What I Wish Journalists Knew About the Nonprofit Sector

The following is a version of my closing keynote speech for the North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations in Fargo on June 3.

Flickr: fouro

Do you work for a nonprofit? Think for a minute about when your organization was founded. What were some of the circumstances surrounding that event? What were the times like then?

Keep that founding dates in mind; I’ll come back to it.

As readers of this blog probably know, I’m the Communications & Development Associate at the National Council of Nonprofits. And in a recession, this means that for the communications half of my title, I’m constantly getting calls from journalists asking how the economy is affecting nonprofits. And then I see the resulting headlines, which often read “Nonprofits slaughtered by brutal economy,” or something like that.

And on the development side, of course, I’m constantly anxious about fundraising and being able to keep our doors open. So until several months ago, I was in a kind of perfect storm of nail-biting worry.

But then something came back to me from my graduate work in conflict resolution. When talking about negotiation and the ability of people in conflict to follow through on agreements, we invoked the psychologist’s saying that “Past performance is the best predictor of future behavior.”

And remembering that, I was able to relax a little. Because yes, we’re in a recession, and it’s scary, but many of our organizations—and the sector in general—have been through hard times already. And that means that we can do it again.

When I read the headlines bemoaning the plight of the nonprofit sector, I grind my teeth a little. I know optimism rarely makes the front page. But painting nonprofits as victims doesn’t do us any good. Donors don’t respond well to desperation. Clients lose faith in nonprofits’ abilities to meet their needs. And “struggling nonprofit” stories get stale fast.

Struggle isn’t a novelty. Nonprofits wear the badge of more than 400 years of perseverance, back to 1601, when Britain passed the Statute of Charitable Uses, which was also applied to its eventual colonies in the new world. It institutionalized the channeling of money for public good for the first time; until 1601, there had been no standards for donating money to charity, only for passing money on to heirs.

During this 400-year history, nonprofits have been adapting remarkably to challenge and adversity. Instead of all the newspaper headlines reading “Nonprofits struggling in tough times,” they should read, “Nonprofits withstand four centuries of tough times.”

We Eat Recessions for Breakfast

Now think about the year your organization was founded and what the times were like then. Chances are this isn’t your first recession.

• Was your organization founded before 1980? Then you made it through the 1982 recession. So did the Women’s Network of the Red River Valley.
• Was your organization founded before 1970? Then you also made it through the 1973-1975 recession. So did the United Way, which made history during this downturn with the first $1 billion campaign by a single organization.
• Was your organization around before 1920? If so, then in addition to the above two recessions, you also made it through the Great Depression. And that’s kind of a big deal. The North Dakota Community Foundation would know—it survived as well.
• Finally, if your organization was founded before 1890, the same time as many of the Western states, you survived the 1894 recession. So did the Sierra Club. And look where they are now.

The point is, things have never been easy for our sector, and this recession is nothing new. Nonprofits face multiple (obvious) obstacles, including funding, regulation, staff burnout, public understanding of our work, etc.—not to mention the less obvious ones. But despite all these challenges, and even in times of severe hardship, nonprofits continue to flourish.

Why?

The answer, I think, speaks to very heart of our work: improving lives and fostering a vibrant society. No other sector has our ability to adapt and persevere. In the current recession, we’ve seen the private sector collapse—especially banking, the auto industry, and the stock markets. The public sector is more stable, but it’s too unwieldy to respond quickly to needs on the ground.

We, however, have to adapt, to flourish in hardship—otherwise, people, animals, and the environment will suffer, art and culture will wither, and scientific progress will stagnate. And we know this, so we find ways to do our work, with new ideas and with each other.

This is what I wish journalists knew: the real story isn’t when nonprofits struggle. Struggling is our default setting. The story is that we are masters of Sisyphean toil.

Passing the Baton

You might be thinking that of course I can be optimistic about our fate—many of your organizations have been around longer than I’ve been alive. But my optimism is backed up by facts. We can see throughout history that nonprofits can survive the worst conditions our country has endured: economic depression. War. Natural disaster. Terrorist attack. Past performance is the best indicator of future behavior. And our past performance is one of perseverance.

