It’s About the Mission, Stupid

Those of us who work day in and day out in the nonprofit sector know it is all about the passion.  If you aren’t passionate about the cause for which you are working, whether it’s addressing food insecurity,  making great art available to all,  or making nonprofits stronger, you won’t find professional and personal satisfaction working at that organization.  Pretty intuitive, right?

Those who don’t work in the sector on that regular basis don’t seem to understand this.  In fact, in a blog I recently came across, “Five Questions to Ask Before Going from For-Profit to Non-Profit,” by Personal Branding Blog, it had to be specifically called out.  The question was, “Are you passionate about the cause?”  The four other questions, according to the blog, that should be asked are:

1. Are your skills transferable?
2. Can you deal with ambiguity?  (This refers to the slow pace at which decisions are made at most nonprofits.)
3. Do you understand nonprofit financing?
4. Have you checked the finances of the nonprofit?

There are, however, two huge questions that have been left off the list that are even more important than the question about passion for the cause.  (And to be clear and fair, these two questions are equally important for anyone new to the nonprofit sector, whether switching from for-profit to nonprofit or just starting your career.)

Failure to understand the right answer–and there is only one right answer to these questions– has enormous consequences.  Sadly, these consequences are becoming more and more apparent in the sector and, thus, more and more alarming.  Left unchecked—and uncorrected—this can only mean disastrous results for our sector.

First question:  do you understand that there is no “my” in the nonprofit sector?  This isn’t my nonprofit; it isn’t your nonprofit.  No one—not even a founder—owns a nonprofit!  (If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had to say this—and explain this to dismayed and confused faces—The Nonprofit Center could be giving away our services for free and still be here 20 years from now!)  Are there lawyers who will set up a nonprofit so that it appears that one person owns it?  Sadly, yes.  But a nonprofit is not a family owned business.  We don’t get to pass the leadership of the organization down, one family generation to the next.   I recently read an application to La Salle’s Masters in Nonprofit Leadership ,where the applicant talked about just that.  Her reason for wanting to pursue the Master’s degree was so that when she took over the family business—a nonprofit—she would be a good, strong leader.  Admirable, but misguided, and definitely in need of further education on nonprofits.  In fact, the whole family should enroll!

The mistaken notion that a nonprofit belongs to any one person rather than to the public, leads to the second missing question:  do you understand that it is not about you?  Related to the original question of a nonprofit’s cause, this new question gets at the fact that nonprofits aren’t there to feed egos, help build fiefdoms, make any one person king of the hill.  Nonprofits are there to serve clients—those people who are the “for whom” in our mission statements.   We are there to serve the people in need of housing, to help people learn English so that they can get a job, help children with homework,  provide exposure to the arts and culture of the past and present, different cultures, etc.

It isn’t about us—those who populate a nonprofits organizational chart.  We are there as mere minions of the mission, doing the most we can to maximize delivery of that mission.

And here is the rub, for me.  When nonprofit leaders—be they on the board, on the paid portion of the organizational chart or on the list of donors—forget that it is about the mission and make it about them, everyone loses.  When it is about self, it isn’t about how best to serve clients.  When it is about self, it isn’t about collaboration but about turf and winning, which leads to harming—harming clients, harming staff, harming the sector as a whole.