Sam Davidson shares a great quote he saw at the National Civil Rights Museum:
Truth comes from being involved, and not from observation and speculation.
Amen to that. The pursuit of truth is really why many of us came into the nonprofit sector. Most of us were looking for something real, something meaningful happening in this big bullshit world. But the question is, do most of us find it when we get here, or do we just find more spin, just as much posturing as we see coming from our politicians? As Jeanne Bell will tell you, we pay a price for the stories we tell about ourselves. Because the problem with many nonprofits today is that we are supposed to be in the business of making social change…the kind that can be funded, measured, replicated, and tied up in a pretty red bow. The kind of change that can only happen in air-conditioned offices with receptionists screening our calls, that doesn’t need to speak out against anything because the good work speaks for itself. We think we know what the community needs even though we’ve never set foot over on the east side of town. We have our protocol and our fears about getting too political, and we think we’re doing some good if we get a little mentoring program up and running without addressing the piss-poor state of the school system.
Really?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the inauthenticity of keeping quiet. I moved to DC in 2004 after participating in the March for Women’s Lives, a huge march on Washington & a real protest to secure reproductive rights for women in the face of the Bush administration’s actions. I helped organize one of our bus groups of women’s studies students from Richmond to DC and it really felt like I was doing something for once in my life. My grandmother thought I was insane to be involved with such an event, and was convinced I would forever be on the “government’s list”. And the college feminist radical in me really wished I was indeed on some watch list. I was proud to be identified as a dissenter. I wanted it to be on the record that I did not agree with the political decisions that were being made on my behalf as a woman. I got involved because NOW (National Organization for Women) along with the Black Women’s Health Imperative had provided me with some real knowledge I wouldn’t find in the history books or on primetime TV. And they showed me what it meant to take action, armed with that truth, to drive change. Yet somewhere along the way I traded in my protest signs for business casual and board meetings. I’m not really sure how I feel about it now, I’ve just been wondering if this is the same sector I discovered in 2004. I mean, we can’t be all about protest and dissent 24/7 right? Someone’s gotta pick up the pieces. But maybe this sector dichotomy is just a representation of the way we’re being trained to toe the line. As Elisa comments:
It doesn’t help that our educational system and the organizations we work in don’t encourage us to do this kind of try and fail experimentation. I don’t know about anyone else, but where I went to school, toeing the line was going to get you farther all the time. Then you transition to a work place that is the same way and it becomes in your best interest (at least in terms of staying ‘comfortable’) to again toe the line.
And I have to be honest here, a lot of my idealism from four years ago has since waned because I’ve seen how nonprofits ‘really’ work. But I’ve been thinking about what my responsibility is to the Rosetta of four years ago that found out what was really going on and told everybody about it. What is my contribution if I forgo seeking truth in order to avoid getting in some kind of trouble? Where are we going as a nonprofit sector if we lose our drive for the pursuit of truth at all costs? And what good are we as independent organizations if, when we find it, we are too afraid to speak truth to power?
Am I the only one that’s lost a little of my college idealism? What’s been your experience?
Here you go again, Rosetta–asking the tough questions!
First, let me say that I think that your “truth to power” roots are still very visible here on your blog. You bring up topics and ideas that challenge the status quo and, I suspect, make a lot of people uncomfortable. You also try to educate people and to respect their rights to their own opinions, while being true to yourself. You may not be marching on Washington, but you haven’t lost touch with the Rosetta of 4 years ago from what I can see.
Right now I’m reading Total Leadership (which I think we may want to consider for the Future ED project. It talks about how real leadership comes from aligning your different roles with your core values and walks you through a step-by-step process for making that happen. I’m only at the beginning, but I think it gets at a lot of what you’re asking here and makes us have to question the true nature of leadership. Are we going to be leaders or just managers of the status quo?
As always–great food for thought, here, Rosetta.
Whoops, published the first version before I was quite ready…
Oh Rosetta, you have kicked my sluggish Monday morning brain into overdrive! I think I could write a book in response…but perhaps I’ll just expand this into a blog post.
When I saw the March for Women’s Lives logo in your post, my heart jumped. I was at NARAL at the time and I helped organize that thing. Its funny though, because my experience of it seems to be so much different than a lot of people’s. As an organizer, I was both very excited about seeing the fruits of our labor and also very exhausted, annoyed and frustrated with the whole process. I can’t tell you how badly my feet hurt on Sunday night after several months of pounding the pavement to get students out to the March. In fact, we spent some time in Southern VA, tho not in Richmond.
