Bruce Gordon, the very recent former president of the NAACP was the keynote speaker at the conference lunch today. I had never heard him speak before, and I was also curious as to whether he would talk about his experience leading the NAACP. Well, he did, even if only from a broad standpoint. After hearing Bruce’s remarks, it’s clear to me why his leadership style did not mesh with the NAACP Board. Bruce, at his core, is a businessman. A very shrewd one, at that. And we all know what often happens when we try to mesh business practices with nonprofit management. Disaster. Not that Bruce had horrible business ideas, just that it’s not hard to see that the NAACP was not ready to hear them, let alone implement them. Among Bruce’s remarks from today’s lunch:
I think we get caught in a rut, caught up in old habits of solving problems, even when the nature of the problems have changed.
We need to focus less on the personalities that lead our nonprofits and more on the process of making our organizations more sustainable. We can’t be driven by individual leaders, but by the successful operation of our nonprofits.
To get our work done, we need to examine our intentions, create the mechanisms, and move forward with execution.
Accountability is important in the Black community. Too many of our people think and act like victims.
Nonprofits need to focus more on showing outcomes and results to prove to our supporters that we are doing a good job.
We should not let traditional thinking keep us from getting the right scope and scale we need for our work. Like businesses, many nonprofits need to consolidate, including the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which need not be separate organizations.
And my favorite part of his commentary:
A lot of people say that the NAACP, National Urban League, et. are no longer relevant or contemporary. Well, how many of these people are dues-paying members of the NAACP, or donate to the Urban League or the United Negro College Fund? How many volunteer or mentor to help others in their own communities?
Bruce’s remarks gave me (and the entire audience it seemed) pause to think about my own involvement in the Black community. Like many people, I complain about the sad state of affairs for our youth, civil rights, and poverty among people of color. But, we all could and should really be doing much more to contribute to changing our communities.
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