As the divorce was getting closer to being finalized, she decided that in addition to no longer wishing to have her husband, she didn’t want his name either.  Clear that she didn’t want to reach back to her maiden name, she decided she’d pick a brand new name.  If you think naming a child is hard, I can attest to the extreme difficulties of choosing a brand new last name.  Hours and hours were spent on this problem and, in the end, she stuck with the name she assumed when she got married.

In many respects, my friend didn’t have anything more pressing to do at that time, nothing urgent on her plate:  she was healthy, employed, had a lovely home, friends, etc.  While she was absolutely serious in her desire to have a brand new last name, there was also a therapeutic, cathartic element—for her—in going through the process of trying to find that new last name.

The nonprofit sector, however, does not have that luxury of not having anything more urgent to do than worry about its name.  And, yet, when I heard two people from two different organizations say in the space of one week that their organization’s priority was to proselytize for a new name (and the same name, at that) for the sector, I got concerned.

I’ll be the first to admit that our name—nonprofit sector—is not at all a good name.  For one, it perpetuates some of the most foolhardy myths ever concocted.  For example, apparently when people hear “nonprofit” they assume that means that the organization cannot, by law, make money.

If anyone stopped to think about the logic embodied in that thinking, they would see the absurdity of it all.  How does any organization survive, let along flourish, if it doesn’t bring in more than it spends running its business?  Following this logic, every for-profit business must, by law, make a profit.  But for too many people, the name cements the concept that all nonprofits have negative balance sheets.

Another foolhardy myth is the one that says nonprofit employees do not need or want compensation that leads to financial well-being.  Apparently, because nonprofits cannot make money, they have no money with which to pay employees and people who want to work at nonprofits know this and are satisfied not to be paid, either at all or at a competitive level.

I get it:  the name is not a good one.  But what is a better alternative?  Because if we are going to change the name of the sector, it better be for a better name.  Non-government organization, or NGO, is the name commonly accepted in the world beyond the United States.  So, perhaps we should adopt that language so that at least we are in sync with everyone else.  But that continues the course of defining us by what we are not, instead of what we are. So, we aren’t a government agency; but what are we?  We should be cautious about naming us by what we are not, as that has lead to some pretty bad misunderstandings that we are still trying to overcome.

The name that came up twice in one week, as I mentioned above, is community benefit sector.  I’ve heard it many a time before this past week, and I shudder each and every time I hear that name.  Simply put, it is so pompous and exclusionary.  I find it ironic and sad that so many nonprofits that work so hard to overcome and break down exclusion could for even one second embrace this name.  The second time this past week that it was said, it was said in front of a mixed audience—nonprofit and for-profit representatives were in the room—and I simultaneously wanted to shrink into the background and hold up a sign that said “Don’t blame me; I don’t buy the message!”  How arrogant are we that we think that only those entities that we currently refer to as nonprofits are the only ones who provide benefits to communities?

While I’m not particularly fond of any bank right now, the reality is that banks do help communities in multiple ways, and they do fund nonprofits.  Do only those hospitals that are nonprofit and those doctors, nurses and other health care providers who work in nonprofit settings provide for community benefit while those who work in for-profit organizations do not?  Architectural firms that are designing green space and solar energy companies that work with them, are they not benefitting communities?  Do restaurants and retail shops not benefit communities?  The nonprofit sector does not have a corner on helping communities, and it is arrogant and divisive to say or think we do.  We need to narrow the divide and work together.

If you were hoping to find a good, new name here, I am sorry to disappoint.  The truth is, like my friend many decades ago, I’ve gotten used to this name and it is better than the alternatives (only two of which I mentioned here).  All of the alternatives that regularly get bandied about has its problems.  So, in the end, you stick with what you’ve got:  it isn’t perfect, but we know its foibles and how to counter them.  And quite frankly, the name is not even among the biggest problem facing the sector.  And we need to put our attentions to those things that matter.

But, hey, if you’ve got a good name to suggest, let’s hear from you.

It isn’t entirely executive directors’ fault.  There is, and always has been and will be, a certain degree of turnover in any organization.  Historically, the turnover rate for nonprofits has hovered around 24%, give or take a percentage point or several.  The 2010 Opportunity Knocks survey on turnover, found that the turnover rate at nonprofits averaged 16%, down from 21% in 2008.  This low level of attrition in 2010 is attributed to the economy, a time where people were more concerned with having any job rather than having a perfect job, or perfect conditions, or a shorter commute, etc.

The area of development, however, has always been known for having higher than average turnover rates than other positions in an organization, with the possible exception of front-line delivers of social services, where some organizations can have an average tenure of just under 12 months.  Over the years, the data on tenure for front-line development staff has been pretty stable:  well under two years.  That data point for directors of development has hovered around three years.  In 2010, Cygnus Applied Research, Inc. cites anecdotal evidence that those in senior development positions receive an inquiry of interest for another development position (at another organization), on average, about 90 days after starting their current position.  The fact of the inquiry doesn’t mean they take the job; but it does indicate the amount of opportunity and temptation that is out there.  When asked why they do leave, almost half of the senior development professionals in Cygnus’ survey said it was for a higher salary, almost 40% said they’d achieved what they set out to do and almost a third said—and boards and executive directors please take note—to escape old-school ways of thinking about and doing fundraising.  Turnover is a fact of the workforce, and, thus, to a degree, executive directors must learn to live with it.