My optimism is also typical of my generation, which feels compelled to serve our communities and our country in a variety of ways. For some, it’s not enough just to volunteer occasionally or donate a few dollars. Contributing our sweat and talent to the nonprofit sector is a perfect outlet for those of us who feel this calling.

This is why I volunteer for nonprofits, and donate to nonprofits, and why I chose to enter the nonprofit workforce: I wanted to make the world a better place, and after five internships in all types and sizes of nonprofits, I saw that this sector is the place to do that most visibly and immediately.

This is not, I think, different from baby boomers, the founders of the modern nonprofit sector, who felt a great calling to address social injustice and social needs. And this is what makes our sector a survivor: the shared devotion to helping others. Founders have it; younger leaders have it. It transcends generation, economy, and technology.

In my opinion, the most important nonprofit collaboration this century—as in all of the past four centuries—will be among established nonprofit leaders and young professionals. This is another reason nonprofits have been able to survive so much hardship over time: when leaders have found themselves ready to pass the baton, there has always been a generation ready to take it.

Still, there has been a lot of talk around this baton-passing over past few years. Studies abound on the pending “leadership gap” in the sector. Bridgespan just reported a nonprofit leadership deficit of 20,000 positions for 2009. That’s 400 empty positions in every state in the union. And with student loan debt rising faster than income, nonprofits are suffering what some have called a brain drain of young talent either leaving the sector after only one or two years or avoiding it completely, often in favor of the public sector or social enterprise.

A lot of ideas are being floated to fix this problem. I’m going to support just one of them right now: in order to make it possible for the next generation of nonprofit talent to actually enter and stay in the sector, overhead funding for nonprofits must improve.

Overhead funding means infrastructure. It means staffing. It means computers and desks and working phones and copy paper. It means that the staff using the computers and making the copies have what they need to do their jobs and do good in the world.

But funders—both individual donors and foundations—tend to shy away from overhead. They prefer program funding so they can feel like their $25 or $250,000 helped feed someone, not make copies. So it’s more or less accepted for nonprofits to fudge the amount of money we request for overhead. Any more than a few percent of our budget looks bad. And when we get the funding, and it’s dedicated to the program, it’s like giving a NASCAR driver a race car but no gas.

When you were a kid, did you want to be a NASCAR driver with no gas?

Young professionals aren’t going to stay in the sector very long once we figure out that, resources or not, the car has to get to the finish line, and now we have to push it there. That’s called burnout. And it will drive young professionals elsewhere.

The campaign for overhead funding isn’t a new idea. Groups such as Grantmakers for Effective Organizations are leading this charge to help nonprofits fully fund the cost of our work, including compensation, occupancy, and other unexciting but necessary overhead expenses. This is a campaign worth joining. Because as many of us know, if it’s not funded, it’s not going to happen. Or it is going to happen, but in the process, it’s going to destroy our will to live.

So if you ever have the chance to participate in a forum or discussion about the need for overhead funding for nonprofits, I recommend you go, speak up, and stay informed and involved in this conversation so we as a sector can make ourselves competitive for the young talent we are about to be so desperately in need of.

A Turning Point?

To have this entire conference dedicated to nonprofit collaboration is incredible. It’s hard for me to say whether it has any historical precedence, since I wasn’t around for much of its 400-year history. But it feels like a turning point now.

Because right now, a conference dedicated to nonprofit collaboration seems to say that not only do we acknowledge the many challenges facing our organizations and communities, but we also believe that the best way to meet these challenges is to seek out one another and work together.

And just as in every minute of our 400-year history, we will not lose sight of our commitment to our clients and missions. Because in times like these, when the private sector stumbles and the public sector lags, our nonprofit sector makes the difference.

It’s what is necessary. It’s what is urgent. And it’s what we are very, very good at.

Nonprofit Blog Carnival: Open Call Edition

Thanks to Beth Aldrich, Communications Intern at the National Council of Nonprofits, for compiling and drafting this month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival.

