Localista’s Post

Transcript

All right, you're probably wondering what the shirt is. I am overhead. Check out We are overhead, all of us collectively.org. And I know it's confusing and it sounds kind of weird, but there's this thing and the nonprofit community that we all know is the overhead myth. What that means is that a lot of folks and funders and people have this thought that we don't necessarily when we're donating to organizations or funding organizations that we don't need to donate to overhead to to people, to me, my hours of work, to our building cost, to our food cost. We need to specifically donate to programmatic expenses, folks that are in the programs, folks that are hungry, meals, things like that. Whereas the most important part about the work that we do is the people that are doing the work. How can we ask the folks that are doing the work that are going to make our missions happen every day? How can we ask them to do that most important work? The work of our organization exists without funding them properly, without funding them well. So we believe us, this whole group, the reason why we're here. We believe that if we fund our people well, then they will love our community well, they will treat our people well. They will solve the problems that exist here collectively together. But it is, it starts with funding the people. It starts with funding the people that make these beautiful missions happen every single day. And it's important. And, and they're the ones that are going to make sure that all of our programs, all of our folks, all of the people that we are starting every single day get taken care of. So fund overhead fund. Plus, it matters. Yeah. So I mean, if the question is about, you know, how should we, how should we look at? Capacity of organizations, right? How should we think about making sure the organizations are capable of being their very best and executing at the highest level and having success and results, you know, at a really high level? If we're going to do that, we have to stop as organizations. We have to stop apologizing and saying to people that we don't, you know, we, we're not going to spend money on all these things. So we're OK with this scarcity mentality. We're OK with this. Idea that. Our people don't get paid very much and we're OK with, you know, working in condition sometimes or having technology that is, you know, generation old. We have stopped doing that. And you don't have to start convincing not only ourselves but our leadership that that's also an important element and they have to invest. And I think that's the biggest. Opportunity to pivot is when we can as as nonprofit leaders. Can you know, staff leadership, management and board leadership, the governance of the organization when they can be aligned around agreeing to that, right? Because board members come a lot of times from business. They understand about investing in infrastructure and investing in people. And but when they show up at a board meeting to nonprofit and they're sitting around the room, they're talking to other board members. The conversation seems to always convert back to we have to cut back some, right? We have to scale back because we can't raise that much money. Well, shouldn't the conversation be about how do we raise more so that we can make that happen? And then once we agree and we're aligned internally between our board and our staff? Why can't we do the same thing with our funders? Why can't we have those conversations with individual philanthropists who are inspired by our mission and come to us and say, you know, what do you need or how can you do better? How can you do more? You know, we want to be able to tell them, well, here's what it will take. You know, I mean, we may have to pay our, our, our top talent, you know, 6 figure salaries and maybe that and that should be OK if that's what it's going to take to get the right people. Or maybe we have to invest in technology that actually works and, you know, hire an IT company if we have to, to, to, to make that, you know, reality. You know, those are the kind of conversations that for too long, I think, in the nonprofit sector, we weren't having. Right. And nonprofits and funders were in a transactional kind of relationship. And it wasn't one or the other's fault. It's just the nonprofits didn't know how to approach funders and have a conversation about anything other than the money. And the funders, The donors had passions and interests, but they didn't know how to engage. And we weren't doing a good job of sort of breaking down that divide, breaking down that that proverbial fence that has always existed between those who do the work. For those who are gifted at and understanding how to solve a problem and those who have the resource and the wherewithal and the desire to want to solve the problem with their money and their resources. So more we can do that, the more we can have this conversation, it's better we'll be.