Sue Burston is a bread baker. That may be the least noteworthy thing someone could say about a woman who has quietly changed the way a part of North Northumberland views world poverty for forty years. But what counts is the bread. The dough, kneaded on a kitchen counter in front of strangers who attended a demonstration and departed after donating to Christian Aid, encapsulates something that the nonprofit sector has been reluctant to express. The kind of compassion that genuinely changes people’s minds and moves money tends to come in a roundabout way. Seldom does it appear in a glossy campaign.
Observing the work of individuals like Burston gives one the impression that the traditional charitable model—the check-in-the-post, gala-dinner version—has been replaced by something more peculiar and long-lasting. Though most would object to the term, call them the new activists. They plan marches through small towns, set up podiatry assistance for weary walkers, travel to Kenya and return transformed, then address a school assembly and explain why a child in Nairobi is unable to drink the water. It’s not glamorous. It functions.
It’s not just a personal change. Take a look at the Tzu Chi Foundation, which was founded in 1966 after Cheng Yen, a Taiwanese Buddhist nun, witnessed a woman’s death due to her inability to pay a hospital bill. Cheng Yen began saving fifty cents a day in homemade bamboo banks with thirty followers. Institutional fundraisers typically include details like the bamboo under “origin story.” However, the model was the bamboo banks. Daily, communal, small. The foundation now operates mobile vision clinics in American cities where people might not see an optometrist for years, and it has over ten million members in forty-seven countries. This may be what scaled compassion truly looks like—ten million silent contributors making decisions every morning instead of a billion-dollar appeal.
These days, social impact investors frequently discuss quantifiable results, which makes sense. However, the most effective aspects of these programs are difficult to quantify. How do you measure an adolescent in Birmingham planning a bake sale after witnessing her mother volunteer, or a child in Bangladesh receiving a hot lunch at a Buddhist Global Relief school? According to research from Save the Children, kids who have a sense of belonging to causes bigger than themselves tend to be happier and less anxious. The information is accurate. However, the texture of what’s happening is understated.
This work also contains tension that isn’t always acknowledged. Sue Burston quotations Dom Helder Camara, a Brazilian priest, was labeled a communist after he claimed that providing bread to the underprivileged made him a saint. It still hurts to read that line. It alludes to the unsettling reality that when charity is taken seriously, it can easily turn into politics. Generosity is less messy than justice. It appears that the new activists are aware of this. They do more than just distribute blankets following hurricanes, as Tzu Chi USA did during Sandy and Harvey. They are questioning why the blankets must be distributed at all, frequently in front of a Westminster audience or a Wooler parish hall.
It’s difficult to ignore how much patience is required. Forty years of raising money. A foundation for 60 years. Save the Children for a century. The new activism, whatever it may be, is slow. Perhaps that’s the point.