If creating the world we want means getting people to change what they currently do, how can we get people to change?

That’s a question we hear a lot when we tell people what we’re doing at Creating the Future. We share that we are building a movement for making visionary community results the norm in social change work, rather than the exception. And the standard response is, “That sounds great. But how will you get people to change their ways?”

Consultants and funders and people involved in capacity building work all seem to live with the same frustrations. How do we get people to change?

Here’s what we’ve found about “getting people to change.”

People will change their habits if they are inspired to change.

People won’t change because you tell them to. They won’t change because it’s best practice or because that’s what other groups are doing. They won’t change if you scare them into doing it (they may DO something differently, but they won’t change how they feel about it, which I can guarantee will rear its head somewhere else, when you least expect it…).

But people will move mountains if they are inspired to do so.

So if we want to change norms, change culture, change habits, the recipe is simple:

1. Meet people where they are, with what they think they need.
2. Open the window just a crack, so they can see what’s possible beyond their comfort zone. Create the environment that inspires them and gives them the confidence to take that small step.
3. And for those early adopters who are absolutely ready to take huge leaps forward, provide the means for them to do so as well.

Think about your mission from the top down and from the bottom up. From the people who can’t wait to make massive changes, and the people who believe they just need a little tweak.

Whether it’s about eating one more helping of vegetables a day or changing food policy; about quitting smoking or banning smoking; about learning 3 new consulting tricks or transforming your practice…

How can you meet people where they are, with compassion and wisdom, and then inspire them to just take that next small step into what is possible?

Those few words encompass the most insidious assumption at the heart of competitive grant-making and competitive fundraising. The “reality” created by that assumption is the source of all the fear and the overwhelming sense of scarcity that undergird this work, everywhere around the world.

For years at this blog, I have shared evidence that this assumption is just that – an assumption. (Check posts here and here.)  And in The Pollyanna Principles, the case studies not only show the step-by-step of how funders can indeed fund everyone – they show how funding everyone dramatically improves the results of those funded projects, in the short term AND the long term!

A New Case Study
These days, Creating the Future finds itself in the middle of another case study, as we have been honored to be included in the launch of a new funding mechanism that is fully intended to fund everyone.

The effort is called Start Some Good.

Start Some Good is built on the assumption that resources are absolutely abundant. The effort’s founders – Tom Dawkins and Alex Budak – prove that each and every one of us (yes, that includes you) has two resources:

1) A powerful desire for the world to be healthy, peaceful, joyful for all of us.

2) A smidge of money to give (whether that smidge is $1 or $100 – smidge is in the eye of the beholder).

With those two assumptions at its core, Start Some Good is a “Crowdfunding Platform” – a central location where social change initiatives can post their information, and where people who want to “start some good” can find and invest in those initiatives.

Donors are encouraged to give to more than one effort – to spread their gifts around. Even if you only have $5, you might give it all to one effort, or you could give $1 apiece to five efforts. Those dollars add up (hence the term “Crowdfunding”) and voila – everyone can win.

Tapping into the assumptions of abundant resources and abundant passion, Tom and Alex began this initiative with their own blood, sweat and tears, just the way so many of us started our own efforts. And we have been honored that they included one of our projects in their launch.

Next week I’ll share a bit about the project we started there. For now, though, as a way of showing our immense gratitude to Tom and Alex for offering this site to the world, we are hoping you will pitch in to make Start Some Good be the best it can be – just as you have done with so many of the projects we have done here at Creating the Future.

Please take a moment and do the following:

1) Use this link to head to Start Some Good

2) Look around the site, to see the projects people have posted, and to get a sense of the site.

3) Please give a small amount to everything that is appealing to you, even if all you can afford is $1 or $2. And see how those small amounts are honored at the site, underscoring the spirit of abundance that says, “We all have gifts to share, and those gifts are all honored.”

4) Please then answer the following questions:
• What do you find interesting / exciting about Start Some Good?
• What has been your experience with similar programs?
• If you have a project you’d like to post at Start Some Good, what questions would you want answered before you would consider doing so?
• As a donor, what would you want to know before you would consider giving at this site?
• On the mechanical side, the site is still in the Beta version. As you move about the site and as you donate, are there things that could make the site more usable?

