Communicating about Nonprofit Talent

Rusty Morgen Stahl, director of the Talent Philanthropy Project at NYU, wrote an article entitled “Talent Philanthropy: Investing in Nonprofit People to Advance Nonprofit Performance.” The article is a good one with an invaluable end goal of persuading donors of the righteousness of the article’s subtitle: investing in people improves performance. But the title diverted my attention for the first five plus pages until I finally got to the author’s definition of talent philanthropy.

It is—drum roll, please—“intentional philanthropic investment in grantee and nonprofit talent to increase performance and impact.” In other words, it is one form of capacity building, a phrase and concept that have been around for quite some time. This is something the for-profit sector has done, and done well, for a long time and which the nonprofit sector has done practically not at all.

As people gnash teeth and wring hands over the presumed shortage of nonprofit staff for the future, Morgen notes the people are there, it is the investment in them that is lacking. In joint research, he and the Foundation Center found that between 1992 and 2011, only 1.24% of grant dollars was allocated to leadership development, and the last decade has seen a decline in this investment from 1.4% of grants to .8%. But the real lack that Morgen points out is one of conceptualization: funders failing to see a grantee’s human resources (sorry, I know I should call it talent if I want to be with it) “as an important ingredient in the success of organizations and programs.” Yes, they don’t want to invest in your mortgage or your electric bill or your phone bill. But how can they not want to invest in the real engines of achieving mission—the people?

Failure to invest in our people will be the sector’s death knoll. With the rise of B corporations and for-profit ventures focusing on doing good—from Tom’s to Newman’s Own —people who want to do good, and not just well, in their careers have more options than they ever did before. The choice is no longer make money and do “good” or don’t worry about the doing good and just make as much money as you can; the choice is now make money and do good or do good and not be valued.

There is so much about the nonprofit sector that too many—those in and out of the sector—don’t understand, let’s not make it harder to be understood. A year ago, the Global Language Monitor estimated the number of words in the English language at 1,013,913. With so many words from which to choose, why must people create new uses and combinations of already clearly defined words that not only fail to enlighten further but actually only muddle? [I’ve given up on expecting people to understand proper grammar, but not on words that do not communicate clearly (Oops! Silly me! I actually thought that was the purpose of language).] And why would we use such troublesome language to talk about a topic that deserves clear and consistent communication until the message is finally heard, loudly and clearly, and change actually happens?

The days of not valuing our employees must finally be over. We must pay them well so that they can do as much good as they can; we must invest in them so they will blossom, develop loyalty and do even more good—for their colleagues, clients and mission.