Third Sector Connector Blog

I woke up thinking about Tinker Toys this morning. Those little wheels, spokes, connectors, and green fans were “the bomb.”  Often, my sister and  I would build fully-loaded little farms complete with animals, trucks, windmills, and barns. Or sometimes we created huge cellular-looking blobs with random hubs and spokes, together sculpting a funky abstract nexus of modern art.   Whatever emerged from our play, it always had its own “je ne sais quoi” of connectivity.

The creation of the Internet and the emergence of Web 2.0 has filled me with the same sense of wonder about its potential for connections. For those of us who are web-connected (or web-addicted), the world is now flat and our degrees of separation continue to shrink. We routinely connect globally with colleagues on LinkedIn and Twitter, and we swap stories, pictures, and videos on FaceBook. We StumbleUpon, Digg, Buzz, and Wave.  Hand-written letters and cards were first replaced by email, and now are down to cheery 140-character tweets and text messages.  Brief repeated encounters with an amazing variety of people now pepper our online days and nights.  Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson has diagrammed his network of global friends and I find that it looks like the string art I made in my post-Tinker Toy days.

While we find new ways to connect globally, the very essence of our humanity also draws us nearer to each other. As social beings, we live, love, and work in communities.  Whether in rural communities of farmers, small towns populated with multi-generational families, or large urban cities surrounded by suburbs, we still rely on local connections for much of our day-to-day lives. Connections, that for many of us, are forged by nonprofit community-based organizations.  They are:

• The local hospitals and clinics that provide us with medical care.
• The free-standing libraries where we research and read, and access the Internet if we can’t afford access at home.
• The performing arts organizations that foster our love for music, dance and theatre.
• The advocates that preserve our local habitats and protect our waterways.
• The day care centers and the after-school programs that serve our youth.
• The adoption centers where we find our furry family members.
• The helping hands that provide us with emergency food and housing assistance and keep us safe during disasters.

These organizations don’t work in isolation, though.  Together, they form a network of resources that allow all of us to remain fully participating and thriving members of our communities. They inform and refer us, provide critical services, and collaborate  in ways that benefit us all. They are the neurons that are the basic building blocks of our communities.

So, Tinkers Toys took me to string art and neurons, and I now find myself thinking about the tapestry of humanity:

• How can we take our global string art and weave it into our local neural networks?
• How do we find ways to benefit from this new tapestry?
  
• And, what does that tapestry look like?
  

Would love to hear your thoughts.

–Laura

p.s. Thanks to @askdebra for a comment that she made yesterday during the #NPCons twitter chat about, “Humanity opening doors.”  It was part of my day residue and inspired some of my thoughts.

Do you ever have moments where all of the signs, arrows, and flashing lights keep pointing in the same direction no matter which way you turn? That’s what happened to me recently, and they were all pointing toward the flashing neon sign in my brain that said (blink-blink, blink-blink) “Servant Leadership.”

First, I received a ton of great feedback on my recent post about “18 Traits for Successful Nonprofit and NGO Leaders.” Some folks thought that the list set the bar too high, but most of our site members and social media pals thought that the list could still be further enhanced so they added even more traits like compassion, empathy, and humility, just to name a few. Upon reflection, I realized that even if executive search teams aren’t specifically identifying these additional traits in job postings, it may be because there is an assumption that nonprofit and NGO leaders already possess the common characteristics of “servant-leaders,” a term first-coined by Robert Greenleaf in the late 1960s.

Next, I read an interesting post by John Copps on the New Philanthropy Capital blog called,”Are charity CEOs too powerful?” , that expressed worries that if shared governance is not present, then “it risks a situation where the CEO is the undisputed top dog and doesn’t receive enough challenge to his or her decisions.” It left me wondering about how the nonprofit shared governance model impacts the concept of servant-leadership, and how to cultivate servant-leaders, not just in our CEOs, but also in our Boards so that this fear simply becomes unfounded.

The third arrow in the quiver was a delightful phone conversation yesterday with Michael Kumer, who is the associate dean of the School of Leadership and Professional Advancement at Duquesne and is also the Executive Director of Duquesne’s Nonprofit Leadership Institute. Every word spoken during our entire conversation reminded me that I choose to teach for Duquesne because of their emphasis on cultivating authentic, capable leaders who are committed, excited and prepared to serve in their communities. How do they do it? They intentionally model servant leadership at an organizational level…no small feat within a large educational institution.

