Though relatively new in fundraising lexicon, "One hundred percent participation" is the driver of matching dollar campaigns, crowdfunding, and bake sales, and has become an expected goal in communal and leadership engagement. But is its payoff really greater than a few deep pockets? However skeptical we may be regarding how lucrative total participation is, the concept may actually explain a mystifying moment in the parsha.
"All the artisans who were engaged in the tasks of the sanctuary came ... said to Moshe, 'The people are bringing more than is needed for the tasks that Hashem has commanded to be done ... thereupon Moshe announced throughout: 'Let no man or woman exert any further effort toward gifts for the mishkan!'" (Shemos 36:4). It must be the first and only time that a fundraiser for a Torah establishment called off the capital campaign because of over-involvement. What about overruns and upkeep? Announcing that we have more than enough money must violate a cardinal fundraising principle.
Perhaps if Moshe was to accept any more funds and thus yield extra, it would demonstrate that someone's donation did not make it into the mishkan. What was an uplifting sense of a community coming together to be collectively and individually responsible for the shechina would have been reduced to questions, doubts and discouragement expressed as each wondered if his donation really made it in. Indeed, if the surplus was large and publicly known, then for many there would be nary a difference between their contribution to the mishkan and their anonymity and the invisibility in Pitom and Ra'amses, lehavdil. By contrast, with the cessation of the collection when the mishkan's needs were precisely funded, every scrap of cloth and every silver ring, no matter how tarnished, would win someone a place in the ohel. The donation of every Jew who wanted to be there became an essential and non-swappable component of the mishkan.
Gold, copper, and cloths of many colors cannot build a structure that can contain that which is sublime and shares no dimension or quarter with the material and physical. However, the Magid of Dubnov explains that it was not the material goods that brought Hashem's presence to this world, rather it was the generosity, the anticipation of Hashem's presence which inspired the alacrity, the desire to be part of a national endeavor, and, yes, to witness and be part of one hundred percent participation in our quest for growth and spirituality. All of that and more were part of every gift, and that is what brought Hashem's presence to His people.