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Value Added
Here, as with SYNERGY, is an expression that means nothing special yet has somehow become indispensable to any serious discussion of civic or philanthropic affairs. The phrase means exactly what it seems to mean: raising the value of something by doing a little work on it. This thoroughly pedestrian meaning has some limited use in economics, and particularly in the field of taxation, where foundations and nonprofits would presumably have no use for it. Yet in the philanthropic world, VALUE ADDED has been invested with all the gravitas of fundamental mission and high charitable purpose. You won't catch a foundation expressing a wish to do something valuable, or to be valuable to others. They all want to provide value added, or in briefer form, to add value.
Well, who wouldn't? The alternative would be to work all day, then go home at night and face your spouse and children with the pathetic admission that you had not made anything better all day long. Perhaps there are people working in foundations today for whom that nightmare is a daily reality. We are not acquainted with them, thank God. But in any case, surely no one would aspire to that situation. And therefore, no one should consider it any great achievement to "add value," much less to " seek to add value." It's the very least that America can ask of her sons and daughters. The issue is how much value you add, to what, and for how long. The expression VALUE ADDED is silent on all of that. It says nothing about degree or quality or wisdom, just mere increment. Perhaps translating the phrase into Greek would make it more expressive. On second thought, don't even suggest it...
Value Proposition
At a conference on corporate philanthropy in 2003, a published summary reports, “a main theme that emerged is that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach when it comes to assessing the value proposition of corporate philanthropy, but that each company needs to develop internally accepted measures.” This sentence appears to leave unchallenged the claim of woolen winter caps to being the only thing in America for which one size actually fits all. But that is not what’s interesting about this unremarkable claim.
Until recently (the early 1990s, as far as we can tell), the idea of a VALUE PROPOSITION was unknown to the philanthropic and nonprofit worlds, but it has been spreading like a brush fire ever since. The phrase describes an approach to developing and marketing products based on a clear idea of what customers consider valuable. The PROPOSITION amounts to a succinct argument for why customers should be willing to part with their money in exchange for your product, rather than someone else’s. An exact synonym for this kind of VALUE PROPOSITION is “sales pitch.”
A foundation that supports civic leadership has posted an online training document on its Web site with the imposing title, “Social Entrepreneurship: Understanding the New Strategic Space for Social Value Creation.” We have already addressed this use of SPACE elsewhere, but the publication’s discussion of “social value creation” leads us, by and by, to the discovery of a new, as-yet-unexplored jargon space: “Developing Your Social Value Proposition.” The document helpfully lists the components of an effective “social value proposition,” all of which bear an uncanny resemblance to … a sales pitch.
An organization that represents community foundations urges its members to “strengthen our value proposition,” by which it means that they should “distinguish and promote our competitive advantage.” In other words, figure out why you and your services constitute a better deal for your customers (in this case potential donors) than do those of your competitors. Merchants do pretty much the same thing whenever they make a sales pitch.
It is perfectly understandable that foundations and civic institutions, acting in the public interest and trying to serve elevated ideals, would want to avoid any appearance of peddling their wares, much less engaging in the hawker’s art of pitching a sale. And yet, however much they may abhor the appearance, some of them seem fairly at ease with the reality — so long as it’s elegantly dressed up as a VALUE PROPOSITION, and moves about in an elevated “strategic space” far above the muddy footpaths of the public bazaar.
Venture
The hottest topic of debate in foundation circles nowadays is the merits of venture capitalism (or in some versions, investment banking) as a metaphor for smart philanthropy. The debate is not mainly about vocabulary or writing style, but about a real substantive question: Are grantmakers a species of investor, building benevolent enterprises that produce a measurable return for society, or are they more passive enablers of good, seeking mainly to support those who pursue charitable ends by whatever path. That is a thorny philosophical matter far beyond the boundaries of this essay. We therefore approach the word VENTURE warily, not as a way of settling the "venture philanthropy" debate, but as a window through which to view a broader phenomenon: the wholesale importation of financial palaver into the glossary of public and civic affairs.
The starched-collar solemnity of VENTURE is ironic, considering that the word is a medieval foreshortening (probably accidental) of ad -venture, with all the derring-do that implies. For some centuries, VENTURE had a cavalier, throw-of-the-dice quality-it meant random chance, or risk, or, in some senses, hazard. It came into its modern business meaning through the portals of risk: the word initially described the work of those devil-may-care visionaries (later ENTREPRENEURS) whose more far-fetched business ideas took on the qualities of an adventure, a sort of safari into the jungles of commerce.
These days, at least among foundations, it has acquired almost the opposite meaning. To be a true venture, an idea now has to be gravely responsible, supported with all the prudent INFRASTRUCTURE of a well-oiled organization, with precise METRICS of return, particularly if it is a SOCIAL venture. It must have CAPACITY, or else get TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE and keep all its STAKEHOLDERS confident and content. Sort of drains the adventure right out of the thing, doesn't it?
The popularity of these words is only partly an outgrowth of the recent "venture philanthropy" debate. Before anyone ever suggested venture capitalism as a model for the modern foundation, all these business terms (VENTURE included) were already floating about the charitable ether, haphazardly sticking to any undertaking more ambitious than a grammar school bake sale. Sometime in the 1980s, talking like financiers started making people feel responsible and prudent (perhaps it did the same for financiers, as their institutions crumbled about them). At the same time, public attitudes toward foundations and nonprofit institutions were growing more skeptical. Thus did the bankers' jargon increasingly become a bromide for queasy grantmakers.
Today, this pilfered vocabulary might actually be more relevant, and certainly more interesting, if it could regain some of its lost connotations of peril. The fact is that many of the most urgent callings of modern philanthropy entail risks that would make an ordinary business start-up look like a license to print money. The odds of achieving, say, a lasting recovery for a cocaine addict, or steady employment for a person with no experience and few basic skills, or a safe and healthy upbringing for kids in dangerous neighborhoods-now those are ventures, in the chanciest old meaning of the word.
In the tired vocabulary of "venture" and "return" and "investment" and the like, it is the genteel, leather-armchair quality that offends. At its best, philanthropy is an adventure, with its first syllable fully intact and all its hazards out in the open. Foundations can accept the risks or avoid them, as they see ?t, but hiding them behind a suite of oak paneling gains nothing-except to take some of the fun, and much of the virtue, out of their work.
To be fair, some foundations do maintain "venture funds" designed expressly for grants that lie somewhere outside the foundations' normal bounds of safety and familiarity. When the intended meaning includes that sense of unusual risk, the word plays exactly the role for which it was designed. Unfortunately for those foundations, most readers are by now so accustomed to seeing the word used in the stodgy sense of "businesslike operation" and "responsible enterprise" that they are unlikely to detect any more daring intent. |
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