Thank you for tuning in for yet another informative Nonprofit Blog Carnival. It was an open call this month and we got a plethora of responses. There were several entries that are useful revolving around money, not surprising with the times. Alan Strand talks about the differences between the funder and the program. Jake Seliger informs us of new grant money available through HUD and Peter Grandstaff supplies us with an amazing list of free resources. 

Jeremy Gregg introduces us to the future of the nonprofit sector while Anna Farmery explains the importance of social media to branding. Wrapping up this month’s edition is Elisa Ortiz and her blog kindly reminding us what is important.

Thank you to everyone who submitted and enjoy!

 

Legal Industry’s Furloughs Can Be the Sector’s Found Treasure

This is a guest post from the National Council’s Public Policy Intern, Marissa Gunn.

I was in a bit of a panic when stumbled into my public policy internship with the National Council of Nonprofits. I was third year law student, it was winter break, and I had no job. It wasn’t a particularly unusual spot to be in; unlike legal employers in the private sector, many employers in the public and nonprofit sectors (where I planned to be) were just gearing up for recruitment season.

What was a bit unusual was the predicament in which I and many of my peers had been left by the troubled economy.

By last winter many soon-to-be graduates who had worked the previous summer with the hope and expectation of being offered a permanent position upon graduation had been told one of two things. Either they simply would not be offered a permanent position (often due to financial difficulties), or they would be offered a permanent position…some day. Those in the latter group were given deferred start dates (and therefore deferred sources of income), sometimes pushed as far back a year.

Though a disappointment, this was not a huge surprise to many of us. We heard a lot the year before about law firms laying off entire practice groups and reducing the number of law students they’d hire for summer positions. If you were able to secure a paid position, you were probably anxious about your employer’s ability to offer you a permanent position at the end of your summer stint. If you weren’t able to find work that summer, you were even more anxious about the toll the economy was taking on your employment prospects.

And if you were me in the winter of 2009, you were anxious about this realization: the already highly competitive legal profession just got way more competitive. So, how do we, as current and soon to be legal professionals, deal?

We endeavor to save the world.

A fast trend for many large law firms who deferred start dates for new hires has been to strike some variant of the following deal with their deferred recruits: We’ll hold a position for you here, but you can’t fill it until X date. In the meantime, we’ll pay you a fraction of what you’d normally make here, if you find employment in the public/nonprofit sector.

Additionally, as was storied in this NY Times piece, lawyers who had been working in law firms for years have been asked not to come to work for a while and receive a lower, often times substantially lower, salary. Apparently, many of those lawyers want to or are encouraged to find work in the public/nonprofit sector too.

This might be a bit scary for those who passed up the potential benefits (a $160,000 starting salary) and burdens (it’s 11:00 PM and you’re still at work) of jobs with some of the world’s top law firms to pursue careers in the public interest. Furloughed attorneys look mighty attractive to legal services organizations who may be finding it more difficult to fund their programs. And for good reason! Why would these organizations pay me when a law firm is willing to pay someone else to do the same work?

But more importantly, it could be scary for the nonprofit sector. What will happen when the furloughs are over? Will the clients and communities that these attorneys serve be happy to lose their advocate? Will the relationships that these attorneys will inevitably build with the organizations and communities they’ve become a part of simply end? Will a well of legal minds and resources made available by the confluence of a recession and an increasing desire among legal students and professionals to do good in the world suddenly dry up?

Hopefully—and probably—not.

The lucky truth would appear to be this: more and more people from all professions are realizing a genuine desire to do good. This is why the best law firms have increased and touted their dedication to pro bono work to both prospective clients and recruits. This is why more and more law students seek out opportunities to serve in some capacity, whether or not they plan to enter the public/nonprofit sector.

This is why a friend and colleague of mine recently called me and excitedly announced that, less than a week after graduation and right before we recent grads begin the gauntlet that is bar preparation, her law firm had deferred her start date for one year.

She called me to get a contact at the children’s advocacy organization where I would be working in the coming fall.

Furlough can be an amazing opportunity. For my friend, it’s an opportunity to provide legal assistance to abused and disadvantaged children. For the legal profession, it’s an opportunity to do our part to make the world a little better, and we’re taking it!

