Third Sector Connector Blog

I’d say think again. There will always be people (like me) who donate to causes that make them feel good, without waiting to peruse reams of information or wade through piles of data about how effective a program is. There will always be people, plenty of people, who make shotgun donations because they feel moved or guilty or it’s their birthday or their Facebook friends are supporting a cause so they feel like they should too. Saying that “charity” should die is one thing — saying that it will is quite another.

Turning “Shoulds” Into “Coulds”

The very notion that donors should “[halt] ‘sentimental giving’ to ineffective nonprofits and [divert] the investments to high-performing organizations instead,” prompted my own response on the Wings for Kids Blog. I argued that instead of shifting resources away from organizations that we could instead, “encourage funders to provide the ones who aren’t yet high performing with coaching, training and capacity building instead of pulling out completely.” I also said, and firmly believe, “There isn’t any reason that we can’t work to lift the entire sector at once.”

That desire to build capacity for the entire sector is what led me to my earlier blog post about Hunter’s article, as well as my comments on the Tactical Philanthropy Blog, where I said, “While we’re at it, let’s urge donors to fund cross-sector leadership initiatives, outcomes and performance training, intra-sector sharing of effective practices, mentorship models for new leaders or new organizations, and more.”

Creating a New Future for the Sector

I’ve long been an advocate of holding ourselves accountable for delivering and measuring real outcomes within the sector, and I believe that given the right toolkit, every organization can do so.

Part of building that toolkit is helping build, coach, and mentor an incoming generation of leaders who understand that focusing on “unpleasant truths” and “problem solving” aren’t likely to create the results that will actually lead to a bright new future for the sector. It’s why I felt honored to inherit the “Creating the Future of Your Community” class that I teach for Duquesne’s Master in Leadership program from Hildy Gottlieb and Dimitri Petropolis of the Community-Driven Institute. Leveraging principles from Hildy’s new book, The Pollyanna Principles, as well as the The World Café by Juanita Brown, these students (many of whom are already leaders in their communities) are successfully taking on such diverse challenges as re-inventing a statewide foster care system, building a new community resource center, steering partnership/merger discussions between a local United Way and a Community Foundation, and increasing sophomore retention and graduation rates in a university.

Why are they able to see such success so quickly? In part, because their approach mirrors Pollyanna Principle #5: “Strengths build upon our strengths, not our weaknesses.”

Signs That We’re Ready

What if we really could lift the entire sector to new levels of performance and collaboration? What if we really could build a toolkit for every organization that would help them create stronger and healthier communities? What if community benefit organizations of all sizes and types really could change the world? We believe we can.

Dan Pallotta’s recent blog post about a “Change-The-World” conference and the comments that follow signals that there are many of us in the sector that are wishing for less finger-pointing and more collaboration. Here’s a snip of his post:

It’s time we all got to know one another. It’s time for the venture capital crowd to know that tens of thousands of fundraising professionals are working their asses off every day and that if new funding could be directed their way, there’d be a big improvement in scaling programs. It’s time for fundraisers to know what the medical researchers are doing. It’s time for community-based nonprofits to know that there’s a social finance movement out there and that debt facilities might be available to them to scale up their operations. It’s time for celebrity philanthropists to hear about the structural problems in the nonprofit sector from the people working in the trenches every day.

Our own experience with launching Nonprofit Local confirms that there is also a desire to collaborate, share, and learn from each other. After being “live” for just a little over a month, we’ve had more than 4,000 visits to our beta site from all over the globe and as of the writing of this post, we have 340 members from across the sector who have joined the site. We’re using input from visitors and members to build a community that bridges the gaps between local grassroots organizations, both by creating sharing opportunities within local communities and to enhance global sharing across communities.

It’s been an interesting few weeks of reading, website feedback, classroom discussion and online dialogue. In fact, I’ve already discovered some great new folks, such as Ingvild Bjornvold from Social Solutions and Aaron Stiner from ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation, with whom I share some common ground. I’m also meeting more of you on our LinkedIn and Facebook pages and through discussions at our site. Although I’ve known for some time that I’m “all in” and ready to help the sector grow and thrive, my “ah-ha” moment is that the sector itself is ready. I look forward to working with and alongside all of you to take us from “ready” to “set” and then “GO!”

Note: With the recent FTC update and hoopla about bloggers disclosing whether they’ve been paid to promote a product, I thought I should mention that, for better or worse, no one’s offered me any money, cool trips, gadgets, or other reward for anything that I’ve written.