I can completely identify with your feeling that you’ve lost the idealism; in fact, it seems like we had the same kind of fire over the same issue and then we came to DC…and it may or may not have been extinguished.
Have we lost it? Have we lost that which made us pick up stakes and move to this city to change the world?? I don’t think so. But I do think its changed within us in a way we never could have predicted as fiery college feminists.
We need to have dinner sometime soon and talk about this more!
I’m with you here. I work in fundraising, and I often feel that I am being taught to play the very game that created the need for my organization (which serves the homeless) in the first place.
We study marketing techniques and wonder how we can overtake Facebook, we learn how to tell a squeaky-polished story that is apolitical and not too in-you-face, and we accept money that only comes with stipulations that will limit our overall effectiveness for the sake of satisfying the political or personal agenda of the donor/funder.
We are no longer a sector defined by the innovative ideas and compassionate ideals that led us here in the first place, but by our cause’s packaging.
But I guess people don’t want to fund ideas or ideals, because these things are often messy and gray-shaded, they sometimes feature people with trackmarks on their arms or an educational system that graduates kids who can’t read.
No, people want to fund an image wrapped in a pretty red bow, particularly one that features a child or a puppy.
But where does that leave us?
@Michele – thanks for the comment and the book recommendation. It sounds like exactly what I need to read right now! The nature of leadership is such a fundamental question for me. There is the theory, our historical heroes, and what we see everyday. How do we make our own way to lead from all of these images often at odds with each other?
@Elisa-thanks for sharing your experience. We were so close but yet so far back in 2004! It seems to me that “fire” should be a requirement on every nonprofit job description. And maybe all of us have it, but we just use it in different ways now. I feel the pressure from some of my mentors and at work to be careful about everything I say, and I keep wanting to ask: Why?
@Sara – you’ve really hit a nreve here. I think as fundraisers, we are put in very compromising positions a lot of the time b/c we must say things and package our work in a way that sometimes dosen’t feel right to us. I am conflicted about this all the time. If the bottom line is only to rasie $, how different are we really from the businesses that “spin” to sell their wares? God food for thought Sara. Exhibiting leadership around these issues in fundraising is so tough…goes back to what Michele said about aligning your core values.
Great post, Rosetta.
Couple of things:
I read Gordon Mackenzie’s Orbiting the Giant Hairball on Bob Sutton’s (www.bobsutton.typepad.com) recommendation. Based on the book, it sounds to me like you’ve gotten caught in the “hairball.” The book is deceptively easy to read, but, I think, might help to give you a different perspective on your post. I wish I had the book in front of me, but all of that day to day “nonsense” can kill creativity and does stifle truth, but it can also serve as a protective playground of sorts for would be activists to practice their skills.
I read in several of your other posts that standing up to our bosses, managers, leaders and boards isn’t, in your opinion, done frequently or vigorously enough. I don’t disagree, but I don’t know how much I agree with 1) how the question is asked; 2) the lack of real specificity; and 3) the limiting range of solutions (although on this last one, I’m perfectly willing to admit I don’t have enough information and could well be wrong.)
First, the question is aggressive, in your face, offensive (in the sense that it creates a defensive position on the other side,) and implies that if we answer, “no, we do not stand up to power. No, we are not involved in the pursuit of Truth” that something is wrong with us. Some people are comfortable that they either will not find truth, or believe that they have found Truth. And they are not necessarily bad people for it.
Second, terms like “stand up to power” are not nearly specific enough. I love my boss’ vision and leadership but I hate a lot of her management. The thing is that some of what I consider to be her abuses of power are a large part of what got her to start the program in the first place. The bad management is a result of the amazing leadership–if you need a good example of great leadership and horrible management read anything about Steve Jobs. We routinely work with some of the most powerful people in the business world and have them interact positively with some of the formerly most powerful people in the prison system. I strongly disagree with the political positions of many of the businessmen we work with, but because they work face-to-face with our guys, “get their hands dirty” in prison, we are able to impact social policy (we routinely meet with political leaders;) we have been able to change corporate policy (we enable corporations to be part of the solution by hiring our guys;) we impact our guy’s families (mothers who had lost hope, wives who now have support raising their children, children who now have fathers who can provide incredible proof of what can go wrong and real inspiration that nothing is impossible.) I bring this point up because mass movements are important social and political events, but the day-to-day slogging, working with those in power with whom we disagree, and finding a deeper, hotter, slower-burning fire inside of us might be better than blazing passion that’s good for a quick fix.
