Category Archives: Analysis and Commentary

We have to start by claiming our failures

Posted on March 18, 2012 by | Leave a comment

There is growing recognition, I think, of the importance of owning our failures—in advocacy and in life—so that we can learn from failings (ours, which is a sort of eternal life lesson, and, increasingly, those of others, too, through shared learning opportunities that have taken some of the ‘sting’ out of failure). We should celebrate the liberating power of being comfortable with failure, of even rushing to it, in pursuit of the victories that we know can and often do follow in its wake.

Certainly nonprofit advocates are not immune from this imperative to acknowledge, analyze, and even disseminate our failures; we can do more, certainly, through the deployment of systematic advocacy evaluation efforts, but I see a trend of reducing stigma around failure, and it’s one that I think will benefit us in the future.

But there’s an extension of this idea that is harder, I believe, for nonprofit advocates to embrace. It’s even more central to our advocacy success. And we’ve got to put it out there together, because it’s too much to ask any one organization, or even any one sector, to go out on a limb.

So here it is.

To fully transform our nonprofit social service organizations into effective advocacy forces, and to make the strongest case possible for the policy changes that those we serve so desperately need, we have to admit the truth:

Our services, our programs, our intense direct services, are failing.

Yes, I know; that sounds brutal.

And of course I don’t mean that there isn’t tremendous value in what nonprofit social service organizations do every day—feeding people who are hungry, mentoring kids at risk, helping people free themselves from addictions, training people for better-paying jobs. There obviously is.

That work meets people where they are, provides hope, helps people survive to fight the larger structures that create and perpetuate need. It is noble work, and it lifts my own soul and has the potential to transform individual lives.

But, measured against the scope and scale of the problems we face, it’s failing.

We’re working smarter, and working harder, and bringing more and more bright and talented individuals around to the ‘social sector’, and yet we haven’t moved the needle on very many of the most critical challenges that face our world. And the answer isn’t more services, or even more money for those services.

It’s changing the systems that create the problems in the first place. It’s addressing the root causes that make poverty and oppression and tragedy routine and predictable and crushingly continual. It’s removing the fuel instead of always putting out fires.
And it means that we have to acknowledge that, on its own, our services aren’t going to win the day. Which is a tough lift for nonprofit organizations that are, now more than ever (and not unrelated, obviously, to these structural issues) competing with each other for funding and trying to prove to donors that they have the answer. We absolutely should be measuring the impact of our services, because they’re certainly not all created equal. And goals of program accountability are not at all incompatible with this larger need to give up the charade of adequacy—we have to stop pretending that we can ever program our way to justice.

We have to stop for ourselves, because there’s no easier way to drive oneself crazy within a social service system. We have to stop for our clients, because how disempowering is it to think that you must be the only one whose problems aren’t being eradicated by this excellent case management or fantastic after-school program.

And we have to stop for our public policies, because we can’t be our best advocates if we’re simultaneously trying to convince policymakers that we’ve got everything taken care of.

I think we can start small, really. What if, in our annual reports where we highlight our programmatic successes, we included a column dedicated to the policy changes that would make next year’s annual report radically different? What if we added language about “ending homelessness” or “eliminating racism” to our mission statements, the way some organizations have done? What if we added “but our services can’t solve all these problems” to our agency brochures, or added an appeal to advocacy in every volunteer orientation?

It won’t be easy, but we can win.

We just have to first acknowledge that we’re losing.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged , , , ,

Can we ever applaud too much?

Posted on March 15, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Note: Next week is spring break, and I have made the executive decision that I’m taking the week off from blogging. I’ll spend the extra time hanging out with my kiddos, no doubt giving them A LOT of positive feedback.

I swear; I don’t know how I ever managed to be an organizer before I was a parent.

It seems like nearly every day I have an insight, related to life with my young children, that has relevance for my social change work.
Lately, it has been this: we can absolutely never, ever applaud too much the actions we want to see continue.

