My name is Nonprofit Curmudgeon, and I am an anonymous coward.

Anonymity sucks.

That's the official finding of Tom Belford of the Agitator. He's a guy that I respect deeply, and he's taken exception to anonymous blogs about charities, among other things.

I have my reasons for blogging anonymously, but if I explained them, I wouldn't be anonymous anymore, and...well, I have my reasons for blogging anonymously.

So, if you decide to go on reading my blog, please heed Belford's denunciation:

• Anonymity used to attack or manipulate springs from cowardice and/or malice.
• It is the antithesis of integrity.
• It is the enemy of authentic discourse.
• Whatever merit the message might hold.

And please don't say that nobody ever warned you about what a bad, bad lot I am.

Putting the "inert" back into "inertia."

Here's another one from the grapevine:

An organization received a substantial (but not unlimited) grant from a foundation to help small, struggling nonprofits in their city that needed IT assistance.

The team very carefully polled members of the targeted organizations about their most pressing technology problems. They made site visits; they made phone calls; they passed out surveys at meetings; they used email and online tools to gather input.

The vast majority of the nonprofits had no technology support professionals on staff. Therefore, the team offered hands-on assistance. They also scheduled a series of trainings that were specifically tailored for the decision-makers and administrators in the nonprofit organizations.

Almost nobody showed up for the trainings.

Since the trainings were costly in money and effort, the team attended a meeting of these small, struggling nonprofits. They were put on the agenda, and had an opportunity to ask what they could do to make the trainings more attractive.

Most of the feedback can be summarized this way:

1. "These trainings are too high-level Just solve my IT problems for me."
2. "I don't want to go downtown for the trainings. You should hold the trainings at my office."
3. "You should pay us to attend the trainings."

I definitely understand #1. You have to be a pedagogical genius to design a training for a group with diverse technology problems and diverse levels of technology experience. The odds of putting it together so that everyone will get exactly the information that he needs are very low, and, when in doubt, it's easier to be more abstract and less specific.

I have less patience for #2, but understand that these people are extremely busy. However, do they think that with a finite sum of money, the team can take each training on site to an infinite number of small, struggling nonprofits?

It's #3 that I cannot fathom. What kind of sense of entitlement is operating here?

Taking all three of these together, what I see is not a pretty picture If I were a member of the training team, I'd be tempted to reply, "Oh, and would you like me to come to your office, spoon feed you your lunch, burp you, and wipe your @$$, while I'm at it?"

I'm well aware that most nonprofit workers (especially those employed by small organizations) are drastically overworked, highly stressed, and underpaid. Whenever it's possible, the trainers should be catering to their needs, and making it easy for them to show up for the trainings and get the most out of them. But there are limits.

But can you imagine what it's like for the training team to go back to their supervisors and the foundation and say, "they won't attend the workshops, unless we pay them to show up." What a way to kill a funder's enthusiasm for supporting IT capacity building! What a way to send a message that nonprofit workers are passive, demanding, and averse to professional development!

501(c)Suck gears up for constructive disgruntlement.

Check out this new blog:

501(c)Suck

The subtitle is "Nonprofits, behaving badly," and the blog's avowed purpose is to "critique nonprofits and funders, by name whenever possible, that are unethical, dishonest, corrupt, myopic, ridiculuous, or just generally lame."

It's so nice to see kindred spirits in the blogosphere. Maybe the authors and I can arrange to cover for each other during vacations.

Time for attitude adjustment: Scarcity, entitlement, and nonprofit technology.

The topic on the listserv was the attitude of nonprofit organizations toward the availability of technology services.

Michael Gilbert responded:


"Some of this is...a reflection of the sector's culture of scarcity (about which I've been writing....) We can't afford it - that's a mantra for a great many of us. How to fight that, given how it's a reflection of the larger culture, is not at all obvious to me.

"Furthermore, as my friend and colleague Put Barber has written, we also have a problem with a culture of entitlement in our sector. Nonprofits expect to get things for free. On the surface, this may seem to be the opposite of the culture of scarcity, but I see it as the flip side of the same coin."


These are wise words. I wish I had an immediate solution, a better response than the cliches that immediately come to mind: wake-up call, paradigm shift, think outside the box.

