To the Editors:
As a right-of-center person who has served in many roles with nonprofits, I was pleased to read Eboo Patel’s latest column “Lessons From Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger on the Dangers of Ideological Rigidity” (January 16).
The issues he raises about rigid adherence to orthodoxy in the nonprofit world aren’t new, but they have grown worse in recent times. I’ve seen the problem throughout my career, including two specific instances in 2013 and 2019, when I attended conferences held by the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership. The themes centered on “Critical Conversations” and “Critical Perspectives” on nonprofit governance.
To me, those titles implied an open discussion of nonprofit orthodoxy, including various ways in which it might be questioned. Instead, the conferences in my view were exercises in blindly rejecting everything about existing nonprofit orthodoxy, while assuming only specific alternatives and solutions were valid. Rather than approaching the conferences with receptivity and adjusting when needed, there was, as Patel explains in his op-ed, a “blind loyalty to dogma.”
I often find myself in search of people who can examine the nonprofit sector from a theoretical and practical perspective. Patel seems to be such a person. We might not agree politically, but it’s possible we both could learn from one another.
Michael Wyland
Owner and Partner
Sumption & Wyland