We’ve been working on this with our kids, especially my oldest son. It sounds ridiculous to us, “Hey, way to go taking your plate to the kitchen.” “Did you notice he just came right upstairs when I asked?” “Boys, great job playing kindly with each other!” “I hear friendly talking—I love it!”

But it never gets old to them. In fact, if we recognize one of them, the others will try to outdo each other, pointing out their own good behavior, seeking the same accolades. And it becomes a positive cycle—they improve their behavior in order to get more positive feedback, which prompts more of it from our end, in turn.

And nonprofit organizations have gotten this message on the donor cultivation side; when we make a financial contribution, we expect to receive a thank-you note, our annual reports list our donors, and we often publicly recognize those whose contributions have made investments in our organizations.

But do we recognize our advocates enough?

Do we send out “success alerts” or “thank-you alerts” as frequently as “take action” ones? Do we invest in tools that can tell us when people have responded to our alerts, so that we can directly and personally honor their commitment? Do we spend as much time talking about what went well, as dissecting what went wrong? Do we recognize the kinds of actions that we want to see repeated, even when the outcome falls short—so that every phone call to a legislator or grassroots member recruited is celebrated, even long before we achieve the policy changes that are our goals? Do we use the pages of our websites, newsletters, and annual reports to highlight “star advocates” the same way that we call out donors? Do we recognize and appreciate and reward advocacy intent and activist activity over and over and over again?

If not, isn’t it worth trying?

Because, really, if a tactic is powerful enough to get my boys to stay in their beds until their fishtank light switches on at 6:45AM, it’s powerful enough to motivate people to overcome our own reservations about collective action and join together to push for social change.

If incessant applause can get my daughter to stop taking off her shoes and leaving them all around the house, it can change the world.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged ,

Grown-ups need villages, too

Posted on February 27, 2012 by | 2 Comments

"Happy Villages" quilt

By far, my absolute favorite part of teaching is when my students come up with insights that make me think about social work, or social justice, in a different way. In those moments, it goes beyond the “I’m learning just as much as you are” (which always sounds a little false to me, honestly, even though I certainly do learn every semester) to produce these real “lightbulbs” of understanding, for which I am always truly grateful.

One of those moments happened in a discussion board interaction with a student in my community and organizational theory class. She was reacting to a post about the social work profession as somewhat uniquely, among the helping profession, focused on the person-in-environment, and relating this to the axiom that “it takes a village to raise a child.” She made the point that it is truly a bit bizarre that we can see (although we certainly don’t always live it out in policy!) how children are affected by their environments, and how crafting healthy institutions that surround kids with supports is an essential element in raising strong youth, but yet, somehow, when these young people grow up, we reflexively attribute their challenges to personal failings, and look for their internal pathologies, as though, well, grown-ups don’t need villages too.

I’ve certainly been thinking a lot about the supports on which I depend to raise my children these past few months: the grandparents whose presence in their lives is constant and nurturing, the neighbors whose friendship and presence sustain us during our days, the public spaces that provide us with a greater quality of life, the schools that are shaping their minds.

But my student’s post prompted my thinking about how our need for these kinds of supports–both formal and informal–certainly don’t end when we magically become adults, or restart only when we ourselves become parents. In truth, our entire lives are bracketed by a mutual interdependence on the environments in which we either thrive or struggle to survive. And social workers (and policymakers) misunderstand this at our collective peril.

Certainly, children’s futures are shaped by the context in which they grow up. And I think there’s a growing acceptance of that idea.

But adults’ todays and tomorrows are just as influenced by these environmental factors, and not just in a carryover sense from their own childhoods, but in a very real way as “grown-ups”: the availability of jobs, their access to health care and transportation, resources for mental health care, supportive social networks, physically strong community infrastructure.

We obviously have a long way to go in order to build “villages” that will surround our children with the opportunities they need to succeed…and the nets they need to catch them when they fall. And adults will carry the legacies of these disparities and inadequacies until we can get that right.

But then, as my student to wisely realizes, we need to apply that same understanding of shared responsibility and linked fates to how we work with other populations.

Including the grown-ups we hope those kids will become.

