A Thanksgiving Example

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. To me it is a time to get together with family and friends, cook delicious food and celebrate the bounty of the season. This year my partner and I hosted our two families at our house and it was wonderful, but not without its challenges. All of the people who came and celebrated with us had their individual needs and expectations for the holiday. It was on me to find a way to balance each of these needs with my own mission for the weekend. Finding this balance reminded me a lot what non-profit organizations have to do, while balancing the needs and desires of their different stakeholders.

Here are a couple examples from the weekend. My brother and dad, true Midwestern men, traditionally have spent most of thanksgiving watching football and cheering for whichever side was loosing. Since we do not have a TV, I suggested they find a local dive bar to watch the games as we cooked. Although none of them were open, we did not change our plans around Thanksgiving for their needs. Another challenge I faced was the needs of my partner’s mom. She has her own expectations around Thanksgiving including particular recipes and dishes to serve. In order to balance our needs we separated the items on the menu so that she could preserve her traditions, while I was still able to serve the new local recipes that I had found. Although these examples seem simple, overcoming them was an important step to guaranteeing that the weekend was wonderful for everyone involved. My experience of needing to protect my own mission this weekend highlighted three themes I have been discussing throughout this blog:

1.  Establishment of strong structures. I knew what type of experience I wanted to build for the weekend and I put the structures in place to make it happen. Before any of our guests arrived we did a lot of the grocery shopping at local farmers markets and made a plan for the weekend that supported the mission. 
2. The power of education. As we cooked each dish I spent the time explaining why I had chose that specific recipe and how it helped me to protect my mission. One example is that we used celeriac root, sweet potatoes and squash to support local farmers and to provide an alternative to the starchy mashed potatoes since I have been eating a paleo diet recently.
3. The importance of compromise. Although I had a strong mission for the weekend I realized that I needed to include the ideas and needs of others to make it a meaningful event for everyone.

Thinking about my blog in this new and different away allowed me to understand the idea of protecting your mission at a deeper level by looking at it through a new and different lens. 

I am overhead

Overhead or overhead expense refers to an ongoing expense of operating a business; it is also known as an "operating expense". Examples include rent, gas, electricity, and wages. In the non-profit sector this expense also includes staff responsible for strategic planning, organizational development and fundraising.

When thinking about protecting your organization’s mission it is important to have strong internal structures and leadership as we have discussed, but it is also important to consider the systemic factors at play. One controversial systemic factor I have been reading a lot about recent is organizational overhead. Foundations and individual donors expect non-profits to work to decrease their percentage of overhead whenever and however possible. Although efficiency is good, this expectation is limiting the ability of non-profits to think strategically and spend the money and time to create and implement this strategy.

The idea of trying to change such a fundamental element of the industry seems daunting but thankfully I am not alone. There is a growing movement of a individuals who agree with me that overhead and organizational development are fundamental elements of creating and working towards a strong mission. Here are a few samples of tweets, articles and symbols that are being created to start a movement:

Why Non-Profits Need Overhead

Non-Profits Public Opinions and Overhead

@ImOverhead shared the following tweets over the summer:

• So yeah. This amazing, inspiring video of children fighting cancer? That's overhead. http://youtu.be/ihGCj5mfCk8  #nonprofits
• Overhead isn't in competition with the cause. It's part of it.@danpallotta (Can I get a heck yeah?)
• Suppressing overhead suffocates #nonprofits and leads to higher turnover, poorer leadership, and worse service. Or did you expect rainbows?

How do you think that we could build and grow this movement? Educate the philanthropic and giving community? Continue to show the outcomes that have been reached? This movement has the potentially to make real and long-lasting changes to the industry and bring a new level of innovation, professionalism and impact. Share what you have done, I would love to continue to learn!  

The Role of Strong Leaders

The Role of Strong Leaders

Throughout this blog so far I have explored what organizations should be doing to best serve and protect their mission, one area I have not yet touched on is leadership. What type of leaders do strong organizations need to protect their mission? On Friday night I was lucky enough to attend Changemakers Night: Passion for Progress, an event that highlighted three strong non-profit leaders. Each of the presenting leaders had a similar set of characteristics:

• They are passionate and happy to share this passion.
• Each of the leaders’ stories was different. Matt was a computer programmer who decided to travel and connected with emerging small business owners in Uganda. Jill found herself in a principle’s office and was asked to find a way to make recess more productive. Finally Craig was 12 years old and wanted to stop child slavery. Each of these stories is unique and unexpected, a reminder that it is important to be aware of your opportunity.

http://startempathy.org/blog/2012/05/recess-revolution

• Metrics and strong outcomes were a cornerstone of each of the presentations. The leaders knew that they were responsible for sharing their stories and also showing the audience the success of their programs and their ideas using statics.
• Along with concrete metrics, each of the leaders highlighted strong relationships with other influential leaders and large numbers of supporters to demonstrate their credibility. In particular Craig showed a promotional video of his work that highlighted these two different types of credibility.

• Jill, of Playworks, started her presentation by having the entire audience play a game. The game allowed me to reflect on my day, my past and other times that have played this game. This allowed me to create a strong emotional tie to the presentation and her organization and understand her story in a completely different way.
• Finally, each of the leaders shared many stories with the audience. These stories showed the importance of the work being done by each of the organization and allowed each of us to connect with the mission of the organization. Here is a video from Kiva that shares the story of the loans the organization makes.

These are the characteristics that I saw in each of these leaders. What characteristics do you respect most in the strong leaders in your life? How are you working to become a stronger leader?