And lastly, if you have a project you would like Tom and Alex to consider, please submit it at the site. We very much want them to succeed, to prove that there are so many ways to build cooperation rather than competition.

We wish them both tremendous luck. Please help them by helping others to Start Some Good!

An answer that has consumed my focus lately is one that doesn’t receive a lot of discussion. I hope that will soon change.

It is the fact that in this sector, everyone is an expert. Or at least that’s what we expect to be.

Most organizations that put themselves out there as “solving a problem” consider themselves experts at their work – or if they don’t, they are soon encouraged to do so. Environmental experts and human service experts and historic preservation experts and music experts.

Then there are the funders and consultants and nonprofit resource centers – all vying for who is the smartest person in the room.

And of course, while board members are not experts at the mission, they are frequently recruited for other expertise.

Experts experts everywhere.

What conditions does that assumption of expertise create in this sector? Here’s just a bit of what we’ve found.

1) An expert has the answers, and therefore takes that posture. The expert gives advice, prescribes solutions.

2) The recipient of that advice may or may not want the advice, even if they have asked for it. (Have you ever noticed how often you yourself ask for advice and then bristle when it is given? Have you ever noticed how often someone will ask YOU for advice, and when you give it, they will argue with you about why it wouldn’t work for them? Have you ever noticed how often you say or think, “Well if you didn’t want my advice, why did you ask for it?”)

3) Each of us has wisdom and experience and ideas of our own, that can be tapped to create possibilities.

4) None of us likes someone else telling us what to do. Yes, even if we have asked them for it. Just because we have confessed our weakness (hard to do) and asked for help (hard to do) doesn’t mean we will be happy about the answer!

5) This sector’s modus operandi – experts upon experts – has unwittingly created a situation of pervasive defensiveness. Walls go up. Questions go unasked. Learning and possibility stop.  Rather than “all of us working together,” we unwittingly create “us” and “them.”

The end result of this Culture of Experts is that it becomes hard to learn, easy to fail, impossible to achieve the results our communities deserve. Operating in a Culture of Experts actually makes us more vulnerable to being whipsawed by circumstances, as we sometimes have more of a stake in being right than making a difference.

Success in the Community Benefit arena doesn’t come from being the smartest and the fastest and the best. Yes, you may become the best funded organization, or the consultant with the most clients. But success in the Community Benefit world is about – well – Community Benefit! And none of us can do that on our own.

It is clear that this sector’s potential can only be reached if we link arms together to create the healthy, vibrant communities we all want. To accomplish that, many of the systems we rely upon in this sector will need to shift, from competitive systems that keep us apart to systems that encourage and nurture interconnectedness and interdependence.

And I am beginning to wonder if the assumption of expertise isn’t one of the pre-conditions to changing those systems.

After all, our assumptions and expectations guide our actions, and our actions guide our results. Without a change in assumptions, systems will not change. With so many systems (fundraising, governance, planning, etc.) continually failing to create the change we all know is possible, how many of those failures are at least in part the result of experts believing they know best for others?

Which leads me to the bigger questions:

What would it take for us to give up this notion that we funders and consultants and organizations are smarter than those with whom we are working to effect change?

What would it take for us to rejoice in learning together as equals?

What would it take for “leaders” and “experts” to be those who bring out the leadership and expertise in everyone else?

And how might we change the systems we use for doing our work, to reflect that shared wisdom, that shared learning, that shared leadership?

I am so pleased to share another letter from Nora Lester Murad. (To read this series from the beginning, please click here.)

Nora lives with her husband and three daughters in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem, in Palestine’s West Bank. In addition to her consulting work to NGOs, Nora has co-founded Dalia Association, a community foundation created and run by people who actually live in Palestine – a rarity in a land dominated by foreign aid (and therefore foreign priorities). Dalia Association’s purpose is to get beyond the politics and just take care of the people.

