Sliding Into Home

We're at the final stages of preparing for our 30th Anniversary Celebration here at Cause Effective, and we're going through what we've been through with our clients so many times... that feeling of being on a shared enterprise that is rapidly, rapidly, rapidly coming down for a landing.

But it’s the shared enterprise - the team - that I want to take this space to reflect on.

A nonprofit is, by its very nature, one of Tocqueville’s “associations” – a group of individuals coming together for a shared purpose.

In the 1830s, Tocqueville traveled to America from France and wondered at the preponderance of voluntary associations to accomplish social good: “Americans

of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations,” he mused.

Almost 200 years later, we still are.

But my point here is not the proliferation of nonprofits in the past several decades – though that’s certainly true – it’s the idea of a joint endeavor. At the heart of board-staff relations, at the core of how we run our organizations, is the concept of collective shoulders to the wheel to get the job done.

And even more than the idea, that concept of collective associations – is the feeling of shared purpose and collaboration.

It’s exciting, it’s affirming, and it’s reinforcing. I’m not in this alone – we’re all pulling the cart along, together.


Nothing brings that home more than sliding into home on a special event.

The whole office is working late. People are taking on responsibilities that “aren’t my job” to help each other out. Board members are responding to emails within seconds, even generating an-idea-a-minute to help the engine along.

I know I’m using a lot of movement metaphors here, but that’s what it feels like – we’re being swept along by a collective force that’s far, far stronger than any one of us doing our jobs in isolation.

And the question post-event?

How to keep that collective energy going, albeit at a lower pitch, to keep the communal strength of purpose and lightning-pitch clarity about goals that we experienced with the event.

Stay tuned…

The Expression on His Face

It happened again.   In fact, twice in the past week.

The first time it happened to a CEO whose board we’re working with to get them to step up to the plate in a big way, fundraising-wise.

We were leading them through some “what’s the value-added of this board” discussions, that sort of soul-searching stuff.  As the board was coming to its own understanding of what the mandate ahead of it was, I could see a number of expressions pass over CEO’s face.  Boredom, exasperation, ennui.  Even a flash of anger as the board went through the “We don’t know enough about what this organization does…” litany – and I could just see his thought bubble:  “But I send you oceans of stuff, all the time!”

And then the change moment happened – and his jaw dropped.  When one of the board members offered to throw a house party.  And another volunteered to make a standing appointment on his work calendar for an hour a week allocated to calls and/or visits on agency’s behalf.  And a third said (and I quote):  “We’ve got to get on the stick, folks!  Who’s with me on this?” – and you could see heads nodding all around the room.

And now it’s like the real estate saying – follow-up, follow-up, follow-up.  (And I mean on the staff side.)  This CEO has to go through the same transformation as we saw pass through his face – from sitting on his hands waiting to see if the board will come through (or fail “as usual”), to seeing a moment of change and moving to support it whole hog.  We talk a lot at Cause Effective about moving toward the light – discovering the positive in the threads around you (especially in board behavior) and thrusting them forward.  Behaving “as if.”

Well, as I said it happened twice.  In fact, the second time was me, with my board.  They were having quite a lively discussion, and I was trying to remain silent.  But then one board member looked at the expression flitting across my face (I’ve never had a good poker face) and called me on it: “Judy, what are you thinking about all this?”

And I had about 3 seconds to recharge from doubt, thinking about the daily workload and other administrative concerns, to “look at these guys coming through!”  From staff supervisor to institutional leader, in other words.

Love those board members!  The good ones really keep you honest…and performing as your best self.