That is not, however, to say that executive directors—and, now, I’ll bring in boards–aren’t responsible for a good deal of the turnover; they are.  First, there is the easy to correct factor of under-payment and a failure to balance of rewards and deliverables:  paying too little and expecting way too much and too many miracles.   Frequently, too, this imbalance is accompanied by an unwillingness by the board to assist in the development process.   In that scenario—low compensation, high expectations, no support–the development professional is set up for failure and for this both the executive director and board should be held responsible.  It is relatively easy to correct that picture; unfortunately, too few organizations do.  So, the cycle of hire, unrealistic demands, a whole in the wall and a development director with a very sore head, moving on, continues

Second, is the all too common mistake of not thinking things through.  Way too often, people come to me and say, “We need to hire a director of development.”  When I know the organization, my comeback is frequently, “Really?”  (This is a similar exchange when representatives from an organization that has no paid staff say to me, “We need to hire an executive director.”  I say, “Really?”)  I don’t know the psychodynamics that cause people to jump to jump immediately to job title when it is time to hire rather than job content, but it is not a healthy one.  When title drives content, we all too frequently end up with what we don’t need.  Think about it:  if you were to write a director of development position from scratch or an executive director position from scratch, there are certain responsibilities that would absolutely end up in that description.

For example, in writing the job description for development director, particularly if this were for a one-person shop, there would need to be a little knowledge of everything in the requirements for the job and a little bit of everything in the responsibilities.  But the reality is that one-person shops don’t—because they cannot—do it all.  Thus, it is much better to figure out what the bread and butter, on-going development strategies are that an organization uses, write the position description and title it accordingly.

A recent conversation I had with a group of executive directors reveled that the number of events each organization had per year ranged from 7 to 17—and that was based on a quick, on-demand request for the number.  Not one had a dedicated events person, yet every one of the executive directors was complaining about the drain on staff, tensions with the board, and questions about “whether it is worth it?”  (Please:  do not read this incorrectly; I am NOT advocating for hiring a dedicated events person so an organization can do lots of events.   I am among the loudest anti-events voices because so few nonprofits use them as they should be, yet spend—dollars, human capital and good will—ridiculous sums doing so.)

What is worth doing is the following:  first, first analyze fundraising strategies to determine clear-out successes and failures and where there is potential for turning in a fence sitter into a success; second, identify the skills and experience needed to maximize the return on the successes and convert the fence sitters; third, write that job description; fourth, title the job appropriately; fifth, identify the stretch compensation that you can afford; sixth, hire as well as you can; and, seventh, and last, have the board and executive director prepared and ready to work with and support this new hire.

Is this going to guarantee that the development professional is going to be there 15 years from now?  No, and that’s all to the good.  Develop needs and strategies shouldn’t be static over time.  Nor should development professionals; some want to grow broader while others want to grow deeper.  Needs and abilities—in all positions—need to be periodically assessed and determination made if there is still a good fit.

Executive directors, stop beating yourselves up because you seem to be hiring new development staff more frequently than any other position on your organization chart.  Staff turnover and longevity are not categorically always bad or always good, respectively.  Being clear about what you need, hiring to fit that need and not a title, and accepting that fit is moveable is, however, always good.

Earlier this week, a parliamentary committee investigating the wire tapping scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s media empire said that Murdoch was “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company” because of his willful blindness to the pervasive phone hacking used by his media team.  Using this standard criminal law concept that describes behavior whereby a person intentionally avoids knowing things that could make him/her criminally liable (such as the drug runner who couriers a package but does not directly ask, “Are these drugs I’m carrying?”), the parliamentary commission is saying that Murdoch intentionally turned a blind eye to things that he suspected, thought, wondered were criminal, not pursuing the truth, but preferring to pretend “not to know.”

Unfortunately, that old adage, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you” is far from wise.  That drug runner who believes he can go into a court of law and claim innocence by offering up the defense “I didn’t know the parcel contained drugs” has a rude awakening coming to him/her—and will have lots of down time in his/her future to contemplate that mistaken thinking.   The truth is, what you think you know, even if you don’t confirm it, can hurt you if your suspicions are that bad, harmful or criminal behavior is occurring on your watch.

Listening to this report, I could not help but think about all of the willful blindness that goes on in nonprofits:  by executive directors, supervisors, board members.  To wit, the conversation I recently had with a lawyer friend whose client “just realized” (my quote marks, not his) that the executive director had been “misdirecting” funds for the last 10 years.  Apparently, some of the board members tried to put the blame on the auditor’s shoulders, wondering how come the auditor hadn’t caught this misdirection some time ago.

It is amazing how people in positions of authority—such as executive director and nonprofit board member—do not understand how an audit works.  An audit is built on the data an organization/individual provides to the auditor:  provide false data and you simply get an audit of that false picture.  Sometimes audits do reveal wrongdoing; but that is not the intent of an audit.  The Alliance for Nonprofit Management defines an audit as “…a process for testing the accuracy and completeness of information presented in an organization’s financial statements. This testing process enables an independent certified public accountant (CPA) to issue what is referred to as an opinion on how fairly the agency’s financial statements represent its financial position and whether they comply with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).”  It is the board’s job to be regularly monitoring those financial statements to see what is really going on.  Ah, the joys of willful blindness.   That is, until the shoe drops and the concept of complicity (ethical and moral responsibility, not legal, so, back off lawyers) rears its head.