Nora has blessed us by agreeing to guest blog here, to share what it is like to try to run a Community Benefit Organization amid the chaos and insanity that is day-to-day life in Palestine. You can find her first post here, and her bio is below her post.

I hope you will continue to welcome Nora and Dalia Association into your hearts.

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Dear Hildy,
Thanks so much for asking about the strategic planning process we did for Dalia Association. I hope your blog readers will have some reflections that will help us in the future.

Our strategic planning process was constrained by our donor, an excellent foundation overall that tries to help applicants access funds by getting involved in shaping the grant proposal.

They suggested that their grants committee would be much more likely to approve our application if we specified that we’d be seeking an international consultant, rather than a local consultant, to facilitate our strategic planning. They said that in their experience, it is worth the expense to get an objective point of view from someone who specializes in community foundations.

Were they helping us to get a grant that we would not otherwise have gotten? Were they passing on valuable information they’ve learned from years of experience around the world? Were they driving our agenda? Or did they not fully comprehend the assets we have right here in our own community? I suspect all these things may have played a role.

The strategic planning retreat itself had some good outcomes. We invited some non-board members to bring new perspectives to our thinking, and this helped deepen our relationships with some key community members who we’ve been trying to involve. We recruited two new board members and two committee members from among those guests.

The board itself came to new clarity and stronger consensus about the need to focus on successful implementation of our three grantmaking pilots over the next 18 months.

And the international consultant became a champion for us, which I think was helped along by the drama we went through when we took a break from our planning to observe a nearby village being completely surrounded by an illegal Israeli settlement. That incident led to us all being detained and questioned by Israeli soldiers for a very tense 20 minutes or so.

But were those achievements worth one-third of our annual budget? The plan itself is unimpressive. It documents what we are planning to do and puts it into a framework that donors and others can relate to.

But is it a plan we can follow? Or is it just a good idea on paper?

As in other third world and regions of conflict, planning in Palestine is very, very difficult. True, the political situation is uncertain, but this is not the challenge. We can pretty realistically predict that the situation on the ground will continue to get worse.

We will continue to have no access to Gaza, nor will Gazans be able to reach us (which is why our Gaza board member did not participate in our strategic planning).

We will continue to be able to enter Jerusalem and Israel only when Palestinian ID holders are granted travel permits by the Israeli military (almost impossible to get). We have had to schedule all our pilots inside the West Bank, as our community organizer has been denied a travel permit.

We will continue to be delayed and frustrated by over 500 mobility barriers (staffed and unstaffed military checkpoints, trenches, concrete blocks, etc.) that divide the West Bank itself into bantustans. The occupation is something completely out of our control, but we can fairly predict how it will affect our operations.

Sadly, all of that is the predictable part of doing our work here.

On the other hand, our financial situation is unpredictable. We’ve planted many, many seeds, but because what we’re doing is so new, and most donors have little or no experience in the Middle East, it is very difficult to predict what we will or won’t get in terms of funding, which means we don’t know if we can hire more staff, expand our projects, or do any of what we have planned to accomplish.

For example, we have one donor who just this month approved our grant request for $25,000/year. We made that request in September 2006 — twenty months ago!

The delays were due to a combination of bureaucracy and indifference and arrogance, with a lot of preconceived notions, misconceptions and stereotypes added in. I say that because after we passed all the administrative hurdles, they shared that they then went through months and months and months of internal discussion about the “risks” of supporting us.

How do you prove that you’re not a terrorist? How do you prove your innocence? How do we prove we are doing real community development work, good work that is sorely needed?

We have another potential donor who is trying to convince us that our grant amounts of $3,000 are too high. They say that local donors who are poor will be discouraged to give if their contribution is so low in relation to grant amounts.

This was such a strange idea to me that I had to think really hard just to understand this feedback.

Then I realized that in the west, individuals make contributions because they want to have an impact. They want to make a noticeable difference.

But here in Palestine, that is not the motivation at all. In both Islam and Christianity, charitable giving is a regular part of the faith, and it is therefore simply proportional to income. In other words, people give money here primarily from either a religious or social obligation. They expect their generosity to be rewarded by God.

