Diana Aviv | Rosetta Thurman

Independent Sector Launches “Envisioning Our Future” Initiative, But is it Inclusive Enough?

Yesterday I was on a press briefing call to learn about Independent Sector‘s new initiative to “reinvent the nonprofit sector.” Envisioning Our Future launches in earnest next week with a conversation among 75 pre-selected nonprofit sector leaders during a three-day “StrategyLab,” to be held July 28-30 in Colorado Springs, where they will deliberate on the future of the nonprofit community. Independent Sector describes this new effort as a combination of research and innovative engagement methodologies to:

Deepen our collective understanding of the trends that will affect the nonprofit sector;

Generate new insights and ideas about how nonprofits and foundations can best address the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead; and

Develop a cohort of leaders involved in thinking critically about this work for the sake of their own organizations and the sector at large.

Along with Independent Sector’s president Diana Aviv, this initiative is being led by Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Marguerite W. Kondracke from America’s Promise.

My question on the call was really the “so what” factor. What will be the outcome of these structured conversations? Stephen admitted that since this is an experimental process, it’s “hard to know what’s going to happen.” Since this is a new effort for them to elicit creative thinking outside the box, Independent Sector has contracted with Architects of Group Genius to facilitate the conversation and help them report out about the process. The 75 participants were instructed to do pre-reading – broad books about how to think differently about the world – such as The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Ramo, The Idea that is America by Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Megacommunities by Mark Gerencser et. al. Diana said that the idea was to involve as many people as possible in this conversation to generate new thinking, “not the same old, same old leaders.” Diana assured us that the group of 75 meeting in Colorado to talk about reinventing the sector involved a diverse set of people from different generations and different areas of the sector. The 75 leaders come to the table with significant influence as well-respected members in their field. Diana indicated that the group comes to table with “80% of the knowledge in hand” while the other 20% will come from learning from each other. Independent Sector is hoping there will be consensus on what the nonprofit sector needs to do to reinvent itself in the next 10 years.

My main concern about this initiative is that what could be a very groundbreaking effort will instead be an elite conversation involving a very small cross-section of nonprofit leaders (75 leaders representing almost 2 million nonprofits in America?) with young people, grassroots leaders and people of color largely left out of the equation. The participant roster, however, is fortunately not a carbon copy of the Nonprofit Times’ Power & Influence Top 50 list of majority white, Baby Boomer leaders. Generation Y leaders involved include Ben Rattray of Change.org and Maya Enista of Mobilize.org. People of color on the list include Barbara Arwine of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Carol Thompson Cole of Venture Philanthropy Partners, John E. Echohawk of Native American Rights Fund, Karen K. Narasaki of Asian American Justice Center, Ralph Smith at Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Luz A. Vega-Marquis of Marguerite Casey Foundation. It appears that about 30 out of the 75 participants are leaders of color, which is a pretty good percentage of racial diversity compared to your typical gathering. Ben Rattray and Maya Enista, however, are the only leaders under 30 on the list. And for a country that is teeming with millions of Generation Y leaders (the second largest generation behind Baby Boomers), this is a huge oversight on the part of a group that seeks to examine trends in the nonprofit sector and develop a plan for the future. How can you have a conversation about the future of anything without the people who will be moving that future forward? Most of the leaders involved are over 40, and while they have incredible experience and knowledge to draw upon, they do not represent the future in the way that younger people do just by virtue of being their successors.

Overall, Independent Sector’s Envisioning our Future initiative seems like a good thing for the sector, and the published documents that result from these conversations could be helpful to nonprofit leaders in navigating this new environment. They also plan to launch an online conversation this fall to engage the broad nonprofit community in this important discussion, as well as host conversations at their Annual Conference in November.

I will be following this effort closely as it unfolds this fall, but my sense is that it is just not inclusive enough (as it stands right now) to be as useful as it could be for our broad nonprofit sector, including the grassroots, community-based groups. As it stands, the only way that other nonprofit leaders can participate in this conversation is to pay hundreds of bucks to attend Independent Sector’s Annual Conference or wait for the online component to launch. And having only 2 Generation Y leaders involved in a conversation about the future is just not sufficent for such an expansive topic.

Godspeed to Ben and Maya in representing thousands of Generation Y nonprofit leaders in this effort. We need our voices to be heard.

YNPN 2009 Guest Blog: Khyati Desai, Diana Aviv’s Keynote, Mergers and Multi-Generational Workplaces

Keynote Speech: Diana from Independent Sector

“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Understanding others is strength. Understanding yourself is true power.”

“If you want to walk fast, walk alone. If you want to walk far, walk together”

Nonprofit’s mission is leading, strengthening, and mobilizing our community. In order for nonprofits to truly reach our mission, we have to work together, to collaborate with the experts in the field that can address the various unique needs and challenges of communities across the country. Diana refers to this as the “social ecosystem” affirming that nonprofits also cannot operate as islands. On average, 70,000 nonprofits are created every year. The financial crisis means that this year, 2009, there will be fewer nonprofits at the end of the year.

Human capital is going to be the difference and this sector needs “strong, connected people” in order to accomplish the purposes that are larger than ourselves. This lack of value for human capital is something I personally have both noticed and experienced in my few years of employment in the sector, whether the organization is being led by a young person or a more experienced person and it is here where the organization risks failing. This failure manifests in various ways such as frequent turnover, mission creep, inability to effectively achieve the mission, etc. How can we change this trend instead of feeling like we have to leave these worthy organizations due to a conflict in values and philosophy?

Diana asks us, as nonprofit leaders, to network, to understand our mutual and shared responsibility, to share skills and practices in order to move the needle on the impact we’re making in the world and to challenge ourselves and each other to continue to think in creative and innovative ways on how best to serve our communities.

Closing Session: On Mergers

Funders are addicted to mergers and acquisitions since it mitigates their challenges in selecting a worth nonprofit. They are more interested in nonprofits that create alliances instead of nonprofits that are unique or different. However, instead of merging, share resources, co-locate, etc. in order to reduce costs and stay consistent with values.

On Multi-Generational Workplaces

An organization cannot sustain itself if it is only committed to employing a certain generation of staff to serve as nonprofit leaders. Today, young people feel like they are not valued in their workplace-that they don’t have enough experience and education and so are dismissed. YNPN and other organizations are committed to helping organizations see young staff as leaders now and today, not in 20 or 30 years. On the flip side, boomers and seasoned leaders are feeling like they’re also not valued and they feel pressure to leave the sector to make way for younger staff. And organizations that specialize in experienced employees have invested time and money to protect the interest of boomers. However, a truly effective, balanced workplace is multigenerational-one in which the experience, education, and, in some cases, wisdom of older staff is both necessary and critical so that problems aren’t repeated and lessons learned can be shared. And young people would be valued for their genuine interest in making a contribution, learning, and growing while committing their time, energy, and creativity to their organization. Diversity, not only in race, but also in age and gender can contribute to a reflective, strong, impactful organization.