Third, the question limits many available alternatives. If you had to arrange buses to go to rallies every day for your living would it be as exciting? Even if you believed in the cause? Maybe what I’m most dissatisfied with about this post isn’t anything you said, but what you didn’t say. I can’t figure out the causes–I don’t see what’s driving the discontent.
My personal discontents with the independent sector are related to management structures and lack of competition. I am likely to leave the sector for one of those two reasons, unless I can help to figure out how to be part of the solution to both of them.
I really enjoyed this post. Your blog is very interesting to read. I’d be interested in hearing about what you think, specifically, is driving your discontent and then what questions you would need to ask/answer to find a solution.
Rosetta, thank you for this post. I have been struggling with this too recently. On the one hand, the stuff most of us do in nonprofits on a day-to-day basis is not the sexy stuff of “social change.” But that doesn’t mean it’s not important and that it doesn’t need to be done. Someone needs to answer the phone, whether it’s a receptionist or the first person to pick up. Someone needs to process donations. None of that grand, idealistic stuff can happen without support. Like arranging for buses. Or scheduling volunteers. Or sending out mailings, calling, etc. so that you actually have volunteers.
On the other hand, I agree with you and Sara, that it often feels like we’ve got to play the game to get anywhere. And it drives me nuts half the time. Yet as cynical as it sounds, this is a marketplace. We are subject to supply and demand and other market forces just like a for-profit business. If no one agreed with our causes, we’d have no support, financially, politically, or people-wise. If not enough people agree, or not enough people are aware, then we won’t have enough support–no matter how important we think our cause is.
Sara, you reminded me of a book I had started reading a long time ago (can’t seem to find it now) called Sweet Charity. The author (forgot her name as well) argues that social services are part of the problem. Thus, the government and many other people can say, “Hey, look at these great organizations and giving citizens who are taking care of this problem.” And thus, no incentive for policy or institutional changes. (And, I think, this is part of what Rosetta was getting at.) I didn’t finish the book, so I don’t know all of what she argued. Yet it’s a tough call to let people die for want of something so basic as food or shelter just to prove a point. (Great idea for call to action though: If we didn’t provide xyz services, 1 million people would die each year from abc problem.) But I digress. I’m not trying to condemn anyone (my organization basically does a form of social services), but it’s definitely something worth some thought.
I feel what you and Elisa are talking about. Before I came to DC and became employed in the nonprofit sector I was full of fire and an active volunteer in many great causes. I felt passionate and about the moral superiority of the nonprofit sector.
I don’t think I’ve lost the fire, but I would readily agree that a veil has shrouded my experience of it. The veil seems to be made up of all the administrative and political mechanisms that are necessary for a nonprofit to operate and carry out its mission.
I find it so much easier to be a volunteer for a cause or participant in an event. Your ability to express your passion has fewer constraints.
I think that is why volunteerism is the heart and soul of the nonprofit community. Their passion and committment provide us, the employees, with a lifeline while we negotiate the backwaters clearing the way for others to follow.
Whenever I am losing my idealism I volunteer for a cause, or even just talk to someone who is volunteering. It helps recharge my batteries and get back up on the battlements.
@Romancitizen – thank you for your thoughtful comments. I had to think about what you said for a while and try to get to why I’m thinking about this. And what I came to is really…feeling dissatisfied about my contributions within my current role within the nonprofit community. I think I’ve started to engage dialgoue around some things that really need changing, but still in a very “safe” way compared to how I went out on a limb in my younger days. That’s not to say that nonprofits are not pursuing truth…but that we need to ask ourselves that question EVERY DAY, and if it’s painful, what do we do about that?
@ Janice & Eric – this is where I struggle the most…where is our courage or motivation to CHANGE THE GAME? Or at least the rules? why do we have to be beggars on behalf of our clients? Or reserve our passion for volunteerism outside of our nonprofit jobs? It’s crazy when you actually break it down, but it seems we’ve gotten so used to it, we’re weakened in our ability to charge forward with a new way of doing the work. Do any of you feel me?