Since the neon sign in my brain was now blinking at strobe speed, I dusted off my copy of Robert Greenleaf’s seminal essay, “The Servant as Leader,” which was written in 1970 and which strongly influenced me during my early days as a young nonprofit leader. Although something new stands out for me each time I read it, the most well-known quote from the essay always has the most impact on me time and time again (perhaps that’s why it so well-known, huh?):

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?”

10 Characteristics of Servant-Leaders

In the many other works that followed Greenleaf’s first essay, these traits and characteristics of servant-leaders were further fleshed out. They include:

1. Listening
2. Empathy
3. Healing
4. Awareness
5. Persuasion
6. Conceptualization
7. Foresight
8. Stewardship
9. Commitment to the growth of others, and
10. Building community

5 Cross-Sector Servant-Leadership Questions
Anyone who knows me also knows that I believe that asking questions provides a powerful opportunity for introspection, reflection and learning. So, Greenleaf’s questions and a refresher on the 10 characteristics above stimulated yet another set of questions from me about servant leadership across all sectors (government, for-profit, community-benefit/Third Sector, and the emerging 4th sector).

• What if every local community made it a priority to identify, cultivate and reward true servant-leadership in businesses, government, and the nonprofit/NGO sector?
• What if local nonprofit leaders (both Board and staff) had a safe “place” to gather to talk about how best to serve their communities collaboratively, without the defensiveness and territoriality that frequently comes with such meetings?
• What if local foundations, business leaders and human services coalitions joined forces to provide ongoing training to existing and next-generation leaders in all sectors about servant-leadership?
• What if, alongside Math and English, Servant-Leadership became part of the core curriculum for all middle-schoolers, high-schoolers and college students?
• What if servant-leadership became the norm in our society?

Wouldn’t servant-leadership lead to stronger, healthier, more vibrant communities? Couldn’t servant-leadership connect all of our sectors with a shared leadership agenda? What do you think?

Our last blog post about 21 burning questions for the Nonprofit/NGO Sector left us – and many of you who read it – wanting answers. So, we’re asking you to gaze into your crystal ball and help.

What trends do you foresee or predictions can you make for the nonprofit/NGO and philanthropic sector in 2010?

Whether your thoughts are about partnerships, social media, programs, volunteerism, fundraising, or other topics, we want to hear from you. We’re asking more than 5,000 people this question, not only here, but via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets. You can be as general or specific as you like.

Here’s a small sampling of our early responses just to get your “predictive juices” flowing:

“I am hoping – actually I’m praying – that nonprofit organizations have learned some lessons and will be steering clear of trends and returning to the basics, emphasizing sound systems and comprehensive donor appreciation. I would love to see organizations begin to focus the same commitment to their development efforts that they show their mission (perhaps then they’d have the funding to SUPPORT their missions!).” From Pamela Grow, President, GrowConsultingPA and Pamela’s Grantwriting Blog

“The current recession will impact the voluntary sector in deepening ways – funding organizations will have less resources as they try to bounce back from losses, United Ways will be pressed with fewer donations as corporations pull back and governments are facing unprecidented deficits – this will call to us to be creative, strategic and to look for those opportunities which will ensure our resilience – those organizations that resist this – will be left behind. It seems bleak – but in every challenge ~ there is opportunity.” Liz Weaver, Lead Coach, Vibrant Communities Canada/Tamarack Institute

“I see an uptick in non-profits of all sizes losing valuable leaders and having great difficulty replacing them. Two reasons at least: 1. Revenue and good salaries will remain hard to come by for the NP and for the home of the leader. 2. Many leaders are ill-equipped (or too tired) to make the changes necessary to survive/prosper in this environment. They’ll move on to more fulfilling opportunities.” Tim Deuitch, Senior Consultant, Strategic Enhancement Group, Inc.

Won’t you pull out your own crystal ball and add your voice?

I recently posted a question to some colleagues on a members-only discussion group, “Does the nonprofit sector need a re-boot? If so, what questions should we be asking?” I received many thoughtful responses and thought I’d share the list of questions that came from that posting here:

1. How can we convert meaningful conversations into actions that produce strong and timely results for the entire nonprofit and philanthropic sector?
2. Are we truly meeting the needs of those we serve, whether it be a soup kitchen or a museum?
3. What is our impact and are we measuring it? Which leads to… how do we raise our bar higher?
4. How do we avoid burn-out and tap into the talents of the next generation of leaders? How much training really is needed?
5. Do we need to rethink compensation at both ends of the spectrum?
6. What is nonprofit ethics and how well do we walk our talk?
7. Why does our sector continue to rely on business modeling and imagery for solutions to our problems?
8. How can we enlist and sustain executive and trustee leadership who see their roles as serving not just their organizations but the sector as well?
9. How can we advance the sector’s identity as a place for those who seek meaning and purpose in life and work and who are rethinking, if not rejecting, acquisition and accumulation as goals for their careers?
10. In the spirit of “never waste a good crisis”, is it possible/wise to promote some rationalization rather than letting social Darwinism dictate the shape of the sector and the strength of its “place at the table” five to ten years out?
11. Accepting that the governance model for the sector might itself require a “reboot”, what role should directors play in any move toward rationalization?
12. Many nonprofits — and their boards — inadvertently sacrifice business basics to mission and service delivery. In the spirit of rebooting the governance model, how can boards better serve to balance stewardship of mission with sustainability of operations?
13. How do we address what our members/consumers/recipients really need not only from a local or personal perspective, but also with a global vision?
14. How do we remain inclusive [bring together stakeholders, maintain and honor diversity, respect many voices] and sustainable [revenue, best practices, and stewardship of resources]?
15. How do Boards stay “honest” and ethical in their stewardship to those they serve?
16. What stops us (as a nonprofit sector) from embracing our value and our power for affecting and effecting positive social change?
17. How can my nonprofit help another nonprofit to advance its mission while also achieving something to help mine move forward?
18. How can we enhance our capacity to talk and think more deeply together about the critical issues facing our communities, our organizations, our nations, and our planet?” (from The World Cafe, (c) 2005)
19. How can we access the mutual intelligence and wisdom we need to create innovative paths forward? (also from the World Cafe)
20. How do we work together to build sustainable infrastructure that will allow us all to flourish?
21. How do we build cross-sector partnerships that are designed to create and drive a new future, not only within individual communities, but regionally, nationally, and across the globe?

Note: The final two questions are ones that I asked in my recent blog post about the blurring of the private, nonprofit, and public sectors.

What strikes you about the questions themselves? What questions do you have to add to this list? Or, what answers do you have to contribute?

I’m usually so immersed in the community benefit/nonprofit/NGO sector that it was fascinating for me to spend the entire weekend with leaders from the American South’s public/government sector. Coordinated by the Charleston-based think tank Center for a Better South, the non-partisan invite-only conference was held at Davidson College in North Carolina and included longtime Southern progressives, current policy wonks, media, academics and others who work not only in the general policy arena, but also in diverse areas such as budgeting, energy, governance, poverty, taxation, and service learning.

We kicked off the weekend with a panelist discussion from Winthrop University’s Adolphus Belk, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Ferrel Guillory and Governing magazine’s Richard Greene. You can see the live tweets from several of us, but I’ve pulled out a couple of the messages that resonated the most strongly for me and that are important guideposts for the nonprofit sector as well:

• Poverty is a common theme for all Southerners, with an average annual income of $32,000.
• High school drop-out rates are high. Only slightly more than two-thirds of Southern Whites graduate from High School and this drops to only 40% of Southern Latinos.
• Rural areas are particularly struggling as young generations of all races head to the more metropolitan areas.
• Thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost and not yet replaced with a knowledge-based economy.
• Religion plays a critical role in Southern ideology and behavior both for Southern Blacks (83.6%) and Southern Whites (69%).

I must say I was surprised at how much it felt like I was sitting in a room filled with nonprofit/NGO leaders. Increasing poverty. Lack of education. Rural crisis. Disappearing jobs. Religion. Racial disparities. Just think about how many community benefit organizations are also focused on those issues, not just in the American South, but across the globe!

Next up was a panelist discussion on the topic, “Can the South lead today?” by former U.S. Congressman Glen Browder, Hendrix College’s Jay Barth, and policy consultant Mac McCorkle from Chapel Hill, NC. McCorkle mostly spoke about the history of Southern leadership, but the answer to the leadership question from Browder and Barth was a definitive “No.” According to the panelists:

• The South has resisted embracing diversity, and that’s reduced the South’s capacity for creative leadership.
• Authoritarianism fueled by resistance to change and the “politics of emotion” results in insular decisions that are community-specific instead of regionally focused.
• This authoritarianism means that not only can’t the South lead the nation; the South can’t lead the South.
• According to Browder, the South’s political brand is broken and tainted. “Having an “S” behind your name is worse than having a “D” or an “R.”

