This post comes on the heels of a series of conversations with friends in the last few years about the non-profit sector. I hope you'll consider jumping into the conversation with a post. Thanks for reading! Jasmine
I'm hardly a big donor type. I give to non-profits and campaigns when I can, but never in quantities large enough to make a splash. This matters little in the world of donor cultivation, though.
In a typical week, I get solicitation emails from about 8 national organizations and campaigns; I also get emails, mailings and newsletters from another 6 -8 smaller organizations. I can only imagine that those who give more, get more.
Many of the organizations that I hear from have remarkably similar
missions and it's sometimes difficult to discern why giving to one is
more advantageous than another. What I do notice, though, is how infrequently such organizations invoke or refer to each other. Instead, they seem to be either competing with one another, or unable to coordinate efforts because of legal restrictions. If I give to Democracy for America's "50 State Strategy," how is this different than giving to the Democratic National Committee's "50 State Strategy"? If I give to the Human Rights Campaign, how is this different than giving to the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce? Insiders could answer those questions at length. But they seem to overlook what the answer ought to be: it's not different at all; we're after the same goals, the same vision.
The messaging in these asks is often similar: our essential work cannot continue without your support. This moment is historic, urgent, unprecedented or critical.
According to "Non profit Fundraising 101," this is precisely what an ask should say. Creating a climate of crisis is said to compel people to give money, just as creating a climate of terror is said to compel people to give up freedoms.
But something about it all feels, well . . . off. Last year I joined a friend at a fundraiser for a national gay and
lesbian organization in San Francisco; it was held at a large art
museum, and featured a sushi bar, a cosmo bar, and a DVD about the
organization running on TVs in each room, touting the budget growth
-- in the millions -- that the current ED had overseen in the last five years. It was a lot of fun and compared to the grassroots events I was used to in North Carolina and Missouri, it felt pretty swanky. But it was also hard not to do the math: how much had that event cost? Surely less than they raised, but still . . .
It's worth pausing over the fact that more and more non-profits trumpet their success and growth by highlighting how their budget and staff have grown. These are strange metrics for organizations whose success should be measured by the eradication of the very social problems they were founded to address. The metric for success should be a reduced need for services, and thus a reduced budget and staff size. In theory, every non-profit should be trying to shut its own doors; or actively planning for its next iteration, when the problem it was founded to address has been solved. Otherwise, aren't we implicitly saying that some social problems are intractable and will be with us eternally? Is it possible that the non-profit sector has become the perfect foil to a market economy in which poverty and disparity are fixed parts of the landscape?
I want to choose my words carefully here. Non profits do an awful lot
of good in the world. I have a list of 5 or 6 favorites that I think do
excellent work. I have worked for non-profits directly and continue to do both consulting and pro bono work for a few. I have friends who log
60 - 70 hour weeks at non-profits and do much good in the
world. My concerns are with the culture of the non-profit sector and
the core assumption we make that starting a non-profit is the best way to
change the world.
The growth of the non-profit sector is not governed by market forces; in fact it is governed by nothing at all, really. If an organization can raise enough money, through grants, donations and events, to keep its doors open, then it can do so, indefinitely. The need for its work, or the quality of said work, are slippery questions, and often taboo ones. Under such conditions the sector has -- choose your word -- blossomed, or metastasized marvelously in the last 30 or so years.
The professionalization of the social change sector and the rise of social entrepreneurship are natural byproducts of this growth. With this has come the expectation among those
who enter this sector that jobs within it should provide a competitive
wage, full benefits and a retirement package. While I fully understand
this expectation, and have felt it myself, it is also contrary to a
basic truth about non-profits in a market economy: because the
organization is not earning a profit, every dollar spent on
administrative costs represents another dollar that must be raised. In
theory, these dollars translate into capacity to address social
problems, but anyone who has worked at a non-profit knows that this
isn't always true.
Thirty or so years into these trends, we would be well served to
examine whether the basic assumption we make -- that if you want to
change the world, you should start, or go work for, a non-profit ASAP
-- is actually sound. Hybridized entities, that both generate profit and do good, represent one variation on this theme. My hunch is that this is only the beginning. The new circuitry is out there, if only we are willing to connect it.
In the past few years, I've noticed more and more people -- non-profit staff, consultants, academics, activists, and people who work for businesses that are expanding into the social change sector -- raising hard and interesting questions about the 501(c)(3) model. "The sector will be extinct within another 30 years," one friend said recently. I tend to agree.
But it's hard to stop a train that's in motion. And to suggest that non-profits suspend operations raises an immediate question: what would happen to the people they serve. In some cases, the results could be catastrophic; in other cases, they would not. In some cases, a non-profit is exactly the right structure to address a social problem. But in many other cases, it is a clunky, inelegant structure that lacks agility, financial autonomy, or a means to ensure excellent results.
Lest I sound like too much of a crank, here are two concrete ideas that I can put out there:
1) If you want to start a group that focuses on social change, you don't have to incorporate as a non-profit.
In 2004, a group of friends and I launched The Progressive Project, with a goal of engaging people in public and political life and a big-picture 30-year vision of helping to make America more equitable and just. Immediately, we were advised that we should incorporate as a 501(c)(3), a 501(c)(4) and a 527, because this would allow us to raise money and to do the partisan work we sought to.
We didn't incorporate. Instead, we function as a group of citizens coming together to act in time-sensitive moments. We have revisited the incorporation question regularly, and so far the answer is always: let's see how far we can take this experiment. Not having non-profit status does limit us in a few ways:
- We cannot accept checks, and donations to us are not tax-deductible. But this is less of a problem (let alone crisis) when you don't have paid staff and when you offer a model of action in which folks pay their own way, or sponsor others who cannot.
- Sometimes, non-profits are reticent about partnering with us, because some of our activities are partisan; but others are not, and at the end of the day, you want both partners to be fully invested in a collaboration.
- Without full-time paid staff, we don't have the capacity to run operations continually, but we are exploring a model that includes "seasons" of programming bracketed by seasons of evaluation and coming up with new strategies and models. With this model, we avoid cycles of burn-out and we we don't have to raise money continually to ensure that staff can pay rent. Would we churn out more work if we had a full-time staff? Absolutely. Would that work be better? I don't know.
In the end, these limitations pale in comparison to what we gain by not being incorporated: agility and the freedom to be creative and to respond quickly when what we're doing is not working. We're trying to create new circuitry in what social change work looks
and feels like, and there's a lot of revision at work as we move
forward. On the best days, the climate we work in feels a lot like a workshop.
When we launched in 2004, we sent solicitation letters and emails, and in return folks gave generously enough to help us get our work off the ground. Four years later, we're approaching fundraising differently. We pass the hat at events to help cover basic costs; we ask folks to chip in to support those who can't afford to pay their own way on an action; and we have gotten some incubation money from the graduate program I am enrolled in. In the next few weeks, we'll be sending out a letter to all of our donors, but this time, we'll be asking them to give not to us, but to organizations and campaigns that we're partnering with.
Why? Because the world doesn't need another non-profit asking for money; the world needs innovations in how we think about and approach solving old problems.
2) Promote Innovations
Service learning centers at colleges and universities and foundations that support emerging social entrepreneurs should devote resources to cultivating alternatives to traditionally-envisioned 501(c)(3). These entities can offer an ideal climate for the spirit of experimentation and innovation that will help us break through to the next generation of what social change work looks like.
There's a lot of emphasis on innovation in philanthropy right now; the next step is taking it deeper and looking in a clear-sighted way at the very structures that animate the social change sector.