How many executive directors really know how the employees in their organizations are executing their duties?  Sadly, children dying in foster care is becoming too common place”to think that there is not something wrong with a system that allows that to happen.  There isn’t a person, from the bottom of an organizational chart to the top of that chart who works in a nonprofit where employees—call them case managers, advisors, SCOH workers, whatever—have a responsibility to oversee a specified number of clients who doesn’t know that the number of clients per employee is well beyond what one individual can handle responsibly.  Which means every executive director of such an organization is complicit in allowing a system to continue that can’t possibly guarantee the promises the organization makes.  Willful blindness.  The board, too, which should be receiving regular reports and outcome studies, knows, as well.  The willfully blind leading the willfully blind.

The executive director who, and board which, allow the organization to chase money instead of mission in order to keep the organization afloat?  The board which allows an underperforming executive director to stay on three, five, 10 years?  The executive director who puts up excuse after excuse for an underperforming employee?  Board members who don’t hold one another accountable for their fundraising responsibilities, their financial oversight responsibilities or simply attending meetings?  My list could go on and on, as could yours.  All preferring to look the other way than make the effort and expend the time to correct these deleterious practices, practices that can in the long and/or short run harm the organization and the ability to deliver mission.  Willful blindness.

In May 2011, the Supreme Court decided the case of Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., a civil patent infringement case.  Obviously, the material substance of this case has little to do with most nonprofits.  In its decision, the Court helped everyone who wishes to lead a legal, moral and ethical life understand willful blindness and the extent to which a court of law might exonerate a person who claims s/he did not know about—that is, willful blindness–the criminal conduct under question.  The Court reached the conclusion that “a willfully blind defendant is one who takes deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of wrongdoing and who can almost be said to have actually known the critical facts.”

The art of “it isn’t really there if I don’t acknowledge it out loud” is well-perfected in too many nonprofit organizations and at multiple levels of their leadership.  We could try and convene a Parliamentary Commission to declare, in headlines around the world, that too many volunteer and paid leaders of United States’ nonprofits are unfit to lead these organizations.  Or, we could take a deep breath, be honest with ourselves and our organizations, stop avoiding and take deliberate and swift corrective action.  Fortunately for the nonprofit sector, willful blindness is easily corrected.

But of late, I’ve come to realize that I shouldn’t be worrying about the future, as the problem is already here.  It may even be of crisis proportions.

Etymologically, philanthropy comes from the Greek philanthropia meaning humanity and benevolence; more specifically, it derives from phil meaning loving and anthropos  meaning mankind.  Put it all together, and today we define philanthropy as actively working to promote the well being of humankind.  This may involve the expenditure of money—a narrow interpretation that too many bring to philanthropy.  But more often than not it involves those simple acts of kindness, done on a small and personal scale, such as helping a neighbor, or a large and perhaps impersonal scale, such as tutoring underserved children, building houses for the homeless or serving food to the hungry.  It may be stuffing envelopes or serving on a nonprofit board.  But it is done because the doer wants to and not to win points won, curry favor, build resumes.  It is done because philanthropists want to see the lot of all humankind be the best it can be.

Earlier this week, I was in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, a county that shares borders with Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, and Somerset County, home of theFlight 93 Memorial.  Greensburg, where I actually was and which is Westmoreland’s county seat, is approximately 33 miles from Pittsburgh and 45 miles from the Flight 93 Memorial.

While in Greensburg, I was told of the young man who is earning his Eagle Scout by raising money to furnish 15 benches to be placed throughout the “Remember Me Rose Garden.”  When people challenged him, suggesting that this was too big a project for one person to take on—each bench costs $350—he was firm in his belief that this was the project for him.  As of the other day, he had six benches to go.  That is philanthropy.

But back in Westmoreland County, 15 miles from its county seat, I was told the KKK is holding meetings and railing about illegal aliens.  That is not philanthropy.  The Marcellus Shale Field runs a huge swath of land starting in southern New York State, running through Pennsylvania (including Somerset and Westmoreland Counties, among many others) and West Virginia, with bits in Kentucky, Ohio and into Canada.  Some players in the fracking industry, I am told, are engaging in human trafficking to secure its workers.  That is not philanthropy.  But they are the stories I was told in the course of a four-hour visit.

On my drive, I heard a very brief interview with Rodney King about his new book, The Riot Within:  My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption.  The reporter asked King about the remarks he made in an effort to stop the riots that ensued after his beating.  “People,” he said, “I just want to say, … can we all get along?”  King explained that his attorneys had prepared a much angrier statement for him to read, but he couldn’t do it.  He didn’t want to fan the fires; so, he spoke, impromptu, he said, echoing the teachings of his mother and of his upbringing in a multicultural faith and community, where the rule was you didn’t threaten people in your house.  “America’s my house,” he said in the NPR interview.  That’s philanthropy!

I recently volunteered for my local MS Walk, charged with registering volunteers and ensuring that key tasks were covered. There weren’t enough of us, so people were forced to do triple and quadruple duty to get everything done.  I ran into a friend there who is the executive director of a nonprofit which requires frequent travel.  She’s in school, retooling for her third career.  Two of her children are grown and out of the house, one is a senior in high school, and her fourth is a paraplegic who lives nearby.  As a mother, she runs an annual charity event in honor of her daughter who was catastrophically injured in a sledding accident.  In its 10^th year, it has raised over $1M, distributed it to organizations that do spinal cord injury research, providing care and quality of life improvements.  She’d already been to church that morning and was now walking to help stamp out MS.  Why was she there?  Because one of her board members has MS.  That’s a philanthropist!