And so there is no shame in giving small amounts. Each family is expected to give in relation to their means. People don’t give because they want to affect some particular change through an organization. And if they did, they would give directly to the organization they want to support, NOT to a community foundation that will make the ultimate decision about how the funds are used.

Now we have to decide, are we going to modify our grant request to increase the chances of funding, since the donor has a specific way of looking at grant amounts? Or are we going to stick with what we know about our local environment and people? This time, I think we will stick to our own plan knowing that we may lose the funding.

Being a grant recipient certainly is helping us to get clearer and more committed to the type of grantmaker that WE want to be. Little things like returning emails, giving full attention when you talk to people, saying up front how long decisions will take rather than saying “in the next few weeks” for months and months — these are the behaviors that communicate to grantees that you respect them as agents of social change (not just as “applicants”) and that you are interested in their success in achieving their mission (not just in “completing the funded project”).

Well, I’ve wandered from the topic of strategic planning a bit. In the future, we expect our resources to become more predictable, which will enable better planning. We hope (and plan) to influence the donor community to be more accountable and responsive. We also hope (and plan) to be less dependent on them once we have more resources under our local control. I anticipate that our strategic planning will look at lot different then!

Best regards to all,
Nora

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Until 2004, Nora Lester Murad combined a life of teaching at Bentley College in Massachusetts with a life of consulting to governments, foundations, corporations and community organizations on matters of racism and intercultural understanding.

In 2004, Nora and her husband moved their three daughters halfway around the world, to the Palestinian community of Beit Hanina, in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem. “My husband is Palestinian, and we wanted to be near his family. We wanted the girls to grow up with a deep sense of belonging to both Palestinian and American cultures, with full access to both sides of their heritage and languages.”

Nora is now the volunteer Executive Director of Dalia Association, a new community foundation that mobilizes resources for Palestinian-led social change and sustainable development in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the Palestinian communities inside Israel.

For the next post in this series, head here.

My heart just sank when I saw that the Lodestar Foundation is offering a $250,000 prize for the most worthy collaboration. Yes, it sank.

Why does the sector that should know better continue to insist on treating organizational and sector-wide symptoms? If we know that symptoms-based approaches accomplish little more in our communities than sprinkle band-aids about, why do we think treating the symptoms will do us any better as organizations?

The Collaboration Prize is well-meaning: Celebrate what good can come from working together, that cannot happen when we work separately. Yes, of course, we all know that, and yes, of course, few organizations truly collaborate as a way of being.

But here’s what gets me about the top-down approach of “rewarding” collaboration – whether that reward is in the form of funding (we will only fund collaborative efforts) or the $250,000 prize now being offered: These rewards simply reinforce competition.

Think about it – now we will have whole groups of great projects, competing with each other for who is best – working hard to prove that they should win and others should lose.

Working together means everyone. It is possible if we think it is possible. Here is just one story of how it has been done - and how funders and others can begin to implement “working together” in ways that are inclusive, and not simply exclusive on a grander scale.

A spirit of collaboration is a far different animal than the mere mechanism of collaboration. Sharing resources and talent does not have to be a competitive enterprise, motivated by money (either gaining funding or reducing expenses).

When instead, working together is motivated by what we can accomplish together that we cannot accomplish alone, it becomes an inclusive process of sharing what we have, building on our strengths and our interconnectedness. It becomes part of our value system.

It becomes simply the way we do things.

Competition for money reinforces the scarcity mentality that says, “We can’t all win. The winners will therefore be those who learn to play the game better than the losers.”

But when our work is Community-Driven, the main prize is that our communities will be better places to live. And when we assume we all have strengths – and that we can provide more benefit to our communities if we share those strengths – we prove that the scarcity model is wrong.

We can indeed all win.

But only when the Powers That Be believe there is a better way than encouraging ongoing competition.

In wrapping up the past week’s rant about the issues related to Donor Accountability, I want to first share what triggered that rant. And then I want to share what we can do to hold ourselves accountable in a way that makes donors happy and, most importantly, makes our communities happy.

