy was enough to make us each advocate strongly for the organizations that we assessed. I believe that the combination of our personal time spent in researching the organizations and the feeling of support that came along with being placed in groups with classmates that held the same beliefs really gave us each the confidence to voice our opinions, with little thought as to whether or not those opinions were offering anything of real value to the debate.
ReplyDeleteWith that said, I honestly enjoyed the debate process. We have spent much of the finalist selection process on the "reason" part of philanthropy - screening applications, explaining our core values, assessing the needs in Broome County, conducting site visits, and evaluating each and every organization. There has been little room for emotion. While some might argue that the debate was trivial or unproductive, I enjoyed seeing the immense passion on behalf of each organization. I feel that this sense of passion had been a missing element up until this point.
I'm not sure about how to make the debate go better In the future, outside of splitting people into groups with an advocate from EACH organization in the group. I completely disagree with the idea of censoring the conversation in any way because, as you said, Itai, this creates the potential for a valid thought to go unspoken.
I agree with Itai that there should be more guidelines in regards to how the in-class debate is conducted. I am a strong proponent of his first suggestion of “constrained debate.” There were several points during the debate at which I noticed the clear advantages that implementing this suggestion would bring.
ReplyDeleteFor starters, we spent a lot of time dwelling on minor points, which, in my view, was detrimental to our decision-making process. Due to the limited time frame, spending valuable time on minor details rather than on more major points is ineffective. One specific example was the reassessment of the three finalist organizations that every group had already recommended the previous week. I recognize that CHOW, Family Planning, and Mom’s House were not as intensely scrutinized as CEO, but I believe that there is a clear reason: the clarity of results. I am not saying that CEO’s programs do not lead to the desired results; I am simply saying that discussions, both in class and on the blog, made it very clear that a lot of our classmates had doubts in regards to the organization. The reason we did not scrutinize the other three organizations so intensely was because their program results were more easily and readily seen.
It is hard, if not impossible, to quantify the work that CEO does, and this lack of empirical data certainly caused some doubt. Over the past few weeks, it was more obvious that the other three organizations’ programs were having an effect, solely because their goals were more quantifiable than those of CEO. This is the reason that CEO needed to be more closely examined than the other three; the answers were simply not as apparent due to the lack of quantifiable data. Although we could have continued to delve into the effectiveness of the other three organizations, it would have just reaffirmed what we already knew. Quite frankly, we simply did not have enough time to waste on questions like this when there were several other more pertinent topics that needed to be discussed.
Because we spent about an hour-and-a-half on questions like this, the last part of class was very rushed. We were forced to condense the last several points that needed to be covered into a short time frame, which is a shame because these were some of the points that deserved the wealth of our attention. For this reason, I am in accordance with Itai’s suggestion of “constrained debate.” Main points should be discussed before delving into more minor details that are less beneficial to the furthering of our decision-making process.
I agree with Itai and Charlie that the debate could have gone better. While it's good that our class cares about maximizing the good we can do, getting that heated over $250 is not reasonable. As Itai noted, it was fueled mainly by emotion.
ReplyDeleteI want to address one aspect of the discussion in particular, one that seemed to be more rationally-based than other parts. Some people argued that we shouldn't fund a project at all if we can't fund it fully. I strongly disagreed with this notion in class, and I've been thinking about it a little bit since then.
One instance in which we wouldn't want to fund part of a project is if the grantee organization couldn't raise enough funds to complete the rest of the project. For instance, say an organization wanted to open a medical clinic. If they need $20,000, and can only get one donation of $10,000, then the donation of $10,000 is a waste. The organization will not be able to open the medical clinic, and the money would have been donated to a different organization. In this situation, I agree with those who say that it is better to fully fund a project than to partly fund it.
I don't think that our class was facing this situation last week, however. We were arguing over between $200 and $500, not $10,000. Also, if we didn't fully fund CHOW or Family Planning, it's not like they wouldn't be able to make any difference at all. CHOW would be able to buy slightly less food, and Family Planning slightly fewer condoms, but both would still be able to buy the majority of what they wanted.
I think in most cases, it is ok to partially fund a project, for three reasons. First, it leaves the grantee organization with a smaller fundraising goal, which will be easier to achieve. I imagine that CHOW will have an easier time raising the remaining $200 than they would raising the full $3,200. Second, getting partial funding shows community support for the organization in question (or some larger form of support if the organization isn't getting local grants). This will also make getting the remaining funding easier. Finally, non-profits would suffer if everyone adopted the attitude that projects could only be funded by one donation from one donor. If everyone adopts this all-or-nothing attitude, then a project becomes harder to put on the larger it gets. In this scenario, CHOW wouldn't be able to have any food for their bus this summer just because we could only buy 93.75% of the amount they needed.
I realize that since we didn't give CHOW quite enough money to buy all the food they need, there is a small danger that they will run out of food towards the end of the summer. This would be disastrous, as many people will be relying on them as their main source of food. I believe that taking this risk is better than not funding them at all, because they will likely be able to raise the remaining funds, and our donation shows support for their project that could make another philanthropist more likely to help them finish it.