All too frequently, I hear people citing as the reason they aren’t philanthropists.  They just simply don’t have the time to care about and for mankind.  Really?  According to the New York Times, in 2010 the average American watched 34 hours of  TV a WEEK!  When I ask board members, what’s the average number of hours it takes to be a good board member for your organization, the #1 answer is 7-10 hours a month.  According to Ipsos Media, in 2011, 78% of Americans were connected to the web and were spending, on average, 30 hours a week online watching videos, shopping, sharing photos, etc.  Oh, people have time.  Time isn’t what appears to be lacking; it’s the benevolence, the caring, the love.

We have a choice:  we can be a society where in the 21^st century the KKK can still live, trafficking in young girls is allowed, people can go hungry, folks don’t know how to read.  Or, we can care about humankind—all of it.  Are there enough philanthropists in our house?

During this same time frame, we also came to understand the unique needs of adult learners, and pedagogy shifted yet again. Having male and female and adult and traditional-aged learners in the same class became, and remains, a challenge for any teacher truly concerned about helping her students learn and not simply interested in passing a class period.  As a result of this research, we came to understand that the path to success was not the same for all.

We seem, however, not to have carried this knowledge into the workplace and made the “leap” to understanding that if people need different paths to be successful in school, perhaps there need to be different options to be successful in the workplace.  I hadn’t realized just how true this is until I started reading “Quiet:  The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain.   As a true introvert, a pronouncement of such to an audience that doesn’t really know me causes laughter, disbelief and argument, I was more than intrigued by the title of this book.  It hasn’t let me down.

This is not an academic book, nor is it, as Cain herself says, a work based on her own scientific research. Rather, it is more a compilation of stories, her own and that of others, her reading of the research done by others, information gathering, etc.  No original research presented here, but equally provocative

Early on in the book, she reports on her visit to Harvard’s School of Business (HBS) and her conversations with self-proclaimed HBS student introverts who, nevertheless, must participate in a pedagogical approach where group activity dominates.  Having a niece who graduated from HBS a year ago (Cain points out that introverts are frequently far more likely to reveal personal facts in the impersonal world of tweets and blogs, despite the fact that these media are read by thousands of people, than they are in a face-to-face conversation; so true!), this description of a culture where  students must do all of their work in groups, eat in groups, go to Germany for Oktoberfest in groups, and other vacation trips in groups, rang completely true.  Just to be on the safe side, however, I had my niece read the section.  She laughed multiple times while reading, the kind of laughter that comes with “been there, done that” recognition, and allowed that while it painted a more extreme version of the reality, the principle was correct.  And why does HBS take this approach?  Because it believes this–group work– is the path to success in the bastions of corporate life where HBS sends most of its graduates.

But it isn’t just corporate America that embraces the model of group work; nonprofit America has done so as well.  Everyone works in teams; we brainstorm as groups all of the time.  We have meeting after meeting, frequently to discuss the same thing we discussed at our last meeting, inching forward ever so slowly.  The rage is open workspaces, great big open spaces with lots of different work stations; in some cases, folks don’t even have “assigned” worksites, just grab whatever suits your mood that day.  This, the theory goes, allows, everyone to feel part of the team–and equal; no walls divide the group—or provide for quiet.  This works for some people, perhaps all of those extroverts out there, but not all.

Contrary to “common knowledge” that is frequently spouted, extroverts do not vastly outnumber introverts (I’ve seen statements that place the number of introverts at less than a third).  The only scientifically based data I’ve found shows quite a different phenomenon.  In 1998, the producers of Myers Briggs, with its I and E “diagnosis”, took a national random sample and found that America is made up of 50.7% introverts and 49.3% extroverts.  They also found that males tend toward introversion (54.1% versus 45.9% extroverts), while women trend in the opposite direction (52.5% extroverts, 47.5% introverts).  Interesting statistics given that men still dominate in the position of for-profit CEO while seemingly embracing the team approach to getting things done!

But research shows that productivity is, in fact, diminished as a result of collaborative efforts, as the noise generated by and the extra effort needed to pay attention to the needs, wants and idiosyncrasies of group members, for examples, detract from productivity.  Cain cites the Coding War Games, a research effort to differentiate the qualities of the best and worst computer programmers.  It wasn’t years of experience, compensation or amount of time needed to do the work (those who had no errors in their work took less time than those who made errors) that contributed to the ten-fold better performance by the best than the worst.  No, the differentiator was that the best had “privacy, personal space, control over their physical environment, and freedom from interruption.”   Sounds like the ideal workspace of an introvert!  The founder of 37signals, a company that produces web-based apps “for collaboration, sharing information, and decision making,” ironically recommends “No-Talk Thursdays,” where employees are not allowed to speak to one another!  Oh, the lengths we might go! (Yes, Dr. Seuss was an introvert!  Along with Steve Wozniak, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Marie Curie, Warren Buffet, and Charles Darwin, to mention but a few greats.)