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged , ,

Finding our Voices

Posted on February 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I was talking with a group of nonprofit CEOs the other day, about advocacy (of course) and our collective responsibility to stand up and speak out on the issues that affect those we serve. I pointed out that there are some systemic issues that affect nonprofits as a sector and that, sometimes, starting to come together around those issues–foremost in my mind, of course, is the revenue foundation–can help to overcome our silos and bridge the divisions that often keep us quiet.

And then one of the executives said, with more dismay than disdain, “that sounds like nonprofits would become just another special interest.”

That reminded me of some of my conversation with Robert Egger last fall, when he talked about the kinds of advocacy, and the kinds of sector organizing, that it will take for nonprofits to find their voices without (seriously in quotes) “becoming just another special interest.”

Does he think of everything, or what?

At the time, that statement mostly rolled right off me, in part because I don’t see anything that wrong with special interests, per se–I’m only concerned when the interests that are being represented are not aligned with my values of social work justice.

But hearing the worry echoed by this executive made me think about how, from a strategic perspective, bringing something qualitatively different to the table, beyond what an industry or trade group might do, is really essential.

Those of us working to exhort nonprofits to make a bolder play for political power have a responsibility not to screw this up big-time.

Because our greatest assets in the advocacy arena–the stories of those we serve, our reputations and public trust, and the perception that we are, in fact, somewhat above the fray–can easily be sullied the moment we enter the struggle.

That’s often used as an excuse, and it shouldn’t be. What good, after all, is having some really good ammunition if we never fire our collective weapon? Why do we care how much latent political power we potentially hold, if we never even test it?

What good is it doing anyone on the shelf?

But it is right for us to be sure, as we consider the kinds of coalitions we build and the types of battles we choose, that we’re spending our capital wisely.

We should be clear about what we want to say, as we begin to find our voices.

On the one hand, that’s pretty easy; if we’re fixated on our vision of the world as it should be and solidly rooted in our values, we should not be tempted to go for the low-hanging fruit or to seize what we can on our way out the door.

The goods for which we aim can only be secured with long and principled and careful engagement.

But it’s obviously not always so clear, what’s right and what’s best. The recent debate over tax reforms makes that clear, with most nonprofits alarmed by proposals to somewhat limit charitable deductions, as part of an overall effort to ensure that higher earners pay a greater share of a growing revenue “pie”. (It’s clear where I come out on this.) The nonprofits rushing to decry this change in the structure as a direct assault on their existence aren’t bad. Or even necessarily wrong.

They’re just operating in much the same way that other special interests do, by looking out for their own.

And, so, as we seek to have a greater impact on policymaking, and to raise our voices on the greatest issues of our day, we must do so with a constant humility, an awareness that, in many ways, we are not so different from the other contenders, and that our difference can only be preserved by a distinguishing vigilance.

Because our interests really are special, and they deserve allies equal to their task.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged ,

What about the next day?

Posted on February 9, 2012 by | 2 Comments

My oldest son’s favorite Bible story is the Good Samaritan, even though he covers his ears during the part where the robbers attack the traveler. We probably read it at least once a month, and we’ve even acted it out before, with props, in the living room.

But it wasn’t until the day that I spent with Robert Egger last fall that I started to wonder–if everyone knew that that stretch of highway was so dangerous, why didn’t anyone do anything about it?

I’m sure there’s some explanation, you know, about how hard it was to find good police officers back in ancient times, or about how the terrain around Jerico was difficult to police anyway.

But this post isn’t really about the Good Samaritan, anyway, but about the many ways in which we still glorify Good Samaritans today, without asking that critical question–what are we doing to reduce the highway robberies in the first place?

Robert asked that question as part of a conversation about the starfish story–his point, I think, was that the story of the Good Samaritan ends with the Samaritan leaving the money with the innkeeper. It doesn’t say what happened the next day, even though there’s a pretty good chance that some other unlucky traveler met the same fate, on the same road, this time without someone to come along to the rescue.