I've previously said that in our sector really smart people sometimes make stupid decisions based on stupid assumptions. Michael Gilbert and Putnam Barber are suggesting that these assumptions are culture-wide. It's not easy to remake a culture, but cultures do change. We should start with a little self-scrutiny and attitude adjustment.

"Failure is not an option."

Here's another one from the grapevine:(1)

Apparently, a foundation officer who was directing an innovative program to distribute computers to nonprofits and schools across the country declared:

"Failure is not an option."

Oh, really?

Here on Planet Reality, that makes no sense.

First of all, we're talking about information technology. It fails all the time. Sometimes it doesn't do what it was designed to do, and sometimes what it was designed to do turns out to be irrelevant to the organization and the communities that are being served.

Secondly, we're talking about an innovative program. If you are truly doing something new, then you need to accept that some aspects of it may fail. Even if your model has been extensively tested, there's risk involved in bringing it to each new setting.

So can we amend this slogan? How about this?

"Failure is possible, but let's try to minimize
it, and to learn from it when it happens."

1) Please keep those emails coming!

Let's not confuse motion with progress.

I sometimes indulge in the fantasy that life is much simpler in for-profit organizations. After all, the desired outcome is to maximize shareholder value. If you can make a profit, then you're succeeding. If you can make a profit without incurring human casualties, harming the environment, or being indicted, then someone will probably even refer to you as a "socially responsible business."

It's a little more complicated than that, but it's not that hard to define success.

On the other hand, there are plenty of nonprofit organizations around that are conspicuous for achievements such as:

• Maintaining longevity

• Raising a lot of money, or managing an endowment

• Accepting awards

• Garnering a distinguished reputation

• Arranging photo opportunities with heads of state

None of these things are (in themselves) successes.

If they help a nonprofit organization achieve desired programmatic outcomes, that's great. If the desired programmatic outcomes are closely related to an explicitly stated organizational mission, that's really great. But if the organization is just sticking around, racking up donations, and basking in the glow of widespread approbation, then it's just going through the motions.

Over time, most for-profit organizations that can't make money have to shut down. However, there are plenty of nonprofits that continue to operate without making any significant progress in the department of outcomes. They often mask this by pointing to all of their activities, but, as they say in the evaluation biz, outputs are not the same as outcomes.

If your mission is to reduce teen pregnancy, then it doesn't matter how much street outreach, peer counseling, home visiting, or curriculum development you do - if you don't reduce teen pregnancy. If you fill a sports arena with 10,000 teens and they cheer wildly while you deliver your message, but you don't reduce teen pregnancy, then you are confusing motion with progress.

There doesn't seem to be an economic principle that causes nonprofit organizations to fold if they don't make any progress toward their missions. I don't know whether the nonprofit sector is a zero-sum game; if it is, then these organizations are simply using up resources and occupying niches that would otherwise be taken by more effective groups.

A blog by any other name.

It recently occurred to me that "Deal With It" would make an even better name for my blog than "Nonprofit Curmudgeon," since the former is turning out to be the underlying theme here.

Most of us have trouble with some area of nonprofit operations. For example, just about anything related to finance or accounting evokes in me a complicated mix of anxiety, irritation, terror, and boredom. I try to compensate for this by being especially nice and respectful to colleagues who are experts in this area. If I calm down and show an interest, they might teach me something I need to know, or even bail me out of trouble.

However, I've run into more than my share of executive directors who do not cope well. They do not just deal with it. Fortunately, I happen to be living in a culture where commodification of concepts is the norm, and it is now possible to purchase a range of products emblazoned with the slogan, "put on your big girl panties and deal with it." Oddly enough, I haven't been able to find this printed on a pair of real underpants, but there are at least a dozen other products, such as tote bags, t-shirts, and key chains available.

I can think of a number of nonprofit professionals who need to put on their big girl panties, and many of them are boys. Perhaps this will turn out to be the season's trendy anonymous gift?

But first, I'd like to edit the slogan a little. Since so many of my frustrations stem from the technophobia of nonprofit executive directors, I'd like it to be, "put on your big girl panties and deal with I.T."

Are you running a human service agency, or a pretext for affluent do-gooders to get out of the house?

