Minnesota Council on Foundations Blog – Philanthropy Potluck

Today we welcome the perspective of Jeff Peterson, Director of Innovation & Strategy at the General Mills Foundation. He shares here the philosophy behind General Mills Foundation initiatives like Join My Village.

I recently represented Join My Village at a women’s empowerment conference hosted by Womenetics. In what would turn out to be more than coincidental, I addressed this roomful of 300+ women’s activists on the same day that the latest Betty Crocker cookbook hit the stands.  And while most audience members were fashionably nonplussed by Betty’s 90-year run and the release of her 11th edition of “Big Red,” Betty’s legacy – and ongoing utility – may have provided the most actionable lesson for all in attendance.

I paid close attention to the tenor, tone, and topics addressed by my fellow panelists. Loads of empirical – and unexpectedly unemotional – evidence was shared on the proven benefits of empowering women in developed nations and investing in women of underdeveloped ones.  “It is so obvious,” said Astrid Pregal of Feminetics, Inc., “all of the data is there. We just need to start using it.”

Indeed, as access to data has evolved, so has the dialogue on women’s issues.  Yesterday’s Gloria Steinem is today’s Muhammad Yunus.

In addition to increasing our collective consciousness, these evolutions have also increased individual empathy, which is an inarguable measure of progress; when others learn to walk a mile in the sandals of a marginalized woman, the pump of action is surely primed. Yet none of the conference attendees were ready to declare, “Mission accomplished.” In fact, the identification of empirical cost-benefit analyses and the acknowledgement of heightened global awareness seem to be causing more anxiety for advocates today than they did for similar groups yesterday.  Why?

Perhaps because we’ve created too much empathy without enough ease.

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote of the false sense of accomplishment that unaccompanied empathy can provide, stating, “These days empathy has become a shortcut. It has become a way to experience delicious moral emotions without confronting the weaknesses in our nature that prevent us from actually acting upon them.”

Brooks attributes this chasm to a weakened moral state, but I have a more pedestrian hypothesis: we have empathy, but we also have errands. For while I, the father of four daughters, eagerly embraces the spiritual and socioeconomic connections between my 12-year old Alice and another 12-year old Alice halfway around the world, I’m only responsible for getting one to volleyball practice. I have empathy; I need ease.

Which brings us back to Betty’s Big Red cookbook and its relevance to last week’s room of non-culinary change makers. Over the last 90 years Betty Crocker has done less to convince the world that a home-cooked meal prepared with love is a good thing and much more to help us act on that universal – yet often unrealized - conviction.

Similarly, Join My Village is designed to do less to develop new approaches to alleviate poverty through the empowerment of women, and more to invite action in its shared theory for change.

This empathy-to-action ethos should sound familiar to fans and followers of General Mills, as it also underlies the success of Box Tops for Education and Save Lids to Save Lives. These initiatives actively engaging millions of consumer citizens in seemingly intractable social conditions through increased measures of ease, not just empathy.

Or, as Betty might say, 2 parts ease to 1 part empathy.

Photo cc Boogies with Fish