Keeping the (Nonprofit) Fire Alive: Maintaining Purpose Under all the Paperwork

Last night I left my office exhausted. At 8:00pm, I climbed the stairs to my doorstep. But before I turned the key, I caught a glimpse of a half-moon emerging from the clouds and a plane flying across the sky. A white line of possibility against the coming night. I smiled and thought of how blessed I’ve been to have met a great number of amazing women over the past month who have challenged me to think differently about my ability to do something wonderful in this world. Many of you know that I continue to struggle with work/life balance (like many of us in the nonprofit field) and recently forced myself to break away from my usual networks and meet new do-gooders with fresh ideas to inspire my work. Sometimes when you’re around the same kinds of people in the same industry as you, it can limit your ability to push out of the box. So I started a new Meetup group for women in the DC area that want to change the world. Come join us if you’re in town! It’s been a wonderful way for me to start new conversations with other women just as passionate as I am. It’s renewed me and gotten me a little more fired up.

Speaking of fire, readers left quite a few comments on my recent post, Are We Still Involved in the Pursuit of Truth? If Not, Why Not? In particular, Romancitizen really gave me pause with his/her comment:

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.

What I love about the blogging experience is being able to talk through what I’m feeling as I go through my nonprofit journey and figure it all out together. And I gotta be honest…sometimes I just lose the fire to be in this work of trying to create social change. I thought about Romancitizen’s comment all week as I talked to other women that are doing awesome work to improve their communities. And what I came to is that I wrote that post on a day that captured my feeling of dissatisfaction about my contributions within my current role within the nonprofit community. I recently met Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green, and she shared a concept that really resonated with me. She said that all social entrepreneurs have a “moment of obligation,” a time in your life when you became accountable for a cause, for a particular problem or issue. A moment when you made a decision to take ownership of some aspect of social change. All of us had that moment when we decided to change the game for single mothers or low-income families, or at-risk youth. We took that idealism and brought it to the nonprofit sector. And after being here for a while, some of us either lost it within all the bullshit, or it wanes a little bit more everyday. Those days when I feel dissatisfied with my impact in the nonprofit sector is when I feel I’ve lost focus on my moment of obligation. I came to this work out of my experiences growing up in the projects with a teenage mother. And I wanted to do something to help all of us that also grew up colored in the wrong zip code. Sometimes I have to wonder whether my work is really helping young people, or people of color or people in poverty? And if it’s not…what, then, is the smartest thing I can do?

I think that through my blog and other writings, I’ve started to engage dialogue 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 I think that by working in nonprofits we 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? If we know what’s wrong, but say nothing, do nothing, how can we expect anything to ever change?

So now, I’m in questioning mode – asking myself what is the smartest thing I can do for the nonprofit sector, and thinking that maybe it’s not even in working in any single organization. Eric Giles’ comment leaves me wondering if real change can ever be rightly attributed to an organization…or if instead credit must be given to the actors who are fired up and playing a big role in carrying out the organization’s work and leveraging the community in their efforts. Eric says:

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.

But many of us came to the nonprofit sector to avoid conformist corporate environments or the bureaucracy of government, but sometimes we find the same issues in working for social change. So how do we keep our fire alive for the cause and stay true to our moment of obligation? Are there ways to stay idealistic sitting in our cubicles? I’ve gotten excited all over again through the Women Rule DC! Meetup. And maybe by building up a passionate community of change agents, we can all just keep feeding off of each other’s fire…

What do YOU think?