Unless one is facing a scenario like the one I outlined with the medical clinic, I think that partially funding a non-profit's project is perfectly fine.
Itai, you raise some very interesting points. In class, I was surprised at some of the ridiculous arguments being made. I also found myself swayed to vote for the better-behaved organizations. While I did not initially support CEO, I ended up voting in favor of a proposal that benefitted CEO simply because their representatives made the most appealing and least aggressive argument. Though I agree that this approach to decision-making goes against most of what we learned this semester, I could not help but let my emotions override my reasoning. This is definitely a problem, as the “emotion” side of my philanthropy should be influenced by my core values and specific feelings toward the organizations themselves, rather than my feelings toward specific classmates or arguments.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I was confused about how we just let the CEO argument die. We never really finished our discussion about whether or not to fund CEO and seemed to just get fed up with that conversation and move on. I, along with some of my other classmates, was never truly convinced that we should give to CEO and I thought that that was the initial purpose of our discussion. Instead, we got hung up on small details or weaknesses in an organization that were not particularly relevant to the decision we had to make. If we had decided not to give to CEO, we could have easily given the remaining three organizations what they asked for.
I was also uncomfortable with the set-up of the discussion, as it forced me to argue against organizations that I supported. I do not think it was fair for Mom’s House to have to prove it is a better asset to the community than CHOW or Family Planning. Each provides different services so they cannot really be compared based on their “impact” on the community. I know that we have tried all semester to quantify impact, but I still do not believe that numbers are a true indicator of an organization’s success.
I think that we could have avoided this whole mess of a discussion if we had started discussing the organizations and raised our concerns a few weeks before we had to make our final decision. I understand that there is limited room for this in the syllabus, but I think that this class discussion is crucial to making the best possible decision. If we had known everyone’s concerns earlier, we could have addressed them and had a more productive final discussion.
I agree with everyone on the point of the group formations. Everyone felt a bias towards their specific organization and it got extremely emotional and loud. Being split up could have framed the debate in a completely different way. I agree with Courtney, that the time and effort spent on researching and visiting one organization was the reason why we felt so close and advocated strongly for it. However, no matter what the formation was it would have still been hard to get all of us to agree. We came to an agreement at the end but everyone was not fully satisfied. Each person has a different way of going about philanthropy. There might be some overlap among us but from discussion in class and through the blog we can see the different ways people want to go about philanthropy. For a lot of people what it came down to was their emotions towards their specific organization. We should definitely be able to express any thoughts we have about organizations in the most respectful way possible. I do think that putting one person from each organization would help because it would not be organizations vs. organizations. It would be a rep that could advocate and compromise with the other organizations. People could have had debates within their groups instead of the whole class and it could have made it easier to come to a decision. I think the finalist presentations helped because they gave people an idea of what to donate to each and why. I think the way we decided this year was perfectly fine, except the group formations. Next years group might come to an agreement right away and not have a debate at all. Or maybe everyone disagrees and the debate will be extensive. Ultimately, I think people should try their best to put their emotions aside. But if thats how they go about philanthropy then I do not think you can restrict them or tell them otherwise. The way the class was designed helped us to get to the debate process to consider all options. Compromise will be the key but no matter what the decision will be helping people within the community.
ReplyDeleteTo read Courtney's post saying she enjoyed the debate last week made me cringe a little inside: for me, sitting through that debate was a very painful experience and made me question why I even want to enter into the world of politics. That being said, I think the reason that the debate was so excruciating was in part because of what Jesse said, that, in essence, we were only fighting over a sum of about $250. Because this number, in the larger picture, is rather futile, it seemed foolish to me to get so heated over such a small number. In reality, the organizations will be grateful to receive any sum of money at all, give or take a couple hundred bucks.
ReplyDeleteI also found it extremely interesting that almost every person who has commented on this blog post has said almost the same thing: that the debate was unproductive, ridiculous, and confusing. Yet, we were the people who made up the debate, and we could have pointed it in any direction we wanted, but no one did.
This brings me to my suggestions, in hindsight, about what we could have done to make the debate more productive. I agree with everyone else in saying that it would have been helpful to have the groups separated, with one person per organization in a group. I don't completely disagree with the idea of constraining or censoring some of the topics of the debate. I think it could have been helpful to at least guide the discussion away from certain points, such as outside sources of funding for the organizations, which seemed to be a fairly futile point. Overall, I believe that if we had a neutral student mediator guiding the discussion, the debate could have gone much smoother. This could have been a student who was in a group that did not support a particular organization, and was willing to be an impartial overseer of the debate. While Professor Campbell tried to take this role, I think it would be more beneficial to have a student who could more firmly steer the conversation away from topics that had already been beaten to death. Also, I would have supported the use of more democratic processes to drive the progression of the debate, much like the vote we took at the end to come to a conclusion as to which division of money we would support. I think if we used anonymous voting more often at various key stages in the debate, the discussion would have been much more clean and smooth.