Here's another one that comes through the grapevine(1):

A direct service worker from a human service agency is trying to recruit candidates for an early-intervention position that is similar to hers. She tells colleagues from other organizations that her agency needs someone with solid experience and credentials, but they really can't pay much. She's hoping that maybe they'll find someone who is willing to work part-time, someone whose spouse has a good job and who can afford to work for hardly any money.

Excuse me? They'd like to recruit a human service worker who is married to a reliable breadwinner? Isn't employment discrimination based on marital status against the law?

Aside from the legal ramifications here, there are serious ethical and socio-economic issues to consider. Is this any way to run a nonprofit organization - by hoping that you can get away with paying less than a living wage? - by limiting your search to the relatively privileged?

Social work is not and should not be the exclusive domain of wealthy ladies who turn up on the doorsteps of the unfortunate and patronize them. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is not only a fictional character, but an archaic one.(2)

I've said it before in another context, but it's worth repeating: if you don't have the money to run a nonprofit organization, it's time to make a decision about whether to close down or find the money.




(1) One of the perks of being a cranky anonymous nonprofit blogger is that I occasionally hear from people with tales from the front lines. These emails are always welcome.

(2) "...she was a most active magistrate in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were carried to her by Mr. Collins; and whenever any of the cottagers were disposed to be quarrelsome, discontented or too poor, she sallied forth into the village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold them into harmony and plenty." (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.)

You know what? You don't have to like it.

Feelings seem to be running high about a full-time nonprofit staff member creating a private email distribution list so that he and others in his position can have frank discussions about vendors, products, and services.

Naturally, some vendors don't like this. They have the right to say so, but it's not up to them to refuse (or grant) nonprofit professionals the right to hold in camera conversations.

My only concern about the new "nptechhelp" group is that the individual wisdom of of full-time nonprofit professionals (when making technical decisions) is not always remarkably good. And what about the collective wisdom of full-time nonprofit professionals? Although it's currently fashionsable to praise "the wisdom of crowds," I'd rather bet on Gustave Le Bon's thesis than James Surowieki's.

Nevertheless, those of us who work in the nonprofit sector sometimes need to blow off steam and tell war stories - at a safe distance from the reprisals of vendors, supervisors, funders, and lawyers. Why else would I be publishing this blog anonymously?

What century is this, anyway?

This one comes through the grapevine.

A colleague reports a rant from the executive director of a small nonprofit organization. Something along the lines of...

I should not have to think about databases. This is the 21st century. My staff doesn't need to go to any database trainings. Donors should give us the money to hire an in-house technical person, and that person will handle it all for us.

Wrong. Right. Wrong. Right. Wrong.

1. Sorry, but every executive director needs to make strategic decisions about databases. In order to do this in a non-random fashion, you need to use your #@$&*% brains.


2. Score one for you - you know what time it is.
   


3. This is not unlike saying that your staff doesn't need to know how to use a telephone.
   


4. Yes, you should have have the money to hire an in-house technical person. And can you guess who your organization's chief fundraising officer is?
   


5. See #3. Do you have one person in your nonprofit who picks up the phone and dials every time a staff member needs to make a call?

Yes, this is the 21st century. And there's a reason they call it the information age. When you've finished having your tantrum about what the world owes you and what you shouldn't have to think about, there will still be a gaping hole in your organization. Deal with it.

On the internet nobody knows you're a social worker. Well, maybe they do, but at least they don't know your name and address.

After years of experience in the world of human services, it's easy for me to make a generalization: social workers of a certain age do not like computers or the internet. Many of them find it easy to believe that all that digital stuff is more trouble than it's worth.

I think I've found a way to make the case to them.

Check out this rant from Craigslist:

A social worker finally snaps

Inside every social worker is at least one great anonymous rant in waiting to get out. It's unprofessional to tear clients a new one, and of course it can jeopardize one's (low-paying, soul-destroying) employment to come right out and say certain things at the office.

Let's all show this one to our favorite embittered (and internet-despising) social workers. Let's offer to help them post their anonymous rants. Let's see what happens.

A new blog: Rorschach test for nonprofit management gurus?

Check out this new blog: Today I Cried - Thoughts On Nonprofit Information Technology.

The anonymous writer has apparently just taken a new job as "the sole technology person at a downtown Manhattan non-profit," and is documenting his or her experiences. (Call me sexist, but I'm leaning toward the assumption that a blog titled "Today I Cried" is written by a woman.)

