Nonprofits Will Never Be Respected Until We Start Respecting Ourselves

There has been a lot of conversation lately about the future of the nonprofit sector. The economy has got us all in a tizzy, worrying about who will be left standing when the smoke clears. The blogosphere is rockin’ with folks talking about the four possible futures for the nonprofit sector, low nonprofit compensation, whether social enterprise is a better entry point for young people, and will the MBAs save us. I think all of this discussion about how our sector should be improved is great. We need this kind of dialogue. But the one thing that’s missing in all of our conversation is the responsibility of the nonprofit sector to transform itself, or ourselves into the kind of organizations we want to be. We can blame it on the economy, blame it on the foundations, blame it on the government, blame it on the Democrats, the Republicans, the President, hell we can even blame it on the alcohol. But if we’re going to play the blame game, we need to recognize OUR role in remaking our future as well. Here are just some of my thoughts about what we should consider now. Let’s look in the mirror, shall we?

Stop Acting Like We’re Doing the Nonprofit Sector a Favor By Working Here
So I’m sitting across from an MPA grad interviewing her for an open position at my organization. I ask her where she wants to be in five years. She says she’d like to be a nonprofit consultant so she can help all the little agencies that need help with “even the most basic management tasks.” Now I know we need help, who are you telling? But it was in the way she said it, as if us nonprofit organizations all had the cooties and she had the cure. We grumble about how many talented young people come into our organizations just to “cut their teeeth” and then move on to bigger and better things in the corporate world. Part of this is our fault. We contribute to the branding of our sector as something that needs to be fixed, that we’re all struggling organizations in need of business skills that none of us have. I disagree with Dan Palotta’s idea that we have to “free the nonprofits” and compete for talent from the business sector. The truth is, the leaders we need are already here. We don’t have to look elsewhere for nonprofit talent. The truth is, the work of social change is indeed highly sophisticated.  This is more than just scooping risotto onto a homeless man’s plate. We do ourselves a disservice by not emphasizing the strength and resilience we have as nonprofit organizations versus the business sector. We would do well to learn from Robert Egger’s stance that all of us nonprofit leaders stand together with our voice, values, and votes to show the rest of the world we mean business.

It’s Not All About the Benjamins
My grandmother always cautioned her girls not to “put out” too soon when dating a new beau. “You want him to respect you, baby”, she would say. “Why would he buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?” Some of us haven’t learned yet. Us nonprofits, I mean. We meet one dyn-o-mite funder, and all of our values fly out the window. I see organizations implementing new programs left and right, everyone scrambling to make ends meet in these lean economic times. The monies have dried up, and it seems like we’re fighting each other and competing worse than ever. We clamor for our small slice of a pie that’s already way too small. But just because we have cash flow issues, doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice our mission. How many times do we have to hear it? We have to do less with less. Focus on our core work, cut expenses where we can, and partner like crazy. Are we listening? This is the new normal.

Let’s Not Be Forced to Merge
You’ve undoubtedly heard many a funder lament about the sheer number of nonprofits in existence. There’s just too many of us for them to fund. To the tune of about 2 million too many. Now is that in itself a reason for nonprofits to consider merging? Of course not. Mergers are not the silver bullet for the nonprofit sector. Many mergers are actually unsuccessful and do not, in fact, end up realizing the predicted financial savings. But. If you know that there are nine other afterschool programs within a 2 mile radius, you have to know that the writing’s on the wall. In this economy, the funders as well as community members start to ask questions. When the money was flowing, it was easy to deflect the “and how are you different from the program down the street?” question, but now it’s glaring for all to see. How will we respond? Will we take it upon ourselves to start having more conversations about deeper partnerships and possible integration? Or will we wait for our funders to force encourage us to merge? My view is that if we’re going to have to consider mergers as part of how we will sustain this work, let’s do it proactively, instead of being forced to do so.

Stop Blaming Low Nonprofit Salaries on Everyone Else But Ourselves
As much as we want to blame the funders, the “nature of nonprofit infrastructure, overhead, etc.” we have to face the music: low nonprofit salaries are OUR OWN FAULT. We are the ones who pay the low salaries, and we as nonprofit employees accept them. We as a nonprofit sector are made up of individuals that don’t speak out of turn, even sit by in those rare instances that CEOs make six-figure salaries while laying off staff. Who are we really fooling here? There is no “low salary boogeyman” in the nonprofit sector making us all pay our staff pennies on the dollar. There has always been an ongoing issue with many Executive Directors making 2-3 times the salary of the next highest-paid staff person. Even our national infrastructure organizations and foundations are guilty of not addressing the issue of excessive CEO compensation compared to what they pay other staff. In 2007, Where Most Needed offered this related criticism on the Independent Sector-sponsored Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice: A Guide for Charities and Foundations from the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector. So let’s stop the madness. You can’t go around saying that one of the main problems in our sector is low compensation when it’s YOU that’s paying your staff $30,000. Break out of the box and pay your staff what they’re worth. Then and only then will adequate compensation become the norm. This may mean that we hire fewer people who can do more work. But hell – to me, that sounds a lot better than underpaying a lot of people who are still overworked, and end up quitting our organizations anyway.

With all of our own moaning and groaning about our sector, it’s no wonder other people emphasize the “non” in our nonprofit field. Believe me, I’ve been guilty of all of the above. But what’s happened is that in all of our “insider baseball” talk amongst ourselves about what’s wrong with our sector, we have somehow internalized it all to conclude that this is just how it is. This is just the nature of “nonprofit culture”. We forget that WE are nonprofit culture. The nonprofit “sector” is made up of individual organizations, which are made up of individual people, which means that this is all up to us. It is what we make it to be. So when are we going to be the change we say we wish to see?

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