Why I’m Building The Generosity Spectrum

A note: This is a longer piece, written intentionally for those who want to understand not just what I am building, but why.

I want to share where this next chapter of my work is coming from, and where I hope it goes.

For most of my career, I have worked at the intersection of nonprofits, technology, and data. I have helped design reports, benchmarks, and research that many organizations now rely on to understand fundraising performance. That work continues, and I remain deeply committed to it.

But over time, a pattern became impossible to ignore.

We keep investing in better tools, better dashboards, better strategies, and better governance structures. And yet nonprofit work feels harder, not easier. Burnout accelerates. Trust erodes. The labor required to hold everything together quietly intensifies.

This is not a failure of effort or intelligence. It is a mismatch between how humans actually function and how our systems expect them to behave.

What problem I am actually trying to solve

Most nonprofit challenges are framed as technical problems. Better CRM usage. Better donor segmentation. Better messaging. Better leadership discipline.

Those things matter. But they are downstream.

Upstream, the real problem is this: we have built resource allocation systems that treat human labor, motivation, and identity as secondary concerns.

Fundraisers are asked to perform empathy on demand. Community leaders are asked to absorb risk without authority. Volunteers are celebrated rhetorically and exhausted structurally. 

When systems break, we tend to blame individuals. We tell them to be more resilient, more strategic, more data-driven. Rarely do we ask whether the system itself is misaligned with human reality.

That shift in perspective has guided everything I am building now.

What The Generosity Spectrum is and is not

The Generosity Spectrum is an educational gaming company. It’s not entertainment for its own sake (though fun matters), and it’s not a consulting firm in disguise (though learning and coaching are part of the work).

At its core, this is a place to experiment without fear.

The work centers on helping people understand generosity as a living system shaped by identity, motivation, culture, power, and labor. Money is part of that system, but it is not the whole thing, and often not the most important thing.

Rather than prescribing actions, the focus is on creating environments where people can explore how generosity actually functions in their own communities. Games serve as the medium because they allow experimentation, safe failure, and the surfacing of patterns that are otherwise difficult to see in day-to-day work.

This approach is grounded in research across philanthropic psychology, sociology, anthropology, and behavioral science, alongside decades of evidence from game-based learning and simulation design. It also draws from history, political economy, moral philosophy, systems theory, media studies, and the long tradition of humans using play, story, ritual, and art to make sense of complex worlds.

The ideas behind this work reflect influences ranging from classical texts on reciprocity and labor to contemporary research on identity and motivation, as well as science fiction that asks what kinds of futures are quietly rehearsed through the systems people build. Game design theory sits alongside organizational psychology. Comics and visual storytelling sit alongside data science. Cozy games, tabletop role-playing, and simulation models sit alongside fundraising benchmarks and governance debates.

The work is further grounded in lived experience across nearly every layer of the nonprofit ecosystem, informed by years spent moving between roles, institutions, and communities, and shaped as much by formal spaces like sector working groups as by conversations in community rooms, conference hallways, and late-night debriefs among practitioners.

In short, this brings together a long arc of study and practice around generosity, across formal and informal settings, academic and applied work, serious analysis and playful exploration. It exists to create the thing that has been missing: a place to practice, reflect, and learn together.

Why games

Games are not a gimmick. They are one of the oldest learning technologies humans have.

Well-designed games make invisible systems visible, allow people to practice decisions without real-world harm, and create shared language and memory across groups.

In nonprofit work, we rarely give people a place to practice generosity strategy together. We hand them plans, policies, and tools and hope alignment follows. Too often, it does not.

Games invite participatory learning environments where nonprofit teams, donors, and program participants can explore assumptions about generosity, power, and labor together. Abstract ideas become concrete choices, and learning becomes relational rather than performative.

That is the core design philosophy behind The Generosity Spectrum.

Who this is for

In the near term, the work starts with nonprofit leaders and practitioners. That is where the need is most acute and where my experience runs deepest.

But the long-term vision is broader.

Funders who want to support capacity without imposing rigid frameworks. Corporate partners who care about adoption, trust, and long-term value creation. Academic partners who want applied research that actually reaches practice. And individuals who believe generosity is more than a line item.

There is a healthy and well-documented precedent for using games in service of social good. From public health simulations to civic engagement tools to participatory planning exercises, games have long been used to help people navigate complexity, surface tradeoffs, and build shared understanding. 

What has been missing is something designed specifically for fundraisers and nonprofit leaders as practitioners. Not a metaphor borrowed from another field, and not a training module with points layered on top, but a true practice field built for the realities of generosity work.

How I am building this

I am building this slowly and in public. That choice is intentional. It is not about visibility or branding, but about governance and accountability, and about allowing the people closest to the work to shape what emerges.

The Generosity Spectrum will take form through playtesting, community feedback, and research partnerships, grounded in academic rigor and disciplined process. The structure draws from long-standing thinking about player journeys, motivation, and community formation, including work by Amy Jo Kim , with a clear emphasis on participation before mastery and belonging before optimization. People are not invited in at the end to react to something finished. They are part of shaping how it works as it comes to life.

Fun is not an accessory in this process. It is the engine. Learning comes alive when people feel safe enough to experiment, curious enough to explore, and engaged enough to keep going. That is why playtesting sits at the center, and why early releases will be intentionally modest. Ideas will be tested in the open, allowed to fail, revised through use, and shaped by real experience rather than imagined demand.

This process depends on human creativity. Artists, designers, writers, illustrators, data storytellers, and other makers will help give form to these experiences, from physical game components to digital interactions and live-event moments. The goal is not polish for its own sake, but work that feels made, cared for, and grounded in human craft. Artificial intelligence will play a supporting role as a prototyping tool, helping reduce workload and explore possibilities more quickly. Anything that reaches the public will be shaped by real people, with transparency around how it was made and why. The art that will shape these games comes from people, and exploring that creative process is what I’m most excited about.