(If you have not read the posts leading up to this one, you can start at the beginning here.)

First, the trigger. It was a discussion at the always-thoughtful and thought-provoking Tactical Philanthropy blog. I appreciate Sean Stannard-Stockton for consistently raising issues that are important to the work we all do, and this was no exception.

Here was the question, from several months back: As we search for the keys to board effectiveness, should donors vote for nonprofit board members?

I won’t go into all the answers I had just to that one question – I think you all have had enough of my ranting to last quite a while!

But back to the issue of donor accountability – if demanding more donor rights is not the answer to the question of organizational effectiveness, then what is the answer?

And that answer is that we stop aiming at the symptoms, and start aiming boards at their potential. And then have them hold themselves accountable for that.

And what is that potential? It is no less than the community’s highest aspirations – the aspiration for our communities to be safe, healthy, vibrant, humane, joyful places to live.

Here’s the thing about the Donor Accountability Movement: It stems from the same frustration everyone seems to have about the work of this sector. It is the frustration reflected in the title to the book that yes, I promise, will be released this fall: Why Nonprofits / NGOs Have Not Changed the World and How They Can.

Donors and boards and everyone else want the same thing from community organizations – we want amazing places to live. To date, the systems this sector relies on fail to aim at that, and in some cases aim glaringly away from that.

But if we change both governance systems and governance culture, making it not only acceptable for boards to hold themselves accountable for creating the future of our communities, but making that the norm – then they will be accountable to their donors and everyone else.

Boards cannot accomplish “extraordinary” if they are wasteful and inefficient. And, more to the point, if boards are holding themselves accountable for creating extraordinary communities, donors will be excited and engaged, rather than critical.

Donors are a hugely important part of what makes our organizations work. They are, in fact, investing their dollars, their in-kind gifts and their time. And they are, in fact, frustrated with the fact that our communities do not seem to be dramatically changing.

Unfortunately, those advocating for donor rights are making the mistake of aiming their complaints at the money, rather than the results. But that does not invalidate their reasons for doing so. They want what we all want – better communities, and healthier organizations leading that charge.

And so, I propose the following:

If the board is holding itself first and foremost accountable for creating an amazing future for anyone whose lives are touched by the organization, and
If a board is making every single decision based on vision, mission and values, and
If that board is creating plans that aim first at the difference they want to make, and then at ensuring they have all the means to accomplish that,
Then our organizations will have far more than just happy donors.

Our organizations will have boards that are committed.

Our communities will have organizations that are energized.

And we will all have communities that are becoming all they have the potential to become.

The issue of where we aim our accountability is therefore the most important question any organization can ask. It is why I took a whole week of posts to debunk the current “wisdom” of accountability to donors. It is why I roam the country, teaching boards how highly practical and do-able it is to Govern for What Matters Most – holding themselves accountable for creating visionary change in their communities.

Thanks to you all for letting me rant this past week. In the next week or so, we will be assembling those points into a white paper. So please just let me know if you would like a copy, and we will get that to you!!

]]> http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/18/debunking-accountability-to-donors-finale/feed/ 0 http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/15/debunking-%e2%80%9caccountability-to-donors%e2%80%9d-part-6/ http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/15/debunking-%e2%80%9caccountability-to-donors%e2%80%9d-part-6/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 01:44:45 +0000 Hildy http://hildygottlieb.com/?p=135 Is the Donor Accountability movement correct? Should community organizations be aiming their primary accountability squarely at their donors?

Having spent the week throwing grenades at that notion, today’s is the last argument I will make before wrapping up this subject tomorrow.

(If you have not read the posts leading up to this one, you can start at the beginning here.)

Accountability for “The Money”
Now we’re at the heart of the matter. If organizations are to be held accountable to their donors, the only logical thing they could be accountable for is “The Money.” And if you ask a room full of nonprofit board members what they are primarily accountable for, that is the response you will get from many, if not most of them. “The Money.”

