Did you notice a missing loveletter last Friday? The short story is that I had a LOT going on and, as much as I wanted to, I just could not get one out. I hope that that doesn’t happen much going forward, but, if you happen to notice one missing, that’s almost surely why. I’ll say that clearly now, just so you don’t wonder or worry… and I don’t have to feel like I owe you an explanation every time.
Today we’re going to start a discussion about the ways nonprofits both let us down… and deeply inspire us with their potential.
We’ll start with the former today (I’ve outlined seven ways we’re let down below, and I ask you to comment with things you’ve experienced that aren’t covered)… and the latter will be our focus next time.
Read on….
For You: Today’s Main Course
This week, I was talking to a nonprofit bud, after we had debriefed another seriously messed-up nonprofit situation involving an ill-prepared board of directors and executive leader, both of which were absolutely not open to feedback or learning, to overcome their significant blind-spots and deficiencies…
…and we were having that typical shaking-our-heads, asking-why-we-keep-doing-this kind of moment — one I’ve had so many times over the years, I couldn’t even begin to count how many times it’s been.
You know that one, right?
What came out of my mouth next, so naturally, made her stop, widen her eyes and mouth, and exclaim:
“That’s IT! THAT is why.”
What did I say?
I said we believe in their potential.
I said we keep our commitment to nonprofits — despite how much they keep disappointing us, traumatizing us, demoralizing us, and/or sometimes even screwing us over — because we believe in their potential.
We believe in their potential, don’t we, friends?!
We just know they can be better.
So this week, I’m putting forward seven reasons I believe nonprofits keep letting us down… and next time, I’ll share at least seven ways I think they could, alternatively, reach their actual, full potential… that we all seem to sense is possible, even though most of us have never actually witnessed it.
Without further ado….
1️⃣ Egos are running the show.
Look at the example I started with.
If a board member or executive leader needs help and learning in order to do their job well — as those for that org I mentioned do — and they refuse to acknowledge that they need it, how will it happen? Spoiler alert: it won’t. And the org and the humans it serves will be the ones to suffer. People could literally be harmed, or sometimes even die. Is protecting our egos really worth that?
Another example: the org leadership that’s convinced that they know best, which means they never ask their staff (who often are much closer to the actual work of the org) for feedback or accountability or correction — nor, of course, do they ask the same from those served by the org.
Another example: founders of a nonprofit org calling it “my” org, as though it didn’t belong to the community served the very second it obtained its 501c3 designation.
Other examples: pissing matches over the version of a document used; power struggles over setting an agenda; squeezing certain people out of the work or opportunities to lead because you “don’t like them;” someone choosing to do something essentially because it makes them look good; someone refusing to share credit for a win when the effort was collective; someone refusing to tell the truth because they don’t like how it reflects on them; and more.
All of these examples have the same general outcome. The mission suffers, while the individual egos involved jockey for what they believe they need (status; pride; position; credit; adoration; etc.).
How destructive for the community, yes?! What a shame, that work that’s supposed to be about the community… ends up being about individual egos instead. How counterproductive, that a collaborative process that could add up to greater than the sum of all of its parts… instead ends up defaulting to work that can barely escape the boulder-weight of pride and arrogance.
2️⃣ People who have no idea what actually works, on the ground, in real life, are handed all the decision-making power.
We all know this one.
Board members who are Certified Professional Accountants… are given the authority to determine how many families are allowed to access trauma counseling this year.
Or someone who went to grad school and got an MBA… is considered more qualified to lead a nonprofit that serves kids in foster care than someone who went through foster care themself.
Or people who have experienced homelessness, or addiction, are treated with suspicion and will never be trusted, because of the societal taboos and stereotypes we have created around these things — so much so that, even though an org’s programs are serving one or both of those populations, folks with these experiences would never be asked to advise on or, God-forbid, even make decisions about programs serving those populations.
Make it make sense! Honestly, what better qualification could there be for this work than real-life experience with it… to inform what is most needed?! Are other things even really that important? And if other things ARE important, can’t leaders who belong to a community and share its lived experience easily be helped by people with that expertise, all while prioritizing their own expertise and know-how above all else?
3️⃣ You’re constantly on a hamster wheel because of the way funding works (one-time, limited funding that must constantly be chased).
My fellow fundraisers will feel this one in their bones.
We go so hard, charging into and through our fiscal year-end. Many of us are hella motivated by a goal of any sort — but also, we know how many people are relying on us to reach our goals. Sometimes, again, lives even depend on it.
As year-end approaches, we skip meals. We skip family commitments to put in “just one more hour,” or hold “just one more event,” or have “just one more donor meeting.” We write appeal letters (or donor emails) at home in our pajamas, on the weekends, because that is the only quiet time we can find to focus.
And then, midnight at the end of the year passes… and it almost doesn’t matter if we met our goal. Hopefully we did. Often we even exceed them! Sometimes we don’t, and then come some really hard conversations.
But no matter what the outcome was, no matter how hard we worked, no matter how much we sacrificed, no matter how much we raised…
… the reality is almost as if none of it happened, because we literally have to start from zero all over again.