Hmmm. Anything sounding familiar? Barriers. Resistance. Reputation. Branding. Leadership. Same topics as we nonprofit folks discuss, with just a slight twist. In fact, for the entire weekend, I couldn’t help thinking of the “Sector Blur” trend that was highlighted in the just-released monograph funded in by the Fieldstone Alliance and the James Irvine Foundation. I should note that Browder and Barth later disclosed to me that they were intending to be provocative to spur us to action, and that the firm “no” was really intended to be a “not-right-now-unless-we-kick-it-into-gear-and-begin-by-looking-in-our-own-backyard” message.

So what to do?

Following thought-provoking lunchtime perspectives shared by H. Brandt Ayers from the Anniston Star and Warwick Sabin of the Oxford American, we set to work to design an “Agenda for a Better South.” Although not yet completed, we spent a full day drafting key recommendations for Southern leaders in the following areas: Job Creation/Employment, Education, Wellness, Energy, Taxes, Infrastructure, Governance, Social Justice, Community Safety. Once completed, the Center for a Better South is going to stamp those recommendations “draft” and broadly circulate them for feedback via a quick survey. Then once finalized, these recommendations will be widely distributed to Southern leaders, and likely will form the basis of the ongoing work of the Center for a Better South.

As I gathered my own thoughts following the weekend’s intensive session, I realized that regardless of what sector we focus on (including the private sector), we all have the same key priorities:

• How do we work together to cultivate and grow our next-generation leaders?
• How do we work together to improve education, health and job prospects?
• How do we work together to build sustainable infrastructure that will allow us all to flourish?
• How de we build cross-sector partnerships that are designed to create and drive a new future, not only within individual communities, but regionally, nationally, and across the globe?
• How do we lift each other up and support each other to become all that we can be?

Although I don’t pretend to have the answers, I can tell you that I was both honored to be part of the dialogue this weekend, and am excited about the possibilities, not only for the South but for all of us as the public sector and community benefit sectors continue to focus on what we need globally. I also find myself energized by the recognition that to truly build healthy, vibrant communities, the public and community benefit sectors need to link hands with the private sector and answer these questions together.

–LD

I always find it fascinating when my online discussions, my consulting work, my teaching and my free-time all end up pointing me to a new “ah-ha” moment that reinforces my commitment to all community benefit organizations.

How Donors are Swayed by the Irrational

I just finished reading the book Sway by Ori and Rom Brafman this past weekend. It’s a fascinating look at the many forces at work that lead people to act irrationally. Through an analysis of scientific studies and recent current events, they bring home the power of swaying forces such as fear of loss, the “swamp of commitment,” our own personal tendencies to attribute value illogically, diagnosis bias, the “chameleon effect,” and more. Time and time again, the authors cite studies and give examples of how these forces can lead a business student to pay $204 for a $20 bill, cause smart investors to cling to failing stocks instead of selling, and even lead a head of airline safety to disregard years of training and cause one of the deadliest plane crashes in history.

While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking about the way that these “sways” impact the philanthropic sector. Value attribution will lead some donors to continue to fund high profile nonprofits because they have a higher “perceived value” than other organizations. The “swamp of commitment” will lead other donors to give to organizations that champion causes that they or their friends are passionate about. Diagnosis bias and the “chameleon effect” will continue to marry donors to organizations, even when they know that they aren’t high performing.

Why Charity Is Still Alive and Kicking

Not only will donors always be “swayed” by irrationality, just as all humans are, but “charity” itself has a “feel-good” component that likely won’t be overwritten by movements like the “social investing” movement. Sure, some will get their “feel-goods” from investing in only high performing organizations, but others will feel good about giving for other reasons. Saabira Chaudhuri said it beautifully in a blog post about David Hunter’s recent article about the End of Charity:

[Hunter] seems to be propagating the notion that “charity” will just roll over and die, elbowed out by the more practical “social investing.”

I don’t have the answer, although David E. K. Hunter thinks he does. In the past few days, I’ve had several colleagues send me the link to his recently published article, with “MUST READ” and multiple exclamation points in the subject line. After reading the article, I couldn’t figure out if my colleagues were telling my that it was a “must read” because they thought it was brilliant, or if it was because they knew that it would raise my blood pressure.

Earlier this month, I had already responded to a Wings for Kids blog posting by Paula Schwed about Dr. Hunter’s recent visit to Charleston, South Carolina (home of our Pluff Mud Connect service) where he advised “influential leaders” about “halting ‘sentimental giving’ to ineffective nonprofits and diverting investments to high-performing nonprofits instead.” My response was in part, “Donors can fund high-performing organizations and at the same time work to build the capacity of those who just aren’t ‘there’ yet” by providing them “with coaching, training and capacity building instead of pulling out completely.”

