Moving beyond thoughts and prayers

A few months before the Haiti earthquake, Typhoon Ondoy hit the Philippines. #RedCross was Twitter trending 48 hours because of a crowd-generated tweet encouraging donations via the American Red Cross 800 number.

Not a single person called. Not a single person donated.

People retweeted but didn’t take the action. I felt discouraged. We were good at inspiring social media action, getting likes on Facebook, but were we connecting to enable a real difference?

After Haiti, #RedCross once again Twitter trended because of the Text HAITI to 90999 campaign. This time people not only retweeted but they texted donations in almost exactly equal numbers.

People retweeted and took the action that enabled a real difference.

Of course, money alone can’t solve complex humanitarian and civil society problems, but it’s a start.

I see a similar pattern developing as we experience incidents like the Paris and Beirut attacks. People are compelled to talk about and show support by posting thoughts and prayers. There’s nothing wrong with posting in this way, but there's growing frustration that we don't back up these expressions with action - "Your thoughts and prayers don't fix anything!" and in Doug Stanhope’s comedy routines.

Feeling compelled to post an acknowledgement of a tragedy online does showcase our selfish desires to be part of something bigger than ourselves. I can also argue thoughts and prayers do make a difference – feeling solidarity with our fellow humans is powerful.

I think the frustration is similar to the one I felt after Typhoon Ondoy in that we can see the potential power in millions of people taking an action all at once and we can feel the disappointment when that action is offering an acknowledgement that doesn't change the circumstances of our society. 

What are the next steps, though? Will we figure out how to move beyond offering thoughts and prayers? Can we as global civil society take this desire to do something and scale it in valuable ways?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this phenomenon I call the crushing abundance (a term I heard Marnie Webb use years ago and I latched onto). There is so much opportunity in the crushing abundance and I haven’t seen anyone figure out how to leverage it consistently. What is the nonprofit sector's role here? 

How might we take the collective energy of thoughts and prayers and turn it into action?