We just finished scaling a massive mountain… and suddenly, we find ourselves at its base all over again, needing to start re-climbing.
How ridiculously Sisyphean it all is! Because of how our budgeting works and the fact that our funders have historically refused to commit to multi-year funding that we can actually rely on, we’re forced to start from scratch every year. What a waste of energy and time! HOW MUCH work essentially just pours down the drain, because we weren’t allowed to carry it over into a new fiscal year? How much innovation and strategy is undermined because nonprofit leaders have no ability to plan for the future without the persistent hum of anxiety that unreliable, unpromised, unsustainable funding — and thus being forced into the disempowerment of relying on the decisions and whims of other human beings — creates?!
4️⃣ Professional development is usually “just winging it.”
I’ll let a friend lay this one out.
She just posted this today on LinkedIn:
”Over the last two weeks I’ve met with a handful of emerging and middle managers in the nonprofit sector who are either ill-equipped or completely unequipped to do their jobs, have nothing in the way of training documentation, no sense of guidance — like they’re supposed to just come in knowing what the job entails and how to do it right.
And then they get treated like an annoying, disruptive force when they ask for help, or are hesitant to perform a task because they’ve never received the proper training to do the thing (even after asking for it).
Problem is, the training is usually only documented in the brain folds of the person who did it before them — and sometimes they can't be bothered to write it all down. The person who can do the task in their sleep had to wing it, so why can’t people in the role now just do that too?!”
People. People! “Winging it” is not professional development. And effective professional development is not free. So if we want to offer our org’s staffers effective professional development — and we should! — we will need to budget for that. As a provider of professional development for fundraisers myself, I’m continuously floored how often folks tell me they’d love to participate… but they don’t have the funding for it from their employer… NOR do they make enough to pay for it themselves… OR they lack both of those things AND, even when I offer them a scholarship, they tell me they’ll not be granted the TIME by their employer to participate. Make it make sense! Do we really want people just struggling on their own… and/or throwing spaghetti at the wall… when the work they’re doing in nonprofits is often deeply affecting other people, and/or our shared planet, and/or our collective well-being?!
5️⃣ Humanity is completely sapped out of what should be the most human work.
We get into this work because we care.
And before we know it, it’s like our care becomes a liability.
When nonprofit work is measured and evaluated as though it’s a machine — look at how we construct “logic models” for grants, for instance, where inputs drive predictable outputs as though we’re stamping widgets and advancing them along a conveyer belt to a transport truck ready to whisk them away to waiting consumers — we have to become machines to enact the work the way it’s contextualized.
We go go go, do do do. We often don’t have time to pause, or to take a breath. We often don’t have much, if any, flexibility in how we work with program participants. We often don’t even get to really know and genuinely appreciate participants, or our colleagues, or volunteers, or even donors or funders, as so much of our relating is hurried along and constrained by time or other resources.
We often don’t get to experience the joy of community in this kind of community work — because the work, as it’s currently set up, is not really about community.
So often, we end up feeling isolated. Misunderstood. Unseen. Unheard. And if we’re feeling like that, imagine how historically marginalized people like our program participants must feel!
How have we managed to make this most human work so very inhumane?! Why do we so often de-humanize ourselves and others in this work? How have we managed to take an effort that is supposed to be an antidote to the ills of capitalism… and transpose capitalism’s ills right on top of it?
6️⃣ You never have the resources you need to do a good job.
Name the resource you need for this work, and it’s scarce.
Money.
Time.
Support.
Training.
Supplies.
Back-up.
Time off. Space for your personal life. A living salary or wage. Healthcare. Mental healthcare. Funding for retirement.
You’d think that, if we really cared about this work, we’d do everything we could to resource it over and above what is needed for success.
You’d think that.
But that’s not reality.
And thus, this question really must be asked: how do we expect endeavors that involve working with human beings — historically some of the most messy, complex, and chaotic units that exist within this giant Universe — to be successful with the barest of bare minimum in every kind of resource? Pray tell, how?
7️⃣ Even though we’re called “nonprofit” and everybody outside the field thinks we don’t care about money, in real nonprofit life, everything always comes down to money.
In a world dominated and driven by capitalism, anything that takes away from profit (which is of course things like all of the resources mentioned above) is something to limit. Because profit must be prioritized before everything else.
And you might think — in a sector labeled “nonprofit” — that that might not be true here. But you’d be wrong. Because yes, even though folks not-in-the-know think that we don’t prioritize money within nonprofits, money is consistently the main driver of every decision and action within nonprofits — largely driven by the scarcity mindset created by the lack of reliable funding and resources we’ve already laid out.
To be real on this one? Instead of the “nonprofit sector,” maybe we should call this sector the “most-minimal-profit-despite-how-hard-we-might-try-to-save-coins-in-every-little-action-and-activity-which-creates-a-never-ending-loop-of-scarcity-and-under-investment-and-struggle-and-social-problems sector.”
________________
That’s it for today, friends.
Thoughts?
Feedback?
Further discussion?
Please pop off in the comments!
And tune in next time for the companion discussion for this post — outlining the true potential of nonprofit work that keeps us all here, despite the many difficulties and dramas called out above.
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