I am also clear about what this will and will not become. While there are formal learning opportunities here, and the potential for workshops or facilitated experiences, those are not the primary measure of success. If this work succeeds, it will be because people genuinely want to play the games themselves. Selling games is the core. Workshops and speaking may follow, but only if the games stand on their own.

I know this can be difficult to see from inside the nonprofit sector, where most learning is still organized around courses, credentials, or consulting-led programs. Yet many industries outside this space have long embraced games, simulations, and hands-on practice as serious learning tools. This work is not about growth for its own sake, extraction, or stretching nonprofit labor further. It is about building something durable and human-centered, where clarity, confidence, and sustainability emerge through experiences people actually enjoy.

History shows that the most lasting organizations and social movements understand this truth: shared joy, alongside shared struggle, is what binds people together.

At its best, this work explores the full spectrum of human experience, moving both fast and slow as needed, and centering joy and generosity so people can learn together, ask better questions, and imagine alternative paths toward community-driven sustainability and growth.

Why I am inviting you into this now

I had a much longer piece of writing that walked through how I’m thinking about building The Generosity Spectrum and how different groups participate in that work. For now, I wanted a clearer, more visual way to summarize that thinking in one place.

This (AI assisted) infographic shows The Generosity Spectrum at the center as a shared practice field for educational gaming around generosity, learning, and practice. Around it are the different groups who engage with the work in distinct but connected ways, with value flowing in both directions.

Nonprofit leaders and practitioners engage as core participants and co-learners through playtesting, peer learning, and experimentation. Their lived experience and practice wisdom inform how the work evolves.

I am running a survey for nonprofit leaders that I'd love 20 more responses to by EOY. Reply to this or DM me to help me out!

Funders participate as pilot partners and learning supporters. Rather than backing finished products, their role is to underwrite focused experimentation and help generate learning that can scale responsibly across the sector.

Corporate partners and service firms, especially technology companies, collaborate through co-created content, thoughtful experiences, and participatory formats. This is not about list-building. It’s about earning trust and brand affinity through shared value and meaningful engagement.

Guardians of the Game serve as co-creators and accountability partners. These are trusted consultants, researchers, and subject-matter experts who help shape the work, challenge assumptions, and keep it grounded in its values. Thank you to Meenakshi (Meena) Das for the name!

Conference organizers engage as experience partners. Together, we can design conference-specific games and participatory moments that help attendees make sense of complex topics in memorable, human ways. I'd love to design some really special experiences with some forward thinking event planners!

Implementation partners play a clearly defined role. When specialized technical or operational work is needed, I collaborate with trusted partners like BackOffice Thinking who do that work well, allowing me to stay focused on research, design, learning experiences, and community building.

If you see yourself in one of these roles and want to explore what this could look like in practice, feel free to reach out.

What is next for The Generosity Spectrum

My underlying vision is a reimagining of how collective learning and peer experimentation are funded, prioritized, and governed in this sector. Not as a byproduct of marketing goals or individual institutional agendas, but as shared infrastructure that belongs to the community using it.

I want something people can keep on their desk, in their pocket, or inside a shared digital world we have consciously designed together. Something grounded in responsible and ethical design, and shaped by the people closest to the work.

The future I am working toward includes a wide dreaming space I have been carrying with me for years. These are not promises or product announcements. They are ideas that have surfaced slowly as I have watched how people learn, collaborate, and imagine better ways of working together. This is the space where possibility lives before it gets shaped by reality.

That dreaming space includes ideas like:

• Hands-on games that let teams design meaningful, in-house stewardship together (dice game)
• Long-form role-playing scenarios that allow people to explore real-world tradeoffs safely (table-top role playing game)
• Cozy simulations where you design the perfect cup of coffee to pair with a grant proposal, slowing the work down enough to think clearly (trading card game)
• Scenario-based worlds where players steward a community-centered food bank and experience the tension between care, capacity, and resources (video game)

Not all of these will exist. Some may take years. Some may only ever inform other designs. What matters is that this work leaves room for imagination alongside rigor, and that learning is allowed to feel expansive rather than compressed.

At the same time, there is a concrete starting point.

I’m planning a hands-on launch game with early access in spring 2026, ahead of AFP ICON in San Diego. The focus is intentionally physical and in-person, with local playtests and sessions around conferences and special events I’m already planning with collaborators like Rachel D'Souza, MPPA, MLS , supported by light virtual touchpoints rather than full digital games at this stage. Before anything scales, the priority is validation: whether people actually want this, whether it supports real work, and whether it earns its place in an already crowded ecosystem.

I do not want to be a distraction.

If this turns out to be a niche practice that only a small, deeply committed group finds useful, I will take that seriously. And if the right next step ends up being something more out of the box career-wise again, I am prepared to make that pivot quickly. Thanks to my wife Jocelyn Sarrantonio, PE , and a combination of privilege, support, and luck, I have the ability to try something new and see what it becomes.

That honesty matters to me, because this is scary.

It is also why I am choosing to build in public. Through short-form video, written reflections, and eventually longer conversations on YouTube beginning in Q1 2026, I want to share not just outcomes, but the thinking and uncertainty along the way.

This is not about performing confidence. It is about inviting others into a process that is still becoming, and seeing what we can learn together.

That is the future I am inviting you to help build. I am grateful you are here.

Game on.

P.S. Tomorrow I will share a downloadable PDF that lays out the research, books, and frameworks that have shaped this work so far. It is my way of showing the thinking behind The Generosity Spectrum for anyone who wants to go deeper.