My guess is that this blog will turn into a Rorschach test for anyone who aspires to be a nonprofit management or strategic technology pundit.

When you read about her first day on the job, what do you find yourself thinking?

• This organization is a perfect example of everything that is ineffectual and annoying about the nonprofit sector.

• There's hope here, because at least the organization recognizes the need to do something.

• This technology manager must have been a glutton for punishment, to take the job.

My theory is that our responses will say more about us than what's going on there. There just isn't enough information to assess the situation. But that won't stop me, or other readers, from seeing this anonymous IT manager's experiences at an unnamed nonprofit as confirmation of all our gut feelings about the state of the sector.

Cross-functional teams? Oh, please.

My eyes usually glaze over when I hear nonprofit professionals invoke management buzz words.

Cross-functional teams? Oh, please.

And yet. And yet.

I have some friends who work for a nonprofit organization that has a slew of cross-functional teams. My friends are always running off to meetings to foster the organization's diversity, or integrate operations across departmental lines, or promote knowledge sharing.

It just so happens that this is an extremely effective organization. I can't figure out how they have time to do anything but prepare for and attend meetings. But the notion is beginning to intrude on my consciousness that every so often there's some merit in espousing a management fad, especially if it's really well implemented.

Cross-functional teams, well-planned and well-executed? Yes, please!

What if all technology innovation were in the hands of a nonprofit agency?

This blog post by Jeff Brooks shows us a (hypothetical) nonprofit version of Google. It looked all too familiar.

Lying.

RAINA. You were not surprised to hear me lie. To you it was something I probably did every day--every hour...

BLUNTSCHLI (dubiously). There's reason in everything. You said you'd told only two lies in your whole life. Dear young lady: isn't that rather a short allowance? I'm quite a straightforward man myself; but it wouldn't last me a whole morning.

RAINA (staring haughtily at him). Do you know, sir, that you are insulting me?

BLUNTSCHLI. I can't help it. When you get into that noble attitude and speak in that thrilling voice, I admire you; but I find it impossible to believe a single word you say.

- George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man



Every time it happens, I'm shocked all over again. I'm naive enough to be shocked every time I hear a nonprofit professional lie casually to funders, journalists, colleagues from other organizations, or random visitors.

When a colleague tells what I know to be a lie (i.e., in my presence, but to a third party) I don't know whether to be amazed by his or her trust that I will condone this, or to be insulted by his or her estimate of my intelligence. Do liars really think that I can't draw the obvious conclusion, which is that if they lie to others then they'll cheerfully lie to me?

And these are the people who are dedicated to serving noble causes. Maybe they think it's ok, because it saves trouble and it gets the job done. After all, if we're the good guys, then it's not really lying when we lie. Right? Well, maybe that's true when terrorists hold a gun to your head and ask for the secret code. But "we're the good guys" is not an excuse for lying about how many clients you're serving or why you're twenty minutes late for a meeting.

"The infighting is so vicious because the stakes are so low."

I've learned most of what I know about nonprofit management from fortune cookies.

But every so often someone from the academy, or from a scary religious sect, makes a comment about his or her own organization that sheds a lot of light on the nonprofit sector. In this case, it was an applied physics nerd talking about a highly respected research institution:

"The infighting is so vicious because the stakes are so low."

Sometimes we're busy saving the world, and sometimes we're busy rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Perhaps the ship will sink no matter what we do, and rearranging the deck chairs is as good a way as any to occupy ourselves in the interim. However, I'd like to believe that if we stopped squabbling (about who gets the best view or the chair closest to the captain's) we might be able to bend our minds to more important tasks.

Capital expense or operating expense?

For some reason, it seems inconceivable to nonprofit decision-makers and to funders that information technology can be both a capital expense and an operating expense.

Yes, a new IT initiative can cost a major chunk of change, and then it costs more money to keep it going. Information technology expenses are not one-time crises, although you can expect your share of those. They are ongoing costs, integral parts of program operations, administration, fundraising, and other normal tasks that fall to nonprofit organizations.

It would be a great leap forward if not only nonprofit decision-makers but also grantmakers and philanthropists would learn to live with this reality.