As in successful learning, one size does not fit all in workplace performance.  How many great minds and creative geniuses did we lose along the way when we were forcing all students to learn the same way, when we assumed all were auditory learners as opposed to some auditory and others visual learners?  Too many to count, too depressing to contemplate!  How many high performers are being devalued by their supervisors because we force all employees to conform to the latest fads and hot trends, work the way we think they should instead of in the manner most conducive to them?  In these economically tough times when we cannot necessarily financially compensate our employees as well as we should want, we can give them the workplace environment that matches their needs and maximizes their productivity and satisfaction.  We’d be fools to do otherwise.

Rosie the Riveter

Newsweek’s cover story for its March 12 issue was entitled “The Rise of China’s Billionaire Tiger Women,” written by Yale’s own “tiger mom” Amy Chua.  Of the four women featured, three were aided in their rise by their husbands’ position, wealth and knowledge.  But I’m truly not taking anything away from them.  Back home, there are certainly American female billionaires, but Newsweek didn’t highlight them, preferring to examine America’s women’s standing in other proficiencies in comparison to those of other countries.  For example:

• women’s participation in the workforce:  Burundi=#1; US=#60
• women’s math scores:  Taiwan=#1; US=#31
• number of Miss Universe winners:  US=#1

The US ranks 71^st in women representatives in legislative bodies:  only 17% of members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate are women.  One article in the issue stated, “Research shows that even women with stellar credentials often lack the confidence to put themselves forward, while men with far inferior qualifications show no such hesitations.”  So, it is women’s failure to self-promote that holds them back? Is that the message we want to immortalize?

Recent research suggests, perhaps, something else.  Zenger|Folkman, self-described as “at the forefront of leadership training programs” for the great big companies, recently took a look at 7,280 corporate leaders who had completed their “Extraordinary Leader 360 assessment.”  Of this sample, 64% (4,651) are male, 36% female; 64% are managers and executives in the US, while the remainder comes from all over the world; and 78% of the males hold top management/executive/senior team member positions, while only 22% of the females do.

Overall, these women leaders were rated significantly—and for you statisticians reading this, we are talking statistically significant (and for you non-statisticians, this means that the differences noted did not happen by chance)—more positively in their leadership effectiveness than were males, as measured on a 49 item index.  Additionally, this dominance held in 12 out of 15 organizational function areas, such as sales, operations, finance and accounting, product development, engineering, IT, and more.  The three functional areas in which males were ranked more positively as leaders were customer services, facilities management and maintenance and administrative/clerical.  Further, on 12 of 16 competencies, such as “takes initiative,” “drives for results,” “solves problems and analyzes issues,” and “inspires and motivates others,” women were again rated significantly more positively than men by everyone:  mangers, peers, direct reports, and others.  In only one are of competency, “develops strategic perspective,” were males rated significantly more positively than females.  (For the three remaining areas of competency, there was no significant difference between the two groups.)

So, women make good, strong, capable, trusted, and respected leaders.  And yet, according to the 2009 “White House Project Report:  Benchmarking Women’s Leadership,” academia had the highest percentage of women leaders at a mere 23%, followed closely by journalism (22%), nonprofits (21%) and sports (21%), with an average across all sectors of 18%.

Findings on the women leaders working in the nonprofit sector are of particular interest here.  Despite the fact that consistently, estimates place the nonprofit workforce at 66%-75% female (the White House report says 73%), the report found:

• only 45% of nonprofits are headed by women; this number shrinks to 21% when an organization’s budget reaches $25 million or more;
• men continue to hold the majority of senior leadership positions and continue to receive greater salaries than women;
• specifically, in 2009, female heads of nonprofits earned only $.66 to their male peers’ $1.00, actually down from that 2000 statistic of $.71 to his dollar; and
• women make up 43% of all nonprofit board members, but sit in only 33% of the board seats at nonprofits with budgets of $25 million or more.

None of these data points were new in 2009; that’s the sad part.  These disparities have been well known for quite some time.  But what we have today (by which I mean in the last 30 years or so) is a growing body of solid research on which to move change forward, yet it has not happened.  Ever expanding research tells us that women are capable, exceptional leaders, even better than men in the fast majority of skills needed to be that great and greatly respected leader; reality says no one is paying any attention to the evidence.

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2011 study of “High Net Worth Women’s Philanthropy” found that in almost 90% of high net worth households, women on their own or with an equal partner make the philanthropic decisions.  In addition, they spend more time doing due diligence than men, more likely to have an annual giving strategic, seek to be more involved, and are more likely to assess their giving each year rather than just keep on giving to the same ‘ole, same ‘ole.  They are actively engaged leaders in this segment of their lives as well.

It is time for the nonprofit sector to wake up and embrace its female (not feminine) side, and to do this from top to bottom on the organizational chart and regardless of mission, operating budget, total assets, age, whatever.  We claim to worry so about not wasting our financial assets.  Why are we so willing to waste our female human resource assets?

Congratulations!

Today is your day.

You can learn what is right

And be off and away!

 You have brains in your head.

Yet dumb stuff you say.

You can do yourself harm

You can steer yourself

Any direction you choose.

But you might crash and burn 

If your mouth leads your brain.

Oh!

The stupid things smart people say!

 Thank you, Dr. Seuss and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”

One of the things some professors do as a semester draws near its end, and they are immersed in grading papers and exams, is to share “would you believe” stories gleaned from those very same papers and exams.  One classic answer to the essay question of why the population increased so much in 19^th century Britain: “People were having sex more.”

