I’m tired of nonprofits being in service to and subservient to philanthropy. I’m weary and beaten down by the business-as-usual practices in the nonprofit world — it’s working for exactly no one. Not the communities and missions we serve, our nonprofit organizations, or our colleagues at foundations. Our world needs extraordinary nonprofits and foundations to stand up to the urgent and complex challenges that communities and the planet face.
The time has come for nonprofit professionals to speak up, speak out, and unite with philanthropy toward a brighter future fueled by risk-taking, humility, and courage. We need to change ourselves first if we hope foundations will change with us.
Talented and committed as nonprofit executives and foundation officials are, we have not reached our potential, and that is because of the dysfunction in our relationships with each other and our relationship with money.
As nonprofit leaders, we are all familiar with the frustrations we go through to raise funds for our organizations. The rejections and disappointments, the opaque and subjective application processes, the staggering amount of time wasted, the deafening silence from foundations, and the sleepless nights we endure, sweating out unpredictable cash flow caused by unpredictable grant makers.
Our foundation colleagues are also drowning — under overflowing inboxes and piles of applications and reports that are full of obtuse language that take a Ph.D. to decipher and the patience of Job to read and digest. They are hamstrung by and frustrated with their trustees’ outdated expectations, attitudes, and policies that don’t match the reality of today’s nonprofit world.
We know it’s broken, so why don’t we fix it? The short answer is power. As nonprofits, we feel we don’t have any power to effect change. We believe that all of the power is in the hands of the philanthropy professionals, trustees, and foundations, those with the money and the checkbooks. Nonprofits do have power, and we need to use it to build the kind of partnerships we want and need.
But first, as nonprofits, we have to admit to our own dysfunctional relationship to money, power, and influence. We overvalue money as the most important input to social change. We act as if money alone can help end homelessness, make elders feel less lonely, expose kids to art and music, make the world greener, change unfair policies, undo the forces of racism and xenophobia and sexism, and over all make the world better.
We know that money alone doesn’t create those outcomes; we do. We contribute leadership, labor, hope, optimism, creativity, expertise, perseverance, networks, first-hand experience, and many other skills and talents that build vibrant, beautiful communities on a healthy planet. So do our grant-making colleagues: They are more than their pocketbooks.
But we continue to overvalue money, and that has created ways of working that burn out talented people and impede success. The need for money to fuel our organizations is real, and the power imbalance caused by money is real, but it doesn’t need to result in this disappointing behavior by nonprofits. Among our bad habits, we:
- Trash-talk other nonprofits and bad-mouth foundations.
- Respond defensively when given feedback and ignore good advice.
- Believe (and act like) we are entitled to funds.
- Say what we think foundations want to hear, whether it’s true or not.
- Hide our challenges, setbacks, and needs from foundations.
- Fail to follow grant guidelines and waste time and money by applying for grants that don’t fit.
- Take funding rejections personally.
- Act like martyrs and perpetuate a scarcity mentality.
- Demonstrate an inferiority complex in relation to foundations.
- Revert to “funding-pitch mode” too frequently.
Today’s broken system forces us to act in these ways to survive and keep our organizations afloat. But we also know we are better than this behavior. We need to stop overvaluing money and combat the distrust and double standards that keep us from being our most effective selves. Here’s how we are going to do this.
Refuse to Perpetuate the Cycle of Bad Behavior
We must act as champions of other nonprofits and foundations, lead the way by asserting our power, and be the kind of partners we dream about having. We must:
- Skip the gloss and present challenges honestly by budgeting real costs and proposing realistic targets.
- Push back on foundations when they question if they are getting enough impact for their dollars; they are getting far more work than their dollars cover.
- Value our time and foundations’ time and don’t apply for grants unless there’s a real match.
- Believe there is enough to go around; there is. Especially when we take a big-picture view on issues and invite partners, both nonprofits and foundations, to work together on solutions, instead of pitching only our own organizations.
Make the First Move
Nonprofits need to stop waiting for foundations to act like peers and real partners.
Many foundation colleagues have told me they have offered peer partnership, but few nonprofits say they have witnessed it. This tells me that nonprofits need to speak up and spell out more clearly what true partnership looks like, acts like, and feels like for us. Foundations are not mind readers. We need to ask for what we want, whether that’s multiyear, unrestricted, general operating support; or a time-unlimited partnership that goes until we meet the ambitious goal we set together with our foundation partners; or a commitment to openly share our organizational challenges with one another and an expectation that feedback, advice, and problem-solving will flow both ways.
Dream a Bigger Dream
When I talk to foundations and nonprofits about what they want most, they often talk about the demise of character counts on grant applications, fewer required reports, trustees who understand what change requires, and the end of the foundation obsession with not funding overhead. These are good dreams, but if we are honest, these are only small, incremental improvements in a largely broken system. If we sit back and close our eyes and imagine the best possible nonprofit sector, one that harnesses the power of the more than 1 million nonprofits and 105,000 foundations, we can come up with bigger, bolder, more beautiful dreams. We need to aspire to partnerships that look entirely different than what we know today. The superpower of the nonprofit world is turning dreams of a better future into reality. Let’s start with bigger dreams, build epic partnerships, and see success multiply.
Jane Leu, Jessamyn Shams-Lau, and Vu Le, executive director of Rainier Valley Corps, wrote Unicorns Unite: How Nonprofits and Foundations Can Build EPIC Partnerships.