That kind of passion doesn’t magically appear when a recession hits or mysteriously disappear when the economic clouds part. My optimistic forecast is that these furloughs into public interest will lead to more of the best minds putting their talents to use for the greater good, stronger bonds between the private and nonprofit/public sectors, and best of all, stiffer competition in the race to make the world a better place.

On your mark…

Get set…

GO!

We’re hosting the Carnival!

logo from nonprofitmarketingguide.com

We the intrepid Nonprofit Congress bloggers will be hosting the Nonprofit Blog Carnival’s May 29 edition. And we want your blog posts! Just email us a blog post, written on a nonprofit-related issue in the month of May, and include your name and blog URL in the email. The  top 7-10 (we haven’t decided yet) will be featured in the Nonprofit Blog Carnival right here on the 29th.

April’s Carnival edition, themed “Raising Money Online,” is over at the Get Fully Funded Blog.

Not sure what the Nonprofit Blog Carnival is? Find out from Carnival guru Kivi herself at the Nonprofit Marketing Guide.

YNPN 2009: Can I get an ‘amen?’

Flickr: Naveen Roy

The YNPN 2009 DC Day is a revival experience. In every session, as people talk, others nod their heads so vigorously I keep thinking they’re having seizures. We clap and cheer and laugh, and I expect us to break into song whenever the energy peaks. But like a revival, are we just preaching to the converted?

Those of us at the conference are all young nonprofit professionals. Obviously. And we’re all very enthusiastic about the idea that we are the future (and, some point out, the present) leaders of the nonprofit sector. A couple of panelists do suggest that in addition to generational differences, we should look at differences of race, gender, and other factors. But in this  congregation, the loudest hymn is that of youth.

Now if we’re trying to understand and overcome the “generation gap”…what about the people on the other side of it?

Some of the panelists are baby boomers. They are open about it. They joke about not understanding Twitter—everyone slips in a mention of Twitter somewhere, which especially tickles those of us tweeting the conference—and avow the value of new media. They exhort us to stand up for ourselves and lead the sector.

In short, they’re as converted as we are.

There’s a reason so many religions have missionaries. Missionaries believe they are saving souls. That’s why they knock on your door and ask if you’re acquainted with Jesus. And if you’re like my dad, you invite them it and confound them with Buddhist theology, but they keep coming back anyway. They want to save your soul. They have to save your soul.

And just as missionaries are trying to save souls, young nonprofit leaders are trying to save the sector. 

We know that with the economy in shambles, and the threat looming of the giant sucking sound that will be made when our baby boomer bosses retire, the nonprofit sector is at a dangerous tipping point. We know that if the nonprofit sector tips the wrong way, things will change. With no food banks, homeless shelters, animal shelters, environmental protection, free clinics, after-school childcare, and human rights protection, there will be suffering. With no art, music, and culture, humanity will come to a standstill. If it’s not the same thing as hell, it’s close. And it’s already very real for many people.

And we know that the groove the sector has settled into leads to a brick wall against which we will crash. We’re preaching a sermon of change: no more sacrificing sanity and family for work; no more outdated, inflexible ideals; no more slow, one-way communication; no more self-defeating label for the sector (nonprofit? Really?).

But unlike religious missionaries, we’re preaching mostly to ourselves. It’s an uncomfortable thing to proselytize, I know. There’s so much rejection. Last week, I was walking home from the gym and a girl no older than 18, outfitted with a name tag, sidled up to me and timidly asked if I wanted more peace and joy in my life. I said no thanks and kept walking. (At least I didn’t say “I’d have more peace and joy in my life if you left me alone.”) But she had the right idea. If you want to save souls, you seek the souls that need saving.

If you want to save the sector, you seek the leaders that know it best and can help keep it from tipping the wrong way.

Let me be clear: our baby boomer colleagues do not need to be saved. The missionary metaphor is cute, but it’s flawed if that’s what it suggests. Baby boomers are our greatest allies in the crusade to save the sector. And if we keep our revival-tent experiences like the YNPN conference to ourselves, we’re putting the salvation of the sector in jeopardy.

