Is your nonprofit a “safe bet”? Let’s Get Dangerous!
Do you take risks?
How?
Last week in the Harvard Business Review, Dan Pallotta talks about how taking risks is important. if we didn’t take risks, we wouldn’t have cures for diseases. We wouldn’t have so much of what we have now. But in the nonprofit world, risktaking is discouraged. Funders would rather see that you have a tried and true model before they invest. They want to see that you have a lot of money and that you are a “safe bet.” This seems backwards to me. Like foundations want to be investment bankers and get the greatest yield for their dollar amounts.
Well, guess what, strategic philanthropists. The greatest yield for your dollar amounts is in a developing nation, where people live on pennies a day. Phil Cubeta, over at GiftHub, writes:
“Albert, a community foundation leader orginally trained in philosophy asks such questions (on his blog under his own name, even). For most, though, the answer about goals is, effective and efficient strategies with measurable outcomes is the operative goal. Giving Smart gets results. Let’s get results. We will then be smart.” As the best salesperson I ever knew once said to me, “Phil, don’t ask why there is air, just breathe.” Maybe Albert should stop asking why the poor suffer so, and just get on with the grantmaking. The more we explore root causes the more complicit we realize we are, and the more demoralized and the less our smart grants seem sufficient expiation for our moral blindness. Better to choose goals by passion, prejudice or whimsy, and concentrate on the effectiveness of the means.”
So, if wages of most people had moved up with the rest of the moneyed classes, we wouldn’t need to court the favor of the big foundations, because our communities would have the money to take our nonprofits higher. The trouble is, they have most of the money now. Don’t believe me? It’s true. The top 10% of America’s wealthy hold over 75% of the wealth in the USA. I have statistics. 
Top 10% have 75% of the wealth
We can try grassroots fundraising, but the reason its’ not working so well anymore is because people have less and less money to give you.
So what is a nonprofit professional to do? The way I see it, we could do several things.
1. One of the things we could do is raise wages for everyone who works at nonprofits. Since this probably won’t happen voluntarily, we should consider getting unions for nonprofit workers, so that people will have cost of living raises, healthcare paid for, and be insulated from wrongful termination. When we start to address income inequality within our own organizations, we are truly making a difference at the grassroots level.
2. Second verse, same as the first!
Page 1 of 4 | Next page