We know this because we have asked board after board. And almost always, that is their first reply – “The Money” – as if “The Money” were some special deity deserving of capital letters and quotation marks.

And as you have probably guessed by now, that is just not true.

As we saw in yesterday’s post, the corporate model actually points away from nonprofit accountability for “The Money.” So, then where does the logic behind “Accountability for The Money” come from?

Perhaps it comes from the law. Aren’t community organizations LEGALLY accountable to donors and funders? Aren’t they LEGALLY accountable for the money?

Well, no. Legally, community organizations are accountable for upholding the law. That’s it.

Now in some cases, the laws they must uphold may include contract law. For example, if there is a contract between an organization and a donor / funder / government contracting office, the organization must legally uphold its end of that contract, just as it would be legally bound to uphold any contract. But in those cases, it is not because the other party is a donor, but because there is a contract involved.

And so, short of ensuring that money is not used for an illegal purpose, the “legal accountability for the money” argument doesn’t hold any more water than the corporate argument.

Well what about tax exemption? In exchange for their tax exemption, community organizations must be accountable for the money, right?

Sorry – wrong again. Organizations receive their tax exemption for one reason: to provide community benefit. The prime example of that is tax exempt hospitals in the U.S., who often find themselves scrambling to put a cash value to the benefit they provide to the community. The IRS wants to know that the community is receiving at least as much in “community benefit” as the hospital is saving by not paying taxes.

Again – not the money; Community Benefit.

But just because it is fun to do, let’s take the tax exemption argument one step further.

If the reason an organization would be accountable to its donors has anything to do with the tax exemption the organization enjoys, then it stands to reason that the reverse is true as well – that donors are accountable to the organization.

Why? Because the organization is not the only one getting a tax advantage; the donor will receive a tax deduction for his/her gifts. And depending on the net worth and sophistication of the donor, he/she may get tremendous personal tax advantages for giving a particular gift in a particular way. So perhaps we should just leave the “tax exemption” issue alone…

Which all combines to leave us here:

IF accountability for the money is not an issue of legal accountability or the tax code; and
IF corporate accountability actually proves that organizations are accountable primarily to the community, rather than primarily to donors; and
IF it is almost impossible to discern to whom an organization would owe its accountability for a government grant; and
IF we have to think hard to determine why a cash donor should be the object of accountability over an in-kind donor or volunteer; and
IF we have to think just as hard, if not harder, to determine cut-off donation levels for varying degrees of accountability – and again determine what exactly that means;
And if we cannot for the life of us figure out to whom an organization would be accountable if it was fully endowed and did not have to raise money through donations or grants…

Well then maybe it is time to put to rest the notion that our primary accountability is for the money, and that we are primarily accountable to our donors.

Perhaps it is time to start looking not at the issue of accountability for the means – the money – but for the end results: community change. And perhaps it is time to start considering what could be accomplished if boards held themselves first and foremost accountable to their communities, rather than to their donors.

Tune in tomorrow, when I will wrap up this thread, by considering what is possible when we start governing for our potential to do amazing things in our communities, and stop aiming our boards’ accountability myopically at dollars and donors.

]]> http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/15/debunking-%e2%80%9caccountability-to-donors%e2%80%9d-part-6/feed/ 0 http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/14/debunking-%e2%80%9caccountability-to-donors%e2%80%9d-part-5/ http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/14/debunking-%e2%80%9caccountability-to-donors%e2%80%9d-part-5/#comments Wed, 14 May 2008 21:49:37 +0000 Hildy http://hildygottlieb.com/?p=134 As I have noted throughout this series, the notion that organizations are primarily accountable to their donors not only misdirects organizational focus, but it is fraught with logic holes large enough to comfortably house a family of four.

In my posts today and tomorrow – the last posts before I wrap this up – I will move away from the absurdity of that logic. Instead, I will aim these remaining posts at the faulty assumptions at the root of this whole argument.

(If you have not read the posts leading up to this one, you can start at the beginning here.)

Faulty Assumption: The Corporate Comparison
Both Corporate and Nonprofit Accountability are about the fiduciary obligation to represent the interests of others.