I wouldn’t be surprised if baby boomers were partly deterred by the “young” moniker for the group and the conference. After all, it seems to exclude anyone older than 30-something from the discussion. But as I learned at happy hour after the final session, it shouldn’t. A YNPN board member explained to me that the “young” in Young Nonprofit Professionals Network refers to being young in spirit, not in chronological age. And that’s fitting. Our sermon isn’t age specific; it’s change-specific. If you know the sector needs to change or it will tip the wrong way, you’re already converted.

The people we should be proselytizing to are not these converted. They’re the ones who think that the nonprofit sector is just fine. They think we can keep papering our supporters’ gerbil cages with our direct mail instead of trying e-newsletters. They think new media is a fad. They think leadership ability is chronological. They think self-sacrifice is its own reward for a 60-hour week.

We know who they are. So why aren’t we talking to them?

Visit Rosetta Thurman’s blog for a roundup of all YNPN 2009 DC Day blog posts.

YNPN 2009 Recap: State of the DC Nonprofit Sector

Flickr: dahliascakes

For everyone who can’t be at the YNPN 2009 conference, here’s a recap of the first session at DC Day this morning. Called “State of the DC Nonprofit Sector,” it featured panelists Chuck Bean of the Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington, Tamara Lucas Copeland of Washington Grantmakers, and Glen O’Gilvie of the Center for Nonprofit Advancement.

Near the end of the session, moderator Stacy Palmer asked several questions that made the big-picture discussion more concrete for the audience.

Question: What can people in the room do to ride out recession?

Chuck Bean offered a four-point plan, called ABCD: Advocate; Be the conscience for the sector; Collaborate; and Dare to innovate. He added that we should take the risks that others who have been in the sector longer might not be comfortable with.

Tamara Lucas Copeland urged us to think about different ways to communicate. Twitter and blogging may be second nature to many of us, she said, but people of older generations “don’t get it yet,” and need help to get it.

She added that we need to keep sector fresh and innovative. Generation Y, she suggested, can be the generation to start talking aboutt sector not as “nonprofit,” or what we are not, but as what we are—perhaps “social profit.”

Question: In the economic crisis, should young professionals make it a priority to get graduate degrees in order to get nonprofit jobs or secure promotions?

Chuck attested that in the hiring process, someone with an MBA will indeed get more attention than someone with a BA. Glen O’Gilvie agreed that, along the same lines, a master’s degree in general will get more attention than a bachelor’s. But the job market, he added, is just like the stock market: buy low and sell high. Get in now, he said, in whatever capacity you can and then work your way up as the sector recovers

Question: How do you do broach the topic of executive transition with baby boomer leaders?

Chuck Bean quipped, “If there was an Old Nonprofit Professionals Network, what would we do?” He suggested we look at it through the eyes of these boomer leaders: where does the sixty-year-old ED go for their next opportunity?

Tamara Lucas Copeland added that many nonprofits were founded in 1970s, and their founders are now ready to move on. At the same time, organizations need to develop career ladders to take away some of the ambiguity and barriers to career advancement.

Coming up: Recap on the afternoon session, “The Next Generation of Leadership.”

Live from YNPN 2009!

I’m live blogging and tweeting from the YNPN 2009 conference here in DC all day. Look for updates here, or follow me on Twitter for bite-sized reports.

If you want a multi-angled perspective, search Twitter for “ynpn” to follow tweets from half a dozen of us at once!

State of the Nonprofit Media Coverage

Flickr: marcelgermain

I like journalists. They are, for the most part, creative, resourceful, hardworking people, and they put up with a lot of shenanigans to perform a much-needed public service.

Of course, the same can be said of nonprofit staffers.

And you’d think the two groups would be natural buddies. Journalists need engaging stories and reputable sources, and have the means and brio to put them in the public eye.  Nonprofits are ripe with stories—human interest, public policy, environmental conservation, arts and culture, etc., etc.—and need publicity to gain public support.

So with this in mind, I’ve been working hard on media outreach. Not PR, I mean, but win-win strategies to get the sector more meaningful coverage and journalists more meaningful stories and helpful sources. Here are some nuggets of information I’ve come across on how nonprofits are currently covered by the news media.