Itai, I definitely think this is a beneficial idea to use our hindsight as a way to make things better in the future. Often the surprising and confusing parts of past tasks can be frustrating, but if we use them as a advice to future classes, they become a great tool.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I wouldn’t go as far to say that our debate was extremely non-productive.
I will say that I was very confused by the time we had to vote but that also has to do with what Martha suggested in her last paragraph. We needed to start an official discussion before the class when we were faced with a final decision. This also echoes Kyle’s sentiment in that the last part of our class was very rushed. Yet, in order to avoid this problem, I don’t believe we should turn to “constrained debate.” Constrained debate will suggest to people not to voice what’s on their mind. Withholding an opinion in class is often what happens in other college classes because students are afraid their thoughts are irrelevant or silly. One thing I liked very much about this class was the participation and the presentation of alternate viewpoints. While we shouldn’t take that away, people do need to be more aware of repetitious comments.
I, along with many others, agree that future groups should have representatives from each organization. However, your suggestion to have each group create a plan for how to split the money is essentially what we had already completed. The group project from the prior class was when each group presented a specific proposal. For me, the problem with the progression was that we didn’t take these presentations into account. In my opinion, it would be more beneficial to transform the formal presentations into a less formal and conversational setting. For example, we can all sit in groups around the tables like our final class discussion. While presentations can be beneficial in some settings (like the first presentation of the semester), other presentations can stifle creative debate. This may be counterintuitive, but I felt students were less likely to get involved after the presentations. Many students didn’t ask questions at the conclusion or begin a conversation and this class thrives on conversation.
Finally, I agree with Charlie that what we did as a class was truly remarkable. We helped great causes in ways we have never been able to in the past. I think this was one thing we lost in the last debate. The organizations became more like objects of debate and less like groups supporting important causes. I would encourage future classes to remember this amidst the final heated debates.
Throughout the entire semester we have heard the phrase “emotion constrained by reason” as a definition for philanthropy. The role of emotion was very obvious on Tuesday. As a whole, our class failed to take Samantha Meadows’ advice, which Emily Olander blogged abut last week. Samantha suggested we try to keep our emotions out of the debate and listen to everyone’s arguments respectfully. However, this proved to be very difficult because people felt very passionate about the specific organizations they researched more thoroughly. In addition, being in groups with people who felt equally as passionate about an organization increased the tension in the classroom, as groups began targeting each other.
ReplyDeleteAs a member of the Opportunities for Broome assessment group, I did not do much arguing. Instead, I focused on asking questions and listening to the points my classmates made. I was most impressed with the representatives for CEO. At the beginning of class, I was not convinced that CEO should be one of the grant recipients. However, I was swayed by arguments Lauren, Derek and Dylan made. Lauren and I had a conversation during the class’ break in which she was able to clearly and effectively answer questions I had. This is the most productive talk I participated in or witnessed throughout the entire debate. Lauren did not try to convince me using emotion and she did not compare CEO to other organizations to maker her case. She simply used a fact-based explanation, which was very successful.
Future classes may have more productive debates if they take a few simple things into account. First, instead of splitting into groups based on which organization we assessed, we should have divided so that each group had a representative from each organization. This may have allowed us to listen to others’ arguments more objectively because it would have been less of an “us vs. them” scenario. Next, we should have focused on the criteria we decided was important. Many people stated what the money would be used for was of little importance to them. However, when making arguments, people addressed this idea. If we agreed it was not important to us, what the money would be used for should not have been brought up during the debate. Finally, we should have asked more specific questions. Many discussions got off topic it seemed as people rambled on about organizations rather than providing clear answers. Perhaps next year’s class members should come to the debate with a list of questions they would like answered before making decisions. This may help focus the discussion, which is important when there is a time limit. With only three hours to decide, a lot of time was wasted when people repeated the same arguments over and over.
Although I got very frustrated throughout the debate, I understood why it proceed the way it did. Clearly, people felt very passionate about their own organizations. I liked being a member of the OFB group because I felt like I was able to be more reasonable than emotional. In the end, the decision was much harder than I expected. However, I am happy with the way things turned out. We were able to learn a lot about specific organizations, the long process that leads to an effective donation, and ways to improve the debate for future classes.
I absolutely agree with a lot of comments that have been made on this discussion – I think that the debate we had last week was very heated and very aggressive and it was incredibly disappointing that our entire class could disintegrate into a yelling mess over just 250 – 500 dollars. I think in the future, to facilitate better class discussion, as a class, the class should come up with a few guiding questions the week before the final discussion to discuss and figure out the final points and issues of contention in the final debate. These questions should be the ones to guide the debate as opposed to the class seeking for ways to delegitimize other organizations. A lot of people have already touched on this but I think that it would be far more conducive to not have each group be composed of the people that went on the site visit but to have a mix of people from each organization. Ultimately, I think that to have guidelines for the debate that the class comes up with themselves would be extremely helpful to having a smooth and fruitful conversation.
ReplyDelete