When we state that a nonprofit organization is primarily accountable to its donors, therefore, we are stating that the organization’s primary allegiance is to represent the interests of those donors.

If that is not enough to make one stop in one’s tracks, we must ask the next question:

What factors determine whose interests those organizations should be representing?

The most commonly cited factors in the “donor accountability” argument look something like this:
1) In a for-profit corporation, shareholders invest the dollars that allow that corporation to do its work.
2) In a Community Benefit Organization*, donors provide the dollars that allow the organization to do its work.
3) Therefore, because for-profit corporations are accountable to their shareholders, “nonprofit” corporations are accountable to the donors.

Seems airtight, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it is not true.

Here is the reality:

1) One can only be held accountable for one’s own actions. Therefore, a corporation can and should be held accountable for the actions it takes.

2) The purpose of a for-profit corporation is to generate profits. The actions for which the corporation will be held accountable will therefore be aimed at that end goal – generating profits.

3) The shareholders will receive those profits. That is their return on their investment.

4) For-profit corporations are therefore accountable TO their shareholders, and accountable FOR taking actions that will provide the very most benefit / reward possible – the highest return on the shareholders’ investment.

5) Corporate accountability to shareholders, therefore, is NOT due to the fact that the shareholders provided the funds. The corporation is accountable to those shareholders because the shareholders will reap the benefit that derives from the corporation’s actions – the actions for which the corporation is accountable!

This is not a difference of semantics. It is, in fact, everything. Corporations are not accountable because their investors put the money in, but because the investors are the ones that will reap the rewards.

Which begs the question, “In the world of Community Benefit Organizations*, who will reap the benefit of what the organization does?”

Yes, it is the community – everyone, including the donors, but also including you and me and our neighbors and friends.

Therefore, the “shareholder / investor” argument does more than simply fail to prove that community organizations are accountable first and foremost to their donors.

The corporate analogy actually proves instead that community organizations are primarily accountable to the community they have promised to benefit.

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Tomorrow, in Post #6, I will provide the last argument in this series – rooted in the biggest and most dangerous of all faulty assumptions. And then, on Friday, I will wrap up this thread with the moral of the tale, and suggestions for change. And I’ll do that all in time for Monday’s Rock-Out (which we will all sorely need by then!).

So stay tuned!

Curious about our use of the term “Community Benefit Organization?”

In this series, I have considered the logic flaws in the argument that organizations should be holding themselves primarily accountable to their donors. So far, I have considered the following questions:

1) Are fully funded / endowed organizations with no donors accountable to no one?
2) Should different levels of giving receive different levels of accountability?
3) Do “donor’s rights” apply equally to volunteers and in-kind donors as they do to cash donors?

(If you have not read the posts leading up to this one, you can start at the beginning here.)

Today, Post #4:

Are Thousands of Organizations Accountable to ME?
There are thousands of organizations that receive large grants from the various layers of various governments – local government, state / provincial government, federal / national government.

If organizations are primarily accountable to their donors and funders, to whom, exactly, are these organizations accountable?

Are they accountable to the whole government? And what does that really mean? I understand what it means for government to be accountable to the people it governs, but to what or to whom would an organization be accountable if it is accountable TO the government?

Perhaps, then, those grantee organizations are accountable just to the division of the government whose budget provided the funding. Or within that division, perhaps they are accountable to the proposal review team, or to the individual program officer who approved the grant.

Or are those grant recipients accountable to the Division Chief that oversees all those program officers? Or to the elected officials who appointed the Division Chief – the folks to whom that Division Chief is accountable?

But wait – that money didn’t really come from the government. You and I gave that money to the government! So is each and every one of those organizations then accountable directly to each and every taxpayer?

Are they all accountable to ME?

The questions “To whom are we accountable? And for what?” are about more than just dollars and donors. These questions are at the heart of everything community organizations are able to accomplish. And the reason for that is simple: We accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for.

Click here to go to the next post in this series.

]]> http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/13/debunking-%e2%80%9caccountability-to-donors%e2%80%9d-part