1. Coverage of nonprofits tends to be positive, but also focuses on one-off events or issues, ignoring overarching themes that tie the sector together. (Source: the excellent article Superficial Friends: A Content Analysis of Nonprofit and Philanthropy Coverage in Nine Major Newspapers by Matthew Hale of Seton Hall University.)

• The point: these themes need to be vigorously discussed, not only inside the sector but outside it as well, to force nonprofits out of complacency so we do our work better.

2. When coverage does focus on the entire sector, it tends to be less positive. (Source: same as above.)

• The point: our goal should not be positive coverage. The goal should be thorough discussion and debate, and if that means shining light on our flaws, so be it.

3. The most common nonprofit story angle over the past few months has been the economy (more than 30% of stories). Stories about episodes of wrongdoing and trends in charitable giving are tied for second place. (Source: my own ongoing content analysis.)

• The point: If you want to pitch your story to a journalist, try tying it to the economic crisis to make it more relevant to their audience.

The good news: we can stop crying about how much the media mistreat us. They don’t. Most of the time, they make us look pretty good.

The bad news: if we’re unhappy with the way we’re covered, we can only blame ourselves. Admit it–sometimes we’d rather talk to ourselves in our own jargon than to others outside the sector in a foreign tongue (called, perhaps, ”plain English”). Sometimes we’re too busy to pitch stories to reporters. And sometimes, like in all other industries, we assume that journalists want to tell the same stories we do.

What do you think? Are you happy with how nonprofits are portrayed by the media? How would you like to see this coverage change in your lifetime? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Street to Screen

In my short time here at the National Council of Nonprofits I have been able to participate heavily in the development of a new individual donor fundraising plan. Mostly I have gotten to see how a website and online fundraising can be made “more personal.” As I have mentioned in previous blogs my background is in canvassing, so I am all about that personal touch. There are, however, some very blaringly obvious traits that have served me well as I carried them over to online fundraising.

One thing I learned that stuck is that people are like sheep. While street canvassing, if one person stops then it is a guarantee that another person within your line of vision will stop and contribute. It’s almost like your first contribution christens you as legitimate and worthy. How do we make online giving transparent in a way that does not violate privacy but validates our cause to other givers?

Another parallel between online giving and canvassing is that if people do not “stop” they cannot give. The stop in the street is just as difficult to achieve as the stop online. I could do back flips and somersaults until the cows come home but if I do not have a compelling grab line people will point and gawk but keep moving. Same with a donate button and its linked page. They may look at it blinking on the page but will they click on it?  What makes a web page just as compelling as a person standing in the rain with no umbrella and a clipboard?

Oh that clipboard; so very important! The clipboard handoff in canvassing is essential to turning a stop into a contribution. Where is that crucial physical engagement on the computer? Is it the click of the mouse? The scroll over the giving page? Where is this, and how do you accentuate this step online so that more click-throughs turn into contributions?

Last but not least, the first rule of fundraising I was taught and that I taught everyone under me: People give to people. If you are not a compelling person with a compelling story people will not give, no matter how great the cause. Where is this person online?  How do we make online giving as compelling as a person with eyes, ears and a voice? Kudos to the person that can do this, but do not assume that I am not trying to beat you to the punch. This is the key to online fundraising becoming the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for nonprofits everywhere: The convenience and privacy of giving in your own home to a cause you love with the personal touch, gratification and transparency of giving on the street to a person.

We made the list!

Elisa

Elizabeth

Two of your intrepid Nonprofit Congress bloggers made the list of Top 10 Young Nonprofit Professionals on Twitter, compiled  by DC’s own leader of leaders, Rosetta Thurman. That’s right—there we are, @emortiz and @eclawson, as in Elisa M. Ortiz and me, Elizabeth Clawson. Go us.

It’s also pretty amazing considering we’ve been at it less than a year. Just goes to show that you might as well try out some of the eleventy-million social media tools out there. After all, you might end up kinda good at one of them.

And since we’re talking Twitter: if you follow me, what kind of tweets would you like to see more of? Who else is rocking the nonprofit Twitter scene? Let me know in the comments below.