Students who say stupid things turn into adults who say stupid things; it simply stands to reason.  But in a situation that isn’t fraught with the stress of an exam, why don’t people at least listen to what they say, evaluate it, and then retract their stupidities?  Especially when these are generally smart people saying dumb things.  The end of the semester is coming, and I’m reviewing the amazingly stupid things real life people, holding respectable positions in the nonprofit sector, have said to us.  Honestly, none of the following is made up.

Interviewing for the director of development position, the executive director told the candidate:  “We don’t really need a development department.  You know lots of rich people, right?”

A newly appointed executive director was asked the size of her organization’s budget.  Rather tentatively, she responded, “By budget do you mean the number of people we serve?”  Come on, board!  What questions are you asking your executive director candidates?  Clearly, you cannot assume certain things; you must question, dig and know the minimum capabilities of your candidates.  But that, of course, presumes that you know what to ask!

An executive director sent us the following question through our website:  “One of our board members is a very important executive – can he send his assistant to board meetings instead?”  Sure, if you want a puppet board!  I cannot help but wonder what this organization thinks the role of a board is.  Does this executive director actually want a board that is a partner in moving the organization forward or a board in name only?  If the latter, why waste anyone’s time with real meetings; have a five minute phone call and call it a meeting!  Clearly, this board and executive director do not understand the roles and responsibilities of a nonprofit board, how the board is supposed to operate and how a board is supposed to work with—and not for—an executive director.

This statement, regardless of what it is that isn’t being revealed, cracks me up, and then dumbfounds me:  “If we just don’t tell the funder and everything will be fine!”  Really?  Do people actually think the best policy is to lie and hide things from a funder?  While, yes, dumb things can come out of funders’ mouths (stay tuned) just like the rest of us, they are not routinely dumb people.  They can figure out when two plus two isn’t adding up to four.  Plus, have you heard of this thing called integrity?  It is important to be straightforward and honest with funders, to tell them what is really going on.  And if things aren’t going according to plan and promise, the response isn’t to cover up, engage in subterfuge, but to explain what really happened, why you think it happened and what you propose to do going forward to try and do better going.  Funders get this; they just don’t take kindly, and rightly so, to lies.

There are right ways and wrong ways to handle transitions; this is not definitely in the latter camp!  “We need a board member to volunteer to be the acting director when we fire the director.  Who here doesn’t have a job?”  Way to increase the chances of a successful transition and future for the organization.  Why bother to worry about needed skills and ability when you can just get a warm body to fill the most important paid position on an organization chart. Just don’t scratch your head and wonder why did things go wrong when the organization starts to crumble.  It’s because you chose any body rather than the right person.

Perhaps one of my all time favorites, which we hear, in some version, far too often, is this plea from an executive director:  “I want to hire one of your consultants to come down here and tell my board it needs to adopt the strategic plan I wrote.”  What don’t you understand a) about strategic planning and b) the role of the board?  Apparently, quite a lot!  Maybe we should come to the organization and tell the board to fire you!

As noted above, funders, too, can say stupid things.  A client seeking a grant to support the development of a marketing plan is told by a funder, “Just get a strategic plan done.”  While there is absolutely a relationship between a strategic and a marketing plan, they are absolutely not interchangeable.  Nor are strategic and business plans, which is another good one:  Grantee:  “We need support to do a business plan.”  Funder:  “I’ll give you a grant to do a strategic plan.”  This may be more naïve than ignorant, but it counts in my book.

From the board president to a very excited, soon to be stunned, executive director of an organization that is anything but flush with money when she tells them about a very prominent, multi-millionaire and his wife want to come out and see their program:  That’s great, but the board wants to meet to decide what we’re doing about a major donor program first, so tell him we’ll call him in a few months.”

That’s right up there with the board members who don’t want to tell the donor who is giving the organization money to buy the building in which the organization currently resides that the building is no longer for sale.  “Let’s tell him after he has given us the gift.   We don’t want to scare him off. ”  Yup, it is absolutely a best practice to string donors along, make them dance to your music and set forth false pretenses.  It is the way to win donors and influence repeat giving!

I left so many great lines on the cutting room floor, but I simply couldn’t include them all.  Maybe I’ll do a reprise in the future.  We all need a good laugh every day, not just now and again.  So, please, add the stupidities you’ve heard and keep us all laughing.

As Dr. Seuss said:  “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.”

While I have known a few founders who have recognized when it was time for them to go in order to allow the organization to move on, and I have even known a few who, almost from the very beginning, were putting into place the path to their departure.  They are the exceptions.  Most often, it falls to the board to recognize when the time has come to replace the founder and to move him/her out.  Want to take a guess how well this works?

Here is my tale of three different organizations, each of which has failed to removed its founder executive director to the detriment of the whole. Organization A has been around for almost 20 years.  It was founder led until several years ago, at which point the board hired its first, non-founder executive director.  The board, which was (and remains 90%) all friends and family of the founder, many of whom had been on the board from the very beginning, did not do what it should have done:  thrown a big fundraising event to honor the founder, his legacy and his departure, and then said good-bye.  No, the board, in all of its “wisdom” allowed the founder to stay in the organization and put him on the board.  Where he, his friends and family, remain.