Separated at birth?

If you're not already reading Hail, Sons & Daughters of Carnegie by "Phil Anthropoid," I hope that you'll make the acquaintance of this curmudgeon of the foundation blogosphere. Phil is definitely a kindred spirit, and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the long-lost evil twin.

Criticizing the critic.

I've been sort of busy since Hurricane Katrina struck, so I really haven't been monitoring the blogworld to see if anyone is commenting on what I write here.

However, today I ran across a blog called To The People, with an article titled "Save My Job!" that was posted in response to something what I wrote here.

Cicero writes:

"Yes, victims of floods and hurricanes shouldn't be helped so that white, upper middle class liberals at nonprofits can keep their jobs. And god damn those selfish Americans that are saving hurricane victims for their own emotional satisfication when they could be saving the spotted owl!"

It's humbling to think that nonprofit professionals have little or no grounds for claiming that they have a clue when it comes to coping with the enormity of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. I've been critical of the nonprofit sector's shortcomings for a while, and I'm not planning to argue that the criticism levelled at me here is entirely misplaced.

At the same time, it's amusing to see that Cicero assumes that I'm white, upper middle class, liberal, and more loyal to my job than to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. (Oh, and male as well. Cicero refers to me as "he.") I may have to revise my self-concept a little.

Did I say "mediocre?" What was I thinking?

Yesterday, I wrote:

"It's not that agencies such as the Red Cross and FEMA are above criticism in the ways that they handle disasters and humanitarian crises - but those clueless idealists should wake up and smell the coffee! It takes years to establish the funding, training, and infrastructure needed to do even a mediocre job."

If the reports I've been hearing and reading are accurate, some agencies that are responsible for responding to the Katrina emergency can't even dream of attaining the relatively high standard implied by the term "mediocre." This tragedy has turned into a scandal and a source of shame.

To do today: 1) Get in canoe. 2) Deliver clue.

This morning I was scanning a new website that was created as a place for bulletins about Hurricane Katrina, and I saw that someone had posted a message along these lines: "Hi from New Orleans! We're creating a new foundation to help victims of Katrina. Here's our phone number, give us a call if you need anything."

I wish that someone would hop into a canoe, and paddle over to these well-meaning but ignorant people, and give them a few clues:

1. New Orleans is under martial law right now. This is not the moment to attempt to incorporate a nonprofit agency, open a bank account, apply to the IRS for tax-exempt status, etc.


2. Not even the American Red Cross, a well-established agency with trained personnel and steady funding, dares to offer a carte blanche such as "give us a call if you need anything" during a major disaster.
   


3. If the reports I read are reliable, two of the many things that most people in New Orleans lack right now are phone service and transportation. They won't be able to call you, and you won't be able to deliver services to them.

It's not that agencies such as the Red Cross and FEMA are above criticism in the ways that they handle disasters and humanitarian crises - but those clueless idealists should wake up and smell the coffee! It takes years to establish the funding, training, and infrastructure needed to do even a mediocre job.

Creating a disaster relief agency actually requires forethought.

Disaster. I hate when that happens.

Terrorist attacks. Tsunamis. Hurricanes.

These all suck, and the damage to people, places, and things is tragic.

It's great that so many nations, individuals, and groups mobilize to help.

Well, I can't argue with any of that.

At the same time, I can't help feeling a little annoyed by all this high-profile awfulizing. It's the long term problems, not the photogenic disasters, that worry me.

Which will kill more people (or ruin more lives) this year...environmental degradation, or hurricanes?...hunger, or tsunamis?...terrorist attacks, or AIDS?

How many nonprofit organizations that fight long term problems will lose funding this year, because donors feel that it's more emotionally satisfying to give money for disaster relief?

"You can't buy loyalty, but you can reward it."

I overheard this recently, and it makes a lot of sense.

And it's good news for nonprofit agencies, since most of them don't have the money to buy loyalty.

Some nonprofit managers seem to live by this principle of rewarding loyalty, and but I can think of far too many who don't have a clue. Or perhaps the latter think that serving a noble cause, working too many hours, reporting to arbitrary supervisors, receiving less than a living wage, being kept in the dark about the agency's future, and having little control over working conditions are all sufficiently rewarding.