In this new article, published in the October issue of the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal, Dr. Hunter argues among other things that, “Social investing, if widely adopted, will help channel funding streams that are directed by measurable performance rather than feel-good stories, habits of giving and rank sentimentality.” He says this on the heels of putting forth three “unpleasant truths,” including that “there is virtually no credible evidence that most nonprofit organizations actually produce any social value.”

Although I had to struggle through the early assertions and the one-sided examples at the article’s outset, I was grateful to see that Dr. Hunter acknowledged that there might be times where social investors might choose to channel resources toward nonprofits that “need additional time and resources” to build their capacity to create sustainable value. I also completely agree with Dr. Hunter’s focus on creating social value through measurable outcomes, not just by counting the numbers of people served (outputs). I was fortunate enough to be involved in the United Way of America’s pilot testing of agency training on outcomes measurement in 1996, and have seen the amazing results that can come from creating real and measurable changes in knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, skills and ultimately condition (for instance, from being unemployed to being employed) of service recipients. That’s why I simply don’t agree that the nonprofit sector is as broken as he asserts. For every example of ineffective programs, there are others that can demonstrate real impact.

Nonprofit Local Co-Founder, Mark Deaton also took issue with several of Dr. Hunter’s assertions and conclusions, and here’s what Mark wrote in a letter to the editors at the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal sent earlier today:

Regarding David Hunter’s “End of Charity: How to Fix the Nonprofit Sector Through Effective Social Investing,” published in the October issue of Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal, I have a different perspective that I am writing to share with your readers. I’ll start with common ground. Dr. Hunter advocates for “clear thinking about what one is doing, why one is doing it and what one really is accomplishing” when deciding how to allocate resources in the nonprofit sector. He is also obviously a strong advocate for an outcome-focused approach, as am I. With those important agreements in mind, I differ with several of Dr. Hunter’s assertions, as well as some of his conclusions, two of which are the topic of this letter.

Quoting Dr. Hunter’s first “unpleasant truth,” he says that “there is virtually no credible evidence that most nonprofit organizations actually produce any social value.” There are three problems with this statement. First, lack of evidence does not necessarily mean lack of value. (I’ll set aside for the moment that I disagree with the premise from the outset, and grant that it might be true that credible evidence is lacking. However, by itself, that supposed lack says nothing about the level of social value being produced or not being produced. All it does is tell us that the author believes there is a lack of evidence. If Dr. Hunter has actual evidence that “most nonprofit organizations actually produce [no] social value,” I would be quite interested in seeing it).Second, the definition of social value is subjective, and the reader learns later that Dr. Hunter’s definition of social value heavily discounts activities such as feeding the homeless, providing shelter for children who don’t have it, and helping uneducated felons get educated. While the complexities of societal problems, such as homelessness, poverty, and poor education, require more than a meal, a roof, and a text book, to say that “very limited social value” is provided by these activities is not an “unpleasant truth,” it is an opinion; and one that I disagree with. Positing an opinion as fact is misleading, and it would have been (in my opinion) better if Dr. Hunter had started with “Unpleasant Opinion number 1.” While this approach to supporting the article’s conclusions runs throughout, I will avoid the temptation to focus on it further and move on.

The second area of disagreement is more important because it gets to the heart of what the Community Benefit Sector is all about – meeting public needs. While I appreciate the distinction Dr. Hunter makes between “low-risk” and “high-risk” social investing, and while I agree that nonprofit organizations should be held accountable for demonstrating positive societal impacts, he suggests that funding poorly performing nonprofits is a “high-risk” activity, without fully taking into consideration the area of need that the poorly performing nonprofit is targeting. For example, if a community has three well-funded, well-run nonprofits focused on reducing teen pregnancy and only one underfunded, poorly-run nonprofit focused on reducing drug addiction in an area with a disproportionate drug problem, which choice represents the greater risk? Investing in one of the well-run teen pregnancy organizations might arguably represent the larger risk, when considering how best to allocate one’s social investments. I applaud Dr. Hunter’s focus on steering social investing towards high-performing organizations, but not at the expense of meeting public needs. The need comes first, and we must all be careful not to let the perfect get in the way of the good.

Our mission at Third Sector Connector is helping nonprofits thrive, regardless of where they find themselves on any given performance measure. We believe that there is creativity to be harvested by sharing ideas across the sector, and that innovation can come both from market forces and from dialogue and change within the sector itself. What do you think?

–LD

(photo credit: Flickr:CarbonNYC)