Just how easy do you think it is for the new executive director to create her own culture within the organization? to introduce new ideas and approaches for doing things, both administratively and programmatically? to develop independent relationships with board members?  It is, in so many ways, akin to the stereotypical buttinsky mother-in-law living next door to her daughter-in-law—only worse.  Smart or not, beloved or not, successful or not, boards have a nigh impossible time not listening to what a founder has to say.  Far too often, boards do not understand that no one, and that includes a founder, owns a nonprofit.  Far too often, they fail to understand that it is a board’s collective responsibility to determine, after careful thought, reflection, discussion, and an assessment of facts—not a founder’s want—what is best for the organization and not a founder’s responsibility.  Instead, it allows the founder to continue to control and dictate what the organization will do from a seat on the board!  All the while eviscerating the executive director whom they are paying to manage the organization.

Organization B is in its 20^th year, and the founder executive director still runs the organization—and the board.  He likes to say that he knows he may be part of the problem; he likes to say that he wants the board to do its job.  But the evidence is all to the contrary.  The board has never created a job description for the executive director and there is no annual performance review.  The founder executive director has dug a moat around the staff and the board may only cross over with his permission; attempts to negotiate the moat on one’s own bring a quick and sharp rebuke.

The founder barks; the board follows orders.  Mention of the risks this situation causes for the organization when the founder executive director does leave is totally ignored. The board cannot answer a question about anything—from clients served to money coming in to who are major donors—without looking to the executive director for the answer.  It could not sustain the organization while it did a search for a new executive director, nor has it made one step towards creating a succession plan for either a planned or emergency transition.  There is parking lot talk among some board members who have become increasingly unhappy about how things are going at the organization and with how the founder executive director is performing.  But all are too scared too say anything publicly.  Really?  And yet, this organization and mission are at grave risk of collapsing once the founder leaves. Is that truly what this founder wants? what the board wants?  Time to wake up and smell the coffee, folks.

And then there is Organization C, and you might be surprised just how common this scenario is:  founder establishes the nonprofit on his/her property—the basement, the guesthouse, the lot next door, etc.  As with Organization A, the founder leaves the position of executive director and migrates to the board.  The new executive director comes in and tries to run the organization, but everywhere she turns, there is the founder:  my property, my organization, my dream, MY WAY.  And like the spoiled child, things must be done her way or she will take her marbles home.  The founder and the board president bypass the executive director; the founder doesn’t like what she sees, she takes it to the board—her old cronies.  The board, blinded by the halo that seems to hang over all founders, regardless of whether deserved, views this as a problem with the executive director and not the situation it created by allowing the founder to hang around, fires the executive director.  And so it begins its path of hiring a series of unsuccessful executive directors.  When does the light bulb go off that maybe, just maybe, it isn’t possible to be that poor at hiring? When does the board ask whether there might be another reason for needing to dismiss executive director after executive director?  Time to step up to the plate, people.

A board’s loyalty must be to the mission, not a person.  It’s responsibility is to make sure that the organization has the capacity to do the very best job it can on delivering the promises of that mission.  To do that job, it cannot afford to be cowed by anyone.

One of the most frequent complaints I hear from individuals seeking a board position is that they don’t know how to go about securing one.  Think about it:  where do you find these listings?  There are some sites, such as The Nonprofit Center’s findnonprofitjobs.org, and volunteer sites, such as volunteermatch.org, where you can find listings for board members and other volunteer positions.  But no matter how much of a wired society we are, we still are not conditioned to look for volunteer opportunities on the web.  I have rarely seen a nonprofit’s website posting board position openings, even when they have a section of their website devoted to employment opportunities with the organization.  So, what is that EPBM supposed to do?  Find an interesting nonprofit, through a chance encounter, attending an event, cruising the Internet?  Pick up the phone, call the executive director (because the board president’s or chair of the governance committee’s phone number won’t be listed), say you are interested in exploring serving on the board and ask about the on-boarding process.

And then be prepared to wait!  It can be weeks, and from some reports, even months, before that EPBM hears back from the GNB (which would lead me to believe it isn’t really a GNB, but more like a LTGNB—less than great nonprofit board--which you should avoid).  There is no excuse for not responding to an on-boarding inquiry immediately.  There are stories of EPBM leaving messages and never getting a return call.  Perhaps even worse is the executive director who responds enthusiastically to the EPBM, says s/he or the board president will be in touch in the next few days, and weeks go by with nothing.  “Just checking in” emails from the EPBM to the executive director will, in return, receive responses that say “trying to get hold of my board president” or “just give me a little more time” or “on deadline; will be in touch next week.”  Next week, a little more time, all come and go, and that EPBM is less eager, hurt stops checking-in.  Way to go organization!  Turned off that board candidate with initiative, follow-through, and excitement.  Who wanted her anyway?

If contact is made and the next step—talking with the board president, meeting with the governance committee chair, being interviewed by a small group of board members and the executive director, whatever that first date is—clearly laid out, it frequently takes weeks to set it up.  If that time lag is the result of the EPBM’s schedule, that is fine.  But if it is the result of the GNB not having its act together, which is the more common culprit, it is anything but fine.  Even worse is rescheduling with the EPBM again and again and again.  Long periods of silence between contacts can really discourage an EPBM.  The appearance of disorganization can really frustrate an EPBM and push him to consider other alternatives, no matter how interested he might be in the mission of that GNB’s organization.

