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“I am not a charity. I run a charity”

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This morning I watched a short video that helped me pull together several chains of thought that have been running through my mind.  The video was of a speech Nancy Lublin, founder of Dress For Success and CEO of DoSomething.org, gave at a fundraiser a couple of weeks ago.

 

There is a lot that is motivational and inspirational in this speach, but that is not why I am writing about it here.  What really caught my attention comes near the end.

 

Lublin is quite outspoken about some of the problems in the non-for-profit world, and one of her points is that we allow non-profit organizations, and non-profit CEOs an boards to underperform because of low expectations.  Non-profits are not held to the same standards as for-profit organizations.  If a for-profit company underperforms it fails.  All too often not-for-profit organizations are propped up by well-meaning boards plagued by low expectations. This does not serve anyone well and is counter-productive.

"There are so many crappy not-for-profit CEOs out there who are being employed by people who know better. Review them!"

I am increasingly involved in working with non-profits, although on a volunteer basis. But in my previous life, although I did volunteer work on the side, I either managed or played an instrumental role in the management of 3 successful small businesses.  One of those businesses focused on providing services to not-for-profits.  I have been privileged to work with successful CEOs in the not-for-profit arena, but I have also seen a lot of under-supported, over-whelmed and even incompetent management in the not-for-profit world that is allowed to continue due to low-expectations as well as various other social and pride-related issues revolving around donors who use different standards for their charitable work than they would for their own financial or business investments. 
 
I appreciated Lublin's honesty.
 "I am not a charity. I run a charity. Those are two very different things. And if we want the best minds solving the biggest problems, it's time we learned the difference."
 
Watch the video.  It is about 17 minutes long, and you can find it here.
 

Comments

One response to ““I am not a charity. I run a charity””

  1. Duchesse Avatar
    Duchesse

    I’ve worked with a variety of nonprofits over my career in consulting. A common structure, that of a paid Executive Director reporting to a volunteer board, has to be one of the dumbest, most ineffective structures ever invented. The ED had six or seven bosses who made competing demands. Sometimes board members are recruited because they are high-profile executives, with vast resources at their command, other times they were drawn from the nonprofit’s client base, but had no business experience. Usual result was ED burnout or termination by a never-satisfied board, whose own performance was unimpeachable.

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