Last week, despite the very best efforts to safeguard an online meeting, I was part of an attempt to electronically “hijack” a Zoom meeting. I was Zoombombed.
These are always unfortunate. They usually involve the same elements: someone takes over controls of the meeting, blasts horrible statements of racism or misogyny, shows inappropriate images to jar and shock the participants, and won’t give back the controls of the meeting to the emcee.
It is the kind of thing you know happens. You may have even seen it happen. There are no exact statistics on how frequent it is, but it seems everyone has a story about someone with bad intentions or just needing attention ruining an online gathering.
This story really isn’t about that person. Their angry, misguided, and inappropriate actions are not what caused me to reflect. They jolted me, yes. But it was the way in which the participants bounced back and came together that inspired me.
In this Zoom meeting, I was serving as co-emcee for a panel to preview GivingTuesday 2021. This is a day that has for me always been a source of positivity and creativity. It is a community of people who come together to drive ideas about how to make philanthropy more personal, more enduring, more innovative, and more impactful. It is a group of people whose goodness is as impressive as their grit.
So, it at first seemed particularly wrong that a group of people who are sharing best practices and ideas should be subject to something so shallow as the hostile takeover of an online meeting. But the group did what the giving and impact sector (or “purpose sector” or “non-profit sector”) must do so often: they pivoted. And they did so with poise.
The group decided how to get back online, how to find a safe (yet still open) place to have the conversation and continue sharing ideas. They did so without holding back. The recording was made online (link here). Reporters joined, and even posted stories that same day about GivingTuesday. The participants rallied in a way that was gracious and magnanimous.
This is the role of giving over the course of centuries, but in particular these last few years. A pandemic, technological leaps and hiccups, uncertainty in an economy, and at times seemingly competing priorities—all of this has threatened to undermine the underpinnings of the giving sector.
Yet, these people continue to rally in ways that are authentic and creative. And it is delivering results. According a Giving USA report, Americans gave a record $471 billion in 2020. In a time when you would expect people to hunker down and conserve resources, giving increased more than 5% last year.
I want to thank those who joined me last week for this panel discussion. The lessons they shared about giving trends and the preview to GivingTuesday 2021 were invaluable. They were determined not to give in, not to become despondent in the face of adversity, They chose instead to strengthen their resolve, and that has strengthened mine. They proved to me why “the giving must go on.”
Great things happen when people give. It focuses priorities, elevates good ideas and critical efforts, and demonstrates who we are as people. That’s a good thing in this year—and any other.
