Review and Interview – Interactions between Media, Spirituality and Giving

A Case Study – Operation Smile

By Chloe Y

As the power of spin, the media and, most strikingly, social media increases, how do not for profit organisations harness this rising tide? I interviewed Kirby Pearce, Marketing and PR co-ordinator for Operation Smile in Brisbane about the interaction between social media and charitable giving, spirituality, religion and giving and how these relationships play out in cyber space. In the case of Operation Smile, while social media plays an increasingly crucial role in gaining support and patronage, the motivation of explicit religious traditions among volunteers and donors seems irrelevant, and a common spirituality of giving is the driving force behind patrons. Speaking to Kirby at Operation Smile’s recent fundraising event at QPAC, a combined initiative with the Queensland Ballet, it was evident that Operation Smile have a strong mission volunteer, corporate and civilian donor base. As marketing and PR co-ordinator, Kirby offered valuable insight into the role social media plays in not for profit organisations and the interplay between religion, spirituality and giving.

Operation Smile is a not for profit organisation with chapters worldwide, that serves to offer free surgical and medical treatment to underprivileged children with facial deformities. Mission groups of qualified Australian surgeons and nurses travel to developing countries for a two week period, performing up to 150 surgeries. As Kirby suggested, the need for these children to have facial deformities treated is twofold; “there is potentially a lot of health problems that can result from facial deformity – children can have difficulty breathing and eating. Culturally and socially, a lot of communities treat facially deformed children as outcasts and ostracize them”. To perform these missions, Operation Smile not only relies on skilled surgeons and nurses volunteering, but also on donations to fund the missions, facilities, medication and equipment. To gather this support, Operation Smile utilises its online presence.

Globally, social media is playing a growing role in delivering social information to users. Facebook has more than half a billion users worldwide (Long, 2012). Social media is successful as a media and public relations tool because it is a two way interaction between producer and consumer (Long, 2012). Using social media also means that social information, that is, information for which meaning is socially constructed can be delivered to and processed by users at a faster rate, through a variety of audio visual mediums (Guo, 2012). As Kirby pointed out, social media enables Operation Smile to reach a much wider audience; “facebook is also quick. It allows us [Operation Smile] to reach a lot more people in a shorter time than traditional marketing tools and communication methods”. Kirby also alluded to a shared motivation for their social media respondents; “social media is useful tool inasmuch as ‘friends’ tend to have the same interests”. However, the benefits of social media for Operation Smile are somewhat limited, being that they do not use it for direct fundraising. A recent Probono Australia survey showed that this was also the case for approximately 40% of Australian charities with a social media platform.

During the interview, Kirby suggested that the vast majority of Operation Smile’s social media audience are active participants in the charity, as donors or volunteers. In assessing the relationship between participation in charitable organisations and religion, it can be seen that Operation Smile’s donor base is not fitting with scholarly theories and statistics on the topic. Arthur Brooks suggests that research collected in in 2000 during a survey on “civic behaviour” found those who practiced religion were 25% more likely to give than those who rarely practiced or had no religion (Brooks, 2003). However, Operation Smile’s participants “are definitely not outwardly religious. As an organisation we are not explicitly religiously focussed. Most of our volunteers do so because they feel it is time to ‘give back’……There is certainly a common sense that helping the underprivileged is the ‘right’ thing to do” (Kirby Pearce, interviewee, 2013). Scholarly work also suggests that a common spirituality of humanitarianism and a social justice conscious drive charity work in twenty first century society.

Hoover and Emerich assert that the trend for people to make meaning in their lives has led to a convergence of media and spirituality (Hoover and Emerich, 2010). In addition to this, it is suggested that new forms of media provide liberation from traditional institutions and authorities, including religious ones (Hoover and Emerich, 2010). Increasingly, there is a trend to define spirituality against religion, “the word spirituality has gained new purchase, becoming reimagined as the distillation of religion, the pure form left after the removal or religion’s dogma, infrastructure, authority and ritual(Hoover and Emerich, 2010).” To this end, Clarke suggests that charitable work fuels spiritual growth and reduces materialism and self-obsession (Clarke, 2009). This was an idea the interviewee echoed “Volunteers that go on mission definitely take quite a journey, and not only in a literal sense. Volunteers are exposed to very different environments to what they come from, and I think it has a deep impact on them.” Charity work for volunteers at Operation Smile, and for an increasing number of people, who define themselves as spiritual as opposed to religious, is centred on an understanding of social justice.

The spirituality many people associate themselves with in the twenty first century has a deeper focus on social justice and environmental activism than religious doctrines (Hoover and Emerich, 2010). This essence of spirituality is realised and acted upon through the media, and more specifically social media, whereby people realise a need for social change through information delivered by social media. As Kirby suggested, “a lot of our volunteers will comment that they were inspired by the before and after photos we have up on our website and Facebook. That seems to really affect people, seeing that there is a change they could be helping to make. That they could really change someone’s life.” Indeed, Stein and Paras’ theories on secular humanitarian aid support this idea. It is suggested that while not religious, secular charities hold humanitarianism and social justice as sanctified, and thus engender their own spiritual sense (Stein and Paras, 2012). Thus, the relationship between charity and religious beliefs seems irrelevant, and many people define themselves spiritually, using this spirituality as the driving force behind their charitable participation.

Social media plays a crucial role in delivering information with a social meaning to users. This is particularly important for not for profit organisations such as Operation Smile, a non-religiously aligned not for profit organisation, whose volunteers participate based on a deep rooted sense of helping others less fortunate than themselves. The motivation for Operation Smile’s volunteers is not religious, and many have a common spirituality based in social just and humanitarianism.