California Musing…

I’ve just come back from spending three days in California talking about how nonprofits all over the country are faring, these days.

The forum was the national Alliance for Nonprofit Management conference. Together with folks from Minnesota. Mew Mexico, Maryland, Ohio, California, New York and everywhere in between, over 100 nonprofit “capacity-builders’ made the space to think deeply about how nonprofits, and the people who run them, are coping.

I’ll warn you, this is not a column that offers solutions.

Some of the profound conversation-stoppers I heard:

As nonprofits hunker down and the more economically marginalized groups go back into their bedrooms, the nonprofit world is starting to become cleaved between two kinds of groups – small, unstaffed organizations, and larger, fully professionalized institutions. Are they really one sector?

In this time of profound change, do boards see their role as protecting the mission...or are they more vested in protecting their organization’s brand than in embracing change? Are boards ready to look at the fundamental business model of their nonprofit?

What is the net result of the deprofessionalization that goes on as a development director, or a chief financial officer, leaves – by attrition or through layoffs – and their role gets absorbed by the executive director? Leaving that piece of work to be done by someone without as much expertise and with multiple other competing priorities?

Are people tuning out from the advice deluge on coping strategies?

As hard as it was to live like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill, the burden now feels like we’re trying to carry a load of mud up the hill, which oozes out at every turn.

Sober musings, all…

Time to Contemplate

I was at a meeting today where board members were being asked to digest a long, complex planning document they’d first seen less than 12 hours ago, if at all.

It had some great ideas.

But it was just too much to absorb “live.”

Now would these board members have pored over the document ahead of time if it’d been sent a week in advance? Maybe, or maybe not.

But by bringing it to the meeting, the executive director all but guaranteed she’d have a “paper board” – a board whose function was to appreciate, not to contemplate.

I don’t think that’s what she intended to accomplish – after all, she went to the trouble of preparing a lengthy exegesis of current trends in the field and their relevance to the agency’s work. If she really wanted a noninvolved board, she could have simply prepared a board packet with financials, press releases and a program update, and called it a day.

So that got me thinking about the power of meetings to force preparation. You know you’re going to face people (especially the board), so you take the time to prepare a thoughtful framing of the issues you want far-sighted deliberation on. Well so far, so good…but the problem was, this executive director should have set a deadline not for the meeting date, but for (a minimum of) a week ahead.

Time to act thoughtfully – not a luxury in these tricky days. A lot depends on our ability to steer our agencies through tea leaves that are murky, at best.

Oxymoron: Relaxing In The Office

In the final days of summer, I’ve been trying on a new discipline – relaxing without being officially on vacation. 

Quite a concept, in the fundraising arena where stress is a constant companion.

So I started thinking about one of the 80/20 rules – the one that posits: schedule no more than 80% of your time because 20% will be added just through day-to-day interactions.

Maybe we should even make that a 65/35 rule of thumb.  But in the nonprofit world right now, where every division is understaffed and we’re all carrying a 150% workload, that’s pretty hard to do.

Sometimes the answer is compartmentalizing.  Training ourselves to see just what’s ahead and what’s doable – not the whole plethora of deadlines, opportunities, and holes in the dike that remain unaddressed.   Trying to focus on a 48-hour span, not on the panorama.  Not as breathtaking – but possibly a little bit more humane.

But that’s easier prescribed than lived.

I tend to see the whole mountain – in fact, that’s one of the key components of the job of development director (and executive director): to see how all the pieces fit together, to sequence and re-sequence the parts as easily as breathing, to always remain aware of the uphill climb and a host of various paths to getting there.

But there’s a serious downside to this wholistic mindset – we’re always aware of what’s next to be done, and that leaves us perpetually feeling as if we’ve got a week’s worth of important tasks to be completed in the next 36 hours.  No wonder the burden never goes away.

Breathing.  Vastly overrated, but there is something to taking a deep breath.  Or taking a walk, reading a poem, emptying one’s mind of the concerns at hand.  Years ago I worked a block away from a terrific gym – I used to go swimming at lunchtime.  My afternoon clients were better off from following my half-hour in the water, into which no voices could penetrate…

We need to create that psychic space, pool or no pool – our work will benefit, our ability to focus will improve, and our souls will be just a little bit lighter.

A better world starts at home…or at the office?

The Danger of Dowagers

We met with a group last week that, by rights, ought to have a robust donor base. Over 100 years old, founded by and affiliated for most of its first century with several of New York’s most august and philanthropic families.

Rescued by a bequest by one of those families last year, from near-death due to mounting debt.

There are many factors that brought this group to its knees like that, but one, frankly, was the curse of the benevolent “fixer.” I’m referring to the long-time (multi-generation, often) donor affiliation which has lost its luster – so that the family members still affiliated are giving out of duty, but are not motivated enough to be asking. The nonprofit was really important to someone a couple of generations back, but not to the folks on the board, now.

So why does this leave a group worse off than groups without this affiliation?

First, because, more often than not, the affiliation with this founding family has enabled the nonprofit to rest on that affiliation – to let its fundraising muscles go flabby. Janet will write a check, goes the history…so why do the hard work of finding and stewarding new donors, when Janet and her descendants will fill the void?

And second, because the group has people filling seats on its board who aren’t fulfilling the board’s primary role – to serve as ambassadors. Other board members get the message that what’s valued isn’t activation but check-writing; and while they may not be able to write that level of check, they’ll give up on the activation too, because it’s not the driving paradigm.

And finally, because having that level of resources on a board, puts stars in people’s eyes. The $500 donors don’t seem worth going after, because you’ve got $50,000 donors within reach.

But do you really?

You may have one at hand, who’ll eventually give you a bequest…but more than that is a mirage.

And mirages don’t cut it, these days...