Thoughts from a nonprofit hopeful
This is a guest post by Tessa Tompkins. She recently graduated with a BA in Social Entrepreneurship from Belmont University and this fall will begin a Master’s Degree in Community Planning at Auburn University.
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Belmont University is known for its music, business, and music business programs. However, the majority of recent graduates, no matter from which corner of the university they emerged, want to do the same thing: Work at a nonprofit. Even beyond Belmont University and Nashville, Tennessee, it seems that all twenty- and thirty-somethings nowadays aim to relieve some social ailment, such as homelessness, sex trafficking, AIDS, etc. If they can’t find a nonprofit that does exactly what they want to do exactly how they want to do it, they start their own. The rise in grassroots nonprofits based out of homes and garages proves that barriers to entry in the nonprofit sector have practically disappeared and that droves of people want to make a difference, but they want to make a difference their way. As a former nonprofit hopeful, I can attest that it is a powerful dream. But because I chose to major in Social Entrepreneurship, my romantic image of nonprofits—a bunch of do-gooders working eighty hours a week for a meager salary—was shattered. To all those thinking about starting a nonprofit of some sort, my only advice is—don’t.
Within my graduating class at Belmont, there were nine Social Entrepreneurship students with nine missions and nine ideas about nonprofits to start. We began at Belmont convinced that we could meet unmet needs around the world better than organizations that were currently trying to do so. We took entrepreneurship, accounting, political science, and sociology classes in order to understand the worlds of business and human interaction and encourage collaboration and innovation within both. Now, freshly graduated, not one of us plans to start the nonprofit we dreamed about freshman year. How did such bright-eyed, well-intentioned goals become, in retrospect, proof of our idealistic naiveté? Throughout our four years at Belmont, we discovered that two major issues within the nonprofit sector today are disorganization and self-glorification. One simple way to help both problems is greater collaboration among existing nonprofits and a halt to the influx of newcomers. Collaboration would decrease the vast number of nonprofits as they combined resources to make a greater impact. At the same time, the spotlight would not be on one agency or one person, and making a difference would involve and require many people. These lessons were all too real when we got out into the nonprofit world.
I completed an internship junior year at a small, grassroots missions agency that worked out of the founder’s garage. The romance of the experience evaporated as I learned how small, grassroots agencies really work. It all starts with a person or group of people who have a burden on their hearts—some social problem or ailment—and a vision of how to fix it. Without researching what is already being done or what is the most sustainable way to meet the need, they start a ministry or a nonprofit, ask everyone they know for money, and move in blindly. When I traveled overseas with my internship organization, I realized that good intentions turn bitter when a business model treats communities like incapable charity cases. The first thing a Social Entrepreneurship professor teaches is that the mission, and of course the passion that drives that mission, is the core of the social venture. However, I learned during my internship that the mission cannot be the only thing within the organization. A nonprofit is a business that needs a detailed plan for staffing, marketing, operations, and funding; it also needs to understand its customers and how best to empower them, so solutions are sustainable beyond the organization’s reach. It’s one thing for a bunch of do-gooders to want to change the world and meet everyone’s needs, but it is quite another when they all start nonprofits, most of them uninformed and poorly run.
The other red flag in the nonprofit sector emerged when I mentioned that a friend of mine was interning at an organization that did similar work to what we were doing. My internship supervisor told me not to share the news with the founder because she considered that organization our “enemy.” I thought to myself, shouldn’t we do whatever we can to further our mission, even if it means making partners and taking ourselves out of the spotlight? If an agency provides shelter for homeless families and another provides career training for homeless adults, they would be so much more valuable to their customers if they joined together and served both needs in one building. Like I said, the mission cannot be all there is to an organization, but it can certainly be a common starting point and a door to strategic alliances. Unfortunately, viewing nonprofit work as a competition and a means to self-glorification is all too common within the industry. When similar organizations join together, share resources, and stop competing, they are much more effective than when they work alone.
Despite these flaws, the nonprofit sector isn’t doomed yet. The nine of us Social Entrepreneurship graduates did not lose our passion for this industry and our desire to make the world a better place. We just realized the best, most effective way to do it. All nine of us want to enhance the impact of existing organizations and are hoping to consult, find jobs at struggling nonprofits, or continue our education at graduate school. If nothing else, we learned that Social Entrepreneurship is more of a way of life than a single action, and it doesn’t require starting anything. It’s about looking at business as an opportunity for sustainable change; looking at victims as a chance for empowerment; looking at competitors as teammates against the bullies and tribulations of the world; and looking at ourselves as minuscule pieces of a well-planned, cosmic puzzle.
To all those nonprofit hopefuls out there (and there are many of you), do your research. The world doesn’t need another nonprofit that is only slightly different than an existing organization. If we all flood the existing market, we can take a sector in crisis and transform it into a formidable force for good. Let’s take direction from model nonprofits and transform the shambles of unsuccessful ones. Let’s stop littering mailboxes with monthly newsletters and donation cards. Let’s admit that we don’t have it all figured out, our way may not be the best, and we need other people in order to truly make a difference.
It’s interesting that those of us who majored in starting nonprofits will be the first to discourage it and instead call for a different way to help, serve, and meet the needs of the world. But I guess someone’s got to.
Stunning video of Earth
To get the full effect, make sure you change the video quality to 1080HD and select full screen:
This timelapse video was created from a series of 121 megapixel images taken every 30 minutes by a geostationary satellite orbiting 24,854 miles above the Earth.
This shift has taken place over the course of the past year. It was a calculated move that has been controversial, both inside and outside of the organization. And, although it may seem strange that a church would want to distance itself from the entrenched idea of charity, that’s exactly what Calvary is trying to do.
Hankinson started reading about food security, looking at the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House and the Kitchen Tables project. He came to believe that, while the church was meeting a need, it was also, in a way, disempowering people.
“This way, people have to work together as peers,” says Hankinson. “We’ve gotten rid of volunteer and guest distinctions. We’ve flipped that power dynamic. We don’t have these people from a middle class background serving these other poor people.”
From an article in the Tyee by Colleen Kimmett
It is great to see a group of people question the prevailing trend in how best to help others. I wish more churches and non-profits would be willing to question the status quo of how aid is done and be willing to change their ways in order to better serve those that they want to help.
Power is a major issue. When we do everything for people because of the assumption that they need our help and cannot do things for themselves, we put ourselves in positions of power over those we are “helping.” In doing this, we end up dishonoring and disrespecting the very people we are trying to help.
Africans and Hollywood stereotypes
The newest video from MamaHope is excellent:
I love the fact that the tag line is: Stop the pity. Unlock the potential. Build a future. Not a stereotype.
This reminds me of a recent article by Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina on the problem of Africa’s image in the international media. In it, he says:
One of the problems with the way it is written about is that it is measured in the present tense by how different it looks from the places that have developed a sophisticated and deeply documented sense of themselves.
Those nations and regions that got in earlier found themselves better able to project their own image to the rest.
The truth is, we will never look like what CNN wants us to look like.
But that’s fine – we can get online now and completely bypass their nonsense.
And just the other day in an article on how not to write about Africa, Laura Seay wrote:
Western reporting on Africa is often fraught with factual errors, incomplete analysis, and stereotyping that would not pass editorial muster in coverage of China, Pakistan, France, or Mexico. A journalist who printed blatantly offensive stereotypes about German politicians or violated ethical norms regarding protection of child-abuse victims in Ohio would at the least be sanctioned and might even lose his or her job. When it comes to Africa, however, these problems are tolerated and, in some cases, celebrated. A quick search of the Google News archives for ”Congo” and “heart of darkness” yields nearly 4,000 hits, the vast majority of which are not works of literary criticism, but are instead used to exoticize the Democratic Republic of the Congo while conjuring up stereotypes of race and savagery. Could we imagine a serious publication ever using similar terminology to describe the south side of Chicago, Baltimore, or another predominately African-American city?
Links I Liked
Everyone has a voice
Last year, a group of bloggers hosted a counter campaign to TOMS shoes “One Day Without Shoes” called “A Day without Dignity.” This year the campaign is back, focusing on the work of “Local Champions.” According to the organizers, this year’s theme “was chosen to show an alternative to awareness raising events that often focus on Whites in Shining Armor at the expense of the dignity of the people they’re trying to help.”
I want to take this opportunity to talk about an idea that seems to be prevalent among those working with the poor and underprivileged. I often hear reporters, people, and groups say they are “giving a voice to the voiceless” or “speaking for those that can’t speak for themselves.” There are even organizations that brand themselves in this way: think Invisible Children. The problem is that this notion is wrong, disrespectful, and hurtful to those that are cast in this light.
Why? Because there are NO voiceless people. There are NONE who are invisible.
You may never have heard of a certain war, or seen these abducted kids, or heard this people’s story, but that doesn’t mean that those people are invisible or without a voice. It just means that you didn’t know.
Instead, by saying that someone is voiceless or invisible, you are stating that they are incomplete without you. That they need you in order to be whole. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
To be presented as something less than you are is humiliating, degrading, and defeating. This is the exact opposite of what these groups say they are trying to do. We must realize that our choice of words and how we frame them has a direct effect on how we and others perceive a group of people and may even effect how that group of people view themselves.
The idea that someone is voiceless or invisible and that you, as an outsider, are needed to give them voice or make them visible is a very imperialistic suggestion. Amanda Taub speaks to this:
I have had it up to here with people claiming to be “giving voice to the voiceless,” or that their own writing is allowing someone else to “speak.” I get that it’s just a cliche, but it seems to me that the by “voiceless”, we mean “this person is too poor/foreign/black/underprivileged to speak for themselves.” And “giving voice” seems suspiciously similar to “graciously filtering the story through my own privilege so that the the elements I think are important will become palatable.”
Our job as outsiders should never to be to “give a voice to” or “speak for” others. Instead our job should be simply to amplify what locals are already saying. People can speak for themselves. A great example of this is the new website Uganda Speaks. For us to think that this is our job is absurd.
That is not to say that we as outsiders must stay silent. We can share our own experiences and talk about what is happening in the global south, however, we cannot fall into the trap of framing it as giving a voice to the voiceless.
Those we say we are helping deserve to have their agency kept intact and to be shown dignity and respect. We must see them and present them in the same light in which we ourselves would want to be seen and presented. Anything less is unacceptable.
To see all the posts and articles written in response to the campaign, check out the website or follow the hashtags #LocalChampions and #Dignity2012 on twitter.
Friday Fun – Arcades and Muppets
Below is the story of Caine, a boy who built and runs his own arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store. If you need a feel-good video today, this will do nicely:
As for muppets, I recently watched a fantastic documentary called Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey. It traces the life of Kevin Clash, who grew up making his own puppets, is the creator of Elmo, and is currently Sesame Street’s Senior Puppet Coordinator. If you get the chance to watch it, you will not be disappointed.
And as an added bonus, the following is the original pitch video that Jim Henson used to sell The Muppet Show to CBS:
