Reflecting our Values

If I could proclaim a universal resolution for 2016 it would be to stop dissing nonprofit professionals.

We may not make six or seven figure salaries but that does not mean we are of lesser talent, lesser value, lesser smarts, and lesser everything else than our higher salaried counterparts.  Just because we prefer to use our talent in support of great causes that offer lesser financial rewards doesn’t mean we are one iota less capable than the person with the same skills and degree of talent who chooses to work in the for-profit sector.

Where we work—be it government, for-profit or nonprofit—is not a reflection of our level of talent, but of our values.  Where we work is a choice.  Stop disparaging the choice to work in the nonprofit sector that 10% of the American workforce makes, while producing 887.3 billion contribution to the GDP, simply because you choose differently.  Don’t mold the guilt you feel because you chose to work in the for-profit sector and make heaps of money into a diss of incredibly skilled and dedicated people who make the communities where you live and work more vibrant, greener, healthier, safer, etc.

The absurdity of this notion that those who can’t do as well work for the nonprofit sector is beyond measurement.  But that there are actually people who theoretically support this sector who believe this, is even more amazing.

I recently learned that the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization that I greatly appreciate, is funding a fellowship program to put for-profit employees in nonprofit organizations for a year.  Why?  As a capacity building effort.  Seriously?  And while the nonprofit that arranges these fellowships claims that 70% of the fellows stay at their host organizations after the fellowship ends (why, then, would the nonprofit get any repeat corporate customers?), that’s not, in my book, how you build nonprofit organizational capacity—one former for-profit employee at a time.

This just reinforces the misguided notion that any for-profit employee is better than any nonprofit employee by virtue of the simple fact that s/he worked at a for-profit.  If Annie E. Casey, or any foundation, has money it wishes to invest in capacity building, the scarcest of philanthropic dollars, why not invest in those who chose to work in the nonprofit sector from the beginning?

Why not show how you value them by giving capacity building grants to build the fundamentals of great management that will sustain an organization long after any one employee has left? Or give them dollars to evaluate their compensation system and the seed money to begin to address the lack of market-driven compensation structures? Or give more general operating grants—or allow for more general operating dollars in a program grant? Or give a three year decreasing grant to fund a full-time development staff who will increase giving so that market wages can be paid staff and the very skilled and talented nonprofit employees don’t have to take a second job to keep their households afloat?  My list of suggestions could go on and on.

When people ask me a question that has grown in popularity over the last 10 years: what is the difference between those who transition successfully from the for-profit world to the non-profit and those who don’t, I give a one word answer:  arrogance.  Those who bring with them the belief promulgated by Annie E. Casey and other funders who share this line of thinking that for-profit is best, have the answers, along with the flip side that goes with this attitude—nonprofits don’t know the answers, they are weak, they need our superior “talent” and help—are the ones who do poorly in the sector.  Their boards may like them, but their staff and collaborators will not, and it is a toss up how donors will react.  Don’t get me wrong:  we have plenty of homegrown arrogance of our own in the sector; but it is the common place arrogance built on a falsely inflated sense of self and importance and not one built on well-supported, yet false belief, that you come from the sector of excellence.

That I even used the word “talent” in reference to employees is really anathema to me.  Talent?  What happened to just plain human resources?  Or even just “people”?  Not inflated enough? Not laudatory enough?   It wasn’t the nonprofit sector that switched from referring to recruiting and retaining employees to recruiting and retaining talent—as if every employee in every organization—for-profit or nonprofit—has real talent.

Forget that!  After all, talent signals an ability to do something special really well.  And that is what the vast majority of the exceptional people who work in the nonprofit sector do, day in and day out, for no glory, no chest pounding or puffing, no need for self-aggrandizement, and no need for a big salary, annual bonuses and perks galore, to know just how important their work is and valuable their contributions are to the quality of all of our lives.  And they have no need to diss those who made choices different from theirs.