In preparation for that meeting, a true EPBM will do further research on the organization’s website.  Now that she knows there is real possibility of joining this board, she will be interested in learning something about the members of the board, those folks who might become her future colleagues.  Wait! There is no listing on the website of board members.  How could that be?  Oh, wait! Finally found it.  But there is just a list of names.  How do I know who this William Smith is or that Jane Brown? How do I know whether this is a strategically crafted board or the friends and family of the executive director? How do I know what kind of brain trust this board really is?  Is this a group of which I really want to be part?  Why aren’t they telling the public?  So, so frustrating!

And now for the next hurdle:  the mandatory give.  Hey all you EPBMs out there:  how many of you have been salivating at the opportunity before you to hook up with that GNB only to be hit with the number of zeros that must follow the first number on your annual contribution check?  You can feel the pin bursting your balloon of enthusiasm.  And you leave, hurt, deflated, dejected, and, sooner or later, angry with that stupid nonprofit for not seeing and appreciating what you would have brought to the board but really only wanting your money.  I judge nonprofits harshly who turn EPBM’s away simply because they can’ write the right sized check.  They will never see a check from me.

It is one thing to turn an EPBM down for board service if the fit isn’t right, the skills present and those sought don’t mesh, the time commitment can’t be there, etc.  It is quite another to turn off an EPBM because the process is disorganized, slow, exclusive, etc.  As is true of so many things in the nonprofit sector, if one nonprofit does something wrong or badly, the whole sector suffers.  We cannot afford to have the poor processes of some ruin the board recruitment prospects for the whole.

Boards must get their recruitment acts together.  There are simply too many great EPBM seeking GNB that the NS (nonprofit sector) can’t afford to lose.

Today, many of my peers are sharing my angst over tightrope walkers, but they are the ones on the rope.   The economy of the last three years has thrown into vivid relief the paucity of most nonprofit salaries.  Not that it was hard to see this before.  But when nonprofit employees by the dozens have to go out and get second jobs just to cover basic expenses, the perils are getting out of control.

I had a heart wrenching conversation on this topic with a very thoughtful executive director of a social justice organization.  She wanted, desperately, to pay her employees a more competitive wage, but she knew that in order to do that, she’d need to cut back on the scope of programming.  What’s an executive director to do:  pay employees what their skill and experience should demand and reduce the number of clients served and the depth and breadth of an organization’s impact or continue to treat nonprofit employees as second class citizens in order to maintain the broadest impact for the mission?  I feel vertigo coming on.

The truth is, this isn’t a philosophical dilemma that should only be keeping the executive director up at night.  This is a dilemma with which the board should be grappling—along with the executive director.  It is the executive director’s job, as part of her/his human resources responsibilities, to be the advocate for his/her employees, and to make the case for improved salaries (and benefits, if needed, though I’m increasingly pleased with the scope of benefits I see nonprofits providing these days).

It is the executive director’s job to present this tension between just compensation and scope of services, otherwise it is the knee-jerk reaction of too many boards to simply say, “We don’t have the money,” and move on to the next item on the agenda.  It is the executive director’s job, because most boards simply won’t do it on their own, to hold board members’ feet to the fire, and take up the cause of the employees.  As executive directors, we cannot let the well being of our staff take a back seat to the lassitude, at worse, or exhaustion, at best, of board members.

It is, however, hard to be the advocate for improved compensation for staff if your own salary is seriously out of line with the rest of the employees.  For example, I recently looked at the 990 of an unnamed organization; according to the 2010 990, the CEO made $551,00 in total compensation.  All told, there were nine senior managers making over $100,000 each in total compensation, but the senior manager immediately under the CEO made $167,000 less than she did.  Given that this is a very young organization, no one has been there long enough for tenure to explain that big a discrepancy.  Putting aside (most of) my socialist leanings, as they simply don’t fly even in the preponderance of the nonprofit sector, I cannot help but be aghast that the leader of a nonprofit, and the board of a nonprofit, would allow such an imbalanced compensation structure.

For most organizations, it is, ultimately, a zero sum game when it comes to the monies available to support the mission work:  more money for programs means less money for salaries; more money for one employee means less for others.  But what those monies are, how they will be gotten and how they will be distributed, (e.g., programs, salaries, equipment, etc.) is never a done deal until after the goals are set and the sources of money identified.  Until that point, the philosophy is totally in the control of the board, to be influenced by the executive director.  We know the chances of success in writing a grant to pay for an increase in salaries.  We know that to increase salaries an organization needs to have unrestricted income, which is least likely to come from a foundation or corporation, and most likely to be gotten in one of three ways:  fees for services, individual gifts or income from a social enterprise.  What do these three sources of income have in common? The board needs to play a key role in each.  The board must tackle that philosophical question of whether to charge for services or not; board members must cultivate relationships with individual donors and build their sense of loyalty and commitment to the organization so that they will want to pay staff decent salaries in order to attract the best qualified to deliver the best for the mission; and boards must determine whether the organization can take that calculated risk to invest money in a social venture in order to reap returns—and improved salaries—down the road.  The executive director, no matter how much of a “superperson” s/he is, cannot do this alone.

But before a board is willing to do any of this, it has to understand that nonprofit employees deserve market-based wages, deserve to be compensated for their knowledge, experience and wisdom and deserve the respect that comes from being able to live a comfortable life on the salary the organization pays.  It is the executive director’s job to do this convincing.  Then, together, the board and executive director must decide how this goal will be achieved.