Are nonprofit agencies the customers from hell?

There's actually something worse than a nonprofit agency that makes crisis-driven decisions: the agency that strings vendors along for months or years.

It's humiliating to tell the patient and long-suffering vendor who has put so much time into drawing up a needs assessment, a proposal, and a price quote that you can't get a "yes" or "no" answer from the manager who needs to sign off on it. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has gleefully gone to a vendor with the go-ahead, after a mere 18 month delay, only to find that he has withdrawn the quote or even changed jobs. Can you really blame him for moving on with his life while the nonprofit agency dithered?

This sort of behavior on the part of nonprofit agencies only encourages people to regard us as the customers from hell. Any warm feelings they may get from offering their products or services to an organization with a worthy mission are off-set by the wear and tear that we inflict on their cardio-vascular systems.

Slogans for nonprofit professionals.

Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain. (Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.)

You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it. (Pirkei Avot 2:21)

Much will be gained if [our work] can succeed in transforming hysterical misery into common unhappiness. (Sigmund Freud)

Don't let your web site drive your mission.

I once watched the staff members of a new nonprofit engage in a bitter struggle over the information architecture of their web site - in the hope that this would help them figure out what their mission and organizational structure should be.

Bad idea. The resulting web site sucked, and the nonprofit agency's overall track record isn't so great, either.

You need to think first about what it is you're trying to accomplish, then design your web site around your goals.

Don't put Descartes before the horse.

(Sorry about the feeble philosophical pun.)

Your heart is pure, your cause is just, and you're still not qualified to start a nonprofit.

Good intentions are not enough.

If you're going to start your very own nonprofit organization, you need these:

• Skills
• A strategy
• Funding
• Experience
• Common sense
• A lawyer
• An accountant
  

The nonprofit sector is not a Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney movie, where you can decide on the spur of the moment to put on a show.

Sustainability is a key word here. If you're starting something that you can't sustain, then you are about to waste a lot of money, good will, time, and energy that could otherwise be used to make real progress in the cause that you care about.

I love the smell of crisis in the morning.

I suppose that most of us get drawn into the nonprofit sector because we want to save the world.

Or some corner of the world.

Or at least postpone the end of the world for another week.

Or maybe hold it off for just for today.

Even though saving the world is a very noble goal, does it ever occur to you that you shouldn't try to do it on a crisis-by-crisis basis?

Remember a couple of years ago, when the big buzz words were "strategic planning?" Well, even though strategic planning is so 2002, it's not such a bad idea. Going from crisis to crisis in your nonprofit is not the best way to effect long term change, and it's not the best context for making financial decisions.

If we could all manage to do without the adrenaline rush of coping with an emergency, maybe we'd actually have fewer emergencies.

A tsunami is an emergency. The departure of a key staff member, the breakdown of mission-critical equipment, the shortfall in a fundraising campaign....none of these things is an emergency. These are things that will probably happen at some point in every nonprofit agency. Deal with it.

You know how people sometimes say, "get a life?" Well, I say, "get a contingency plan." Get it long before an alleged crisis occurs, and keep it up to date.

Letterhead stationery, tech support, and other necessities of life.

I don't know if this is true everywhere, but our town is full of young idealists.

They have great tech skills, and they're dying to get jobs in the nonprofit sector, so that they can "make a difference."

But they can't find those jobs, so they go work for corporations.

Why can't they get hired? It's not like nonprofit agencies don't need tech support.

It's that the nonprofit managers can't find the money in the budget to pay them.

I realize that tech support might cost you as much or more than letterhead stationery, the executive director's secretary, manilla folders, the electricity bill, and publishing the annual report - but you manage to find the money for all of those things, don't you? After all, you just can't do business without letterhead stationery, could you?

Well, you just can't do business without adequate tech support. Deal with it.

Otherwise, all the young idealists will be absorbed by the corporate sector, and when you get around to realizing that you desperately need tech support, your only option will be to hire people who are older, more cynical, and more expensive.

Sometimes I wonder.

• Why does the executive director of the agency have a brand new monitor, when the people in Accounts Payable are still using the DOS verson of Lotus 123?

• What is the point of buying a new software package, when you don't invest in ongoing training for the employees who are going to use it?

• Why is everyone anxious for the agency to have a web site, when nobody has thought about what sort of content and features it should have?
  

• Why did management put all the candidates for the IT job through an 18 month hiring decision cycle, and then go with a part-time college student intern?

• Why are the servers located in the men's room?

Fortune cookie advice: "Promise only what you can deliver."

No kidding. That was today's fortune.

"Promise only what you can deliver."

For some reason, both donors and nonprofit managers have a pernicious habit of speaking in declarative sentences about things that are actually indefinite.

It's time to realize that you don't have to be all things to all people. Promising that you are going to be is a form of lying. Don't do it.

Volunteerism is great but it ain't the long term solution.

I'm sorry, but 99% of the time, it doesn't work to depend on your brother-in-law to come in on weekends to do all of your tech support.

I don't care how nice he is, or how good he is at it. People with really good tech skills and responsible jobs usually have a lot of demands on their time. Waiting until your volunteer has a free moment is no way to run mission-critical systems.

And it's hard to hold someone's feet to the fire, when your only claim on him is that he's a nice guy who cares about your mission. Most of the time, you can't demand that a volunteer re-arrange his schedule around your emergency, and it's hard to tell a volunteer that he did a lousy job and has to re-do it immediately. (It's even harder if your volunteer also happens to be a member of your board, because he is in fact your boss.)

There's nothing wrong with including volunteer help in your overall tech support plan, but if you can't hold your volunteers to professional standards, then you're undercutting your agency's effectiveness and reputation.

Think about it. Let's say that you go to a big university-affiliated hospital for a surgical procedure. They can't find your medical records because there's something wrong with the database, and the department's office manager tells you that his brother-in-law will be in on Saturday to fix it, if it isn't his turn to drive the kids to soccer practice. He'll definitely fix it, maybe this weekend, or maybe next weekend. But you'll have to wait until he has a free moment to debug the database, and then they'll be happy to retrieve your medical records and reschedule the surgery.

No. That's unacceptable.

And yet that hospital is just a big nonprofit organization. Can't you cut them a little slack?

No. It's unprofessional.

Maybe your nonprofit agency is small, and maybe it's low on cash, but you still have an obligation to meet professional standards.

Technology costs money. (Round 2)

Heads up, nonprofit executive directors!

This is the 21st century, and you need to buy your staff technology that was developed in this millenium, not the previous one.

What's that I hear you whining? Is it that you don't have the money in your budget for technology?

Here are two urgent messages from Reality:

1) If you don't have the money for technology, you don't have what it takes to operate, and it's time to decide whether to close down or find the money.

2) These days the executive director of a nonprofit agency has to be its Chief Fundraising Officer, so get moving.

If you don't tell employees what's happening, they'll make stuff up.

It's probably natural for decision makers at nonprofit agencies to hold off from announcing things until everything is definite. Just the same, you should bear in mind that the staff is human.

If they don't know what is going to happen next, they'll speculate about it. They'll discuss their speculations endlessly, and some of their guesses will make the rounds in the form of alleged facts.

Not only will the rumor mill operate overtime in the absence of information, but the staff will also make the highly justifiable assumption that they aren't trusted with information and aren't considered worthy of being consulted.

This really sucks.

Lack of information tends to lead to feelings of powerlessness in relation to management. Feelings of powerlessness do not tend to increase a sense of loyalty, trust, or job satisfaction. And in a nonprofit agency, you're dead in the water if your employees don't have those three.

Technology costs money. (Round 1)

A question for executive directors: how much do you make a year?

I bet it's a lot less than you'd make in a for-profit business. But you get paid a salary, right? And you deserve every penny of it, right?

Right.

So now it's time to choke down the realization that if you're going to run a nonprofit agency, you need a certain amount of computing power. This costs money. You need to create line items in your annual budget for technology products and services.

When I say services, that includes people. You need to pay real money to real people.

You need to pay people what they're worth. You get paid a salary, and you deserve every penny of it, remember? Well, please keep that in mind when you go looking for technical support.

Nonprofit Curmudgeon: Frequently Asked Questions

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Smart people. Stupid assumptions.

Nonprofit agencies are mostly run by really smart people. But sometimes those smart people make stupid decisions, based on really stupid assumptions.

This blog is for my anonymous rants about those really stupid assumptions.