Frank and immoral advice for nonprofits
Destiny sez, "At a Craigslist Foundation conference in San Francisco, Oakland lawyer-turned fundraiser Van Jones stole the show with an inspiring speech of surprisingly frank tips that are 'counter-intuitive and probably immoral' for non-profits. #3 is simply 'Don't Lie.'"
There is something about the relationship between the not-for-profit sector, the government, the foundations, and the donors that creates a massive incentive to lie -- flagrantly, and often.I met Van last summer and was absolutely blown away -- he's a smart, committed, incredibly effective activist who's funny, personable and convincing as hell. Link (Thanks, Destiny!)And it's not just a one-sided thing. The relationship between not-for-profits and foundations is like the relationship between teenagers and parents. You don't really want to tell them everything that's going on, and they don't really want to know. So there's this dance of deceit, shall we say.
"What'd you do this weekend?"
"Oh... Studied! With my friends."And the parents say 'Good! So glad to hear that!' Because they don't want to know. And so what do you say?
"How did the year go?"
"We had success after success! All goals were met, and a good time was had by all."And what was there left to say? 'Good! Good!' They don't want to know....
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This is what I (I run a small not-for-profit) call "Outcome Inflation" and it is a big problem for the sector.
It's a bit of a chicken and egg thing:
1. Foundations ask for excessive outcomes in their grant guidelines
2. Nonprofits agree to those outcomes knowing they can't meet them (or naively believing they can)
3. The nonprofit runs their programs as usual
4. The nonprofit returns a glowingly padded report
5. The Foundation uses that report to set next year's giving guidelines.
6. Rinse and repeat.
Nonprofits need to be more honest (and objective) with what they can accomplish. Foundations need to know what is realistically achievable and provide better oversight.
Also, those Craigslist Foundation functions are great. I highly recommend the Nonprofit Bootcampe (SF and NYC):
http://craigslistfoundation.org/index.php?page=Boot_Camp
"What a tangled web we weave…"
Years ago I worked for a small for-profit business that was shopping around for venture capital. To buff up the current quarterly financial statement top management stayed late on the last night of the quarter and posted the next day's business from everyone's In Baskets. Don't know if this move had the intended effect but it did have an unintended consequence — years later top management was still pulling all-nighters four times a year to avoid an embarrassing dip in the quarterly numbers.
Comment #1 hits the nail right on the head. There's definitely an escalation of sorts that always seems to be going on between the funder and the non-profit.
The devil in all of this is the desire to quantify those being served and the services given. Funders and non-profits tend to be staffed by smart, hard working people who are aware that objectives and results are more often than not abstract to some degree, but rather than trust their own professional judgments regarding the effectiveness of programs, they attempt to devise systems that can quantify things that inherently resist quantification. So long as everyone is willing to play within that artificiality, everyone can go to sleep at night knowing that they've taken no risks, and offended no-one.
A heads up - I couldn't see large parts of the linked article, including the quoted portion, using Safari 3, though it showed up find in Firefox.