But it’s really what didn’t happen before that violent encounter, and what should happen next, that matter the most in that story. There will never be enough Good Samaritans to go around and, besides, shouldn’t they be able to spend their money on something other than medicine and lodging for those routinely robbed?

Because we often know what the problems are, just as everyone seemed to in this story. We know that our health care system means that people without insurance will need Good Samaritans to pay for life-saving treatment. We know that our fractured “child welfare” system depends on Good Samaritans to rescue the children who fall through the cracks. We know that the inadequacy of our public education system requires Good Samaritans to swoop in with scholarships and private donations. We know that the poverty and lack of opportunity that plague many communities in our country create conditions where only Good Samaritans can save families from the dismal reality of their surroundings.

I’m not in the Samaritan-bashing business.

As I’ve said before, the life-changing work that we do in direct service meets real needs and soothes our own souls.

But we need to ask ourselves the question: What happens the next day?

Who’s going to make that stretch of highway safer?

Let’s write that story together.

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged ,

The Power of One

Posted on January 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

One fairly influential individual

There are a lot of sort of pop psychology, bumper sticker motivationals out there about the difference that one individual can make…they all sort of run together for me, but you know what I mean, right?

Probably the best known is attributed to Helen Keller, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

Beautiful, right? And capable of making me feel guilty when I’m, say, on my way to the fabric store instead of a rally.

The belief in the power of the individual is very much rooted in our culture, but much less frequently seen in how we build capacity for advocacy and social change.

Bet you never thought about that while stopped behind someone at a red light, hunh?

See, when it comes to how we invest in building power to make a difference, we tend to focus almost exclusively on networks of people, on the connections that bind us together, and on how we create structures that leverage those relationships for power.

Sure, it’s obvious that no social movements are the sole work of any individual, even those that are commonly associated with one. But isn’t it also just as true that single individuals do, perhaps not as often as we would wish, change the course of history in amazing ways?

So why is the organization, or the community, most often our focal unit, when we think about what we need to develop in order to reach our goals? Why do we sometimes sort of gloss over the individuals who populate those entities, as though they are somehow replaceable, even when history so clearly teaches us otherwise?

I’ve been particularly thinking about this over the past couple of weeks because of the work that I do with The Sunflower Foundation and its Advocacy Fellows initiative. The initiative is somewhat distinct, particularly in the philanthropic world, because it revolves around advocacy, specifically, rather than a more diffuse sense of nonprofit leadership, and yet, unlike many other advocacy capacity-building efforts, individual advocates are clearly the emphasis.

The theory of change animating the Advocacy Fellowship is this: “the Sunflower Foundation believes that increasing the number of nonprofit health leaders who advocate on behalf of their constituents informs public policy and leads to real solutions for those in need. By becoming involved in advocacy, nonprofit leaders are advancing their causes, building public trust, and helping the people they serve.”

Notably missing, then, is discussion about the organizations in which these individuals work (indeed, they fairly frequently move organizations during the Fellowship or quickly following it) or about the sector as a whole. Instead, the idea is to find promising people, who happen to be working in nonprofit health organizations, and to work intensively with them to develop the knowledge, skills, and, yes, relationships they need to be effective advocates themselves. They are the ones held accountable for moving their work forward, and they are seen as the keys to advancing a vision of a healthy Kansas.

We’re still very much in the early stages of evaluation, but the indications at this point are, really, that the model works–that, no, their organizations do not necessarily greatly increase their advocacy capacity, but they as individuals do, and that that makes a difference. They are quoted more frequently in media accounts of related policy debates, they engage in those debates more often and with more influence, they are more respected by a larger circle of potential targets and allies, and they are increasingly sophisticated and outspoken in their advocacy.

It’s a bit of a gamble, this business of investing in individuals. We feel safer, sometimes, with organizations, because of the law of averages, but those same “averaging” tendencies can dilute and stall the radical message we want to convey: that, in the end, justice hinges on you (and me).

Here’s to sparking movements, one soul at a time.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged , , ,

Why do big tents so often fall down?

Posted on January 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Over the past several months, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some really committed advocates–super smart and dedicated people who are working extremely hard to protect their clients and the programs that serve them, in a climate of drastic budget cuts and an eroding social contract.

It’s soul-sucking work, and we’re losing many, many more battles than we win.

Lately, though, some of us have felt like we’re really fighting the wrong battle. Or, more accurately, battles.

It’s not just the old “divide and conquer” problem–the fact that social service advocates are vulnerable to intra-skirmishes that distract us from the real enemies and make it easier for those same opponents to play us against each other.

It’s also that we deliberately avoid taking on the real struggles, and even sometimes miss noticing them altogether, because we’re trying to contain debates that we can really only hope to dominate if we act collectively.

Here’s how it looks in real life:

In Kansas, advocates spent all last year fighting against budget cuts in different program areas–mental health, public education, child welfare, senior services. And all year, the Governor and some legislative leaders hinted that their sights were really set on a policy battle far larger and more fundamental to our state’s well-being: the revenue foundation that shores up (or doesn’t) all of those programs and far more. For the most part, they have not encountered much effectively organized opposition. From my conversations with at least some advocates, it seems that many hoped that not antagonizing the Administration on that issue would, somehow, preserve some access and influence that they could use to defend their work and serve their clients.

So, in essence, we’re sitting on the sidelines while our fates–for the next several years–are decided.

Because, of course, if the Governor and his allies are successful in eliminating the state income tax, they won’t need to legitimate their budget-slashing goals at all: there quite literally won’t be enough money to fund any of these programs, and so advocates will be fighting over crumbs.

If the failure to build a sustained, strategic, progressive coalition to take on these more global, structural issues was just a logistical one (getting people together across distance), or just jurisdictional (getting people to set aside their competition with each other), or even just a problem of capacity (people not having enough resources to take on a fight this big), then I feel like we’d know better how to start addressing it.

After all, those are the kinds of challenges that we overcome in our organizing every day.

But the real reason that building this kind of “big tent” is so hard, I think, is that too many awesome advocates think it’s a bad idea–that taking on these common concerns dilutes their influence and compromises their positions. And so we have to overcome not just inertia but entrenched resistance, and we’ve got to do it without being able to offer any guarantees that their concerns aren’t, in fact, totally well-founded: this Administration absolutely does box out those who oppose them.

But advocacy isn’t about tallying the numbers of wins v. losses.

It’s about how we can build movements that shape how people see themselves, and their worlds, and about how we can change even the debates about the policy challenges we confront. It’s about being in the arena, even if we emerge somewhat bloodied.

And so we can’t afford to sit out the really, really big fights, and we can’t presume that going it alone is ever safer.

There are some battlefields on which we just have to be willing to make a stand.

And there is solace in solidarity.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged , , , ,

The Legacy of Brown: We Must Not be Bought

Posted on January 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Not long ago, I stood with my oldest son at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in front of a photo that contrasted a segregated school for African Americans in South Carolina (one-room schoolhouse with sagging shingles and missing boards) with a rather opulent school (large brick building) for white students.

The “unequal” part was obvious, and even more glaring than the “separate”.

Looking at those pictures, I remembered a section of The Race Beat, a book I read recently about journalists who covered the civil rights movement, that described the efforts of some segregationists in both the North and South who were eager to spend more on schools for children of color, especially in the lead-up to the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Because they were willing to pay a lot to maintain the status quo.

That’s how much maintaining an oppressive system was worth.

Holding hands with my son, who started Kindergarten in public school this year, I was thinking about those brave parents, the ones whose names are on the collection of lawsuits that, together, became known as Brown v. Board. And wondering whether they were ever tempted, as I would have been, if my child had been in that rickety schoolbuilding, to take the money.

Even knowing what it cost.

Obviously, our entire country has benefitted tremendously from their refusal to be bought. They understood that separate could never be equal, and they knew that their little boys and girls deserved integrated schools and the access to power and full participation that only integration can bring, rather than a spiffed-up segregated school, with better-paid teachers and textbooks in the classrooms.

They were right, and they were patient in that impatient about injustice but amazingly able to wait for real solutions way, and their intransigence was a witness that sparked the greatest movement for social equality our country has ever seen.

And the next thing I thought, as my son’s attention moved on to the next part of the exhibit, was…

I hope we can be as brave. And as tough. And as smart.

Times are tough, these days, for social service nonprofit organizations and for many of those we serve. We’re perennially out of money, and in begging-mode, and we are confronting serious challenges in a political context that’s often impervious to our sufferings.

That’s a dangerous combination, because it can breed a desperation that can push us to accept compromises that we know take us backwards, concessions that violate our most honored principles.

I see it when private organizations join together to pay for public services that the state has abandoned–we’re reaching for a Band-Aid because the need is so urgent, but we’re excusing public abdication of responsibilities core to our social contract.

I see it when organizations scramble to align themselves with even objectionable programming opportunities (“marriage promotion“, anyone?), because they’re trying to find ways to stay afloat, and to curry favor with government officials.

I even see it in myself, when I’m reluctant to take an Administration on on one front because we’re still negotiating on another–no, it’s not money at stake, but something arguably more valuable–my integrity.

I’m sure Linda Brown’s parents wanted her to go to a nice school. They may have even been approached with offers of upgrades, if they would just “be quiet”.

We need to all be thankful that they did not.

And we must, in the words of the song to which my 3 oldest kids and I danced in the gallery of the Brown site, in what used to be a school only for children with a certain color skin, we must not be moved.

Or bought.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged , , , ,

Root Causes: Keep Asking “Why?”

Posted on January 9, 2012 by | Leave a comment

It’s organizational transformation week on Classroom to Capitol! I can’t think of a better way to start the new year than sharing some of my thinking about how to help nonprofit social service organizations fully integrate social change activities into their work with the community of readers here.

I’ve been working with several nonprofit organizations and individual leaders to assess their organizations’ capacities for transformative social change, in pursuit of their visions of social justice, relying heavily on the work of the rock stars at Building Movement Project (if you haven’t already downloaded their free Process Guide, please make that a 2012 resolution!). The Guide approaches social change work from a foundation of quality social services and helps nonprofit organizations engage in cycles of learning and strategy development and action and reflection, as they walk a continuum from status quo-reinforcing to truly revolutionary power-building.

This process begins (and ends–it’s a cycle!) with exploration of the root causes implicated in the social problems that our social programs are designed to address. Too often, our organizations’ activities are aimed at the symptoms of those problems, rather than the structural realities that perpetuate them, despite all of our best intentions. It’s not that we don’t care about the root causes, or even always that those examinations are too controversial for us to contemplate (although that can be a factor).

Instead, I think that one of our greatest obstacles to uncovering the root causes that demand our attention is that we…

don’t think enough like 3-year-olds.

Because, really, have you ever met an adult with the same “why, why, why?” stamina as a preschooler?

I didn’t think so.

The connection was made clear when I was reading The Little Engine That Could to my 3-year-old son.

Twenty-seven times in one day.

Every single time, he asked me (on the same exact page), “Why the black engines no help?”

And it occurred to me, maybe on time 18 (slow, I know), that what he really wants to know is WHY someone (or, in this case, something) would ignore the pleas of another in need. He can’t understand that, and, of course, none of us should be able to. And he wasn’t satisfied with any answer I gave, because they all fell short of really explaining “why”.

And that commitment to “why?” needs to underscore our organizational evolutions towards social justice orientations, too.

WHY do racial health disparities persist? WHY are people of color more likely to be uninsured? WHY are unemployment and underemployment rates higher for some demographics? WHY are educational attainment levels different for different populations? WHY are health outcomes tied to income and other social determinants? WHY? WHY? WHY?

It often takes peeling away many layers to see the linkages between social problems and to uncover the root social inequities that, tragically, are relatively few and achingly predictable.

How many “whys” do you have in you?

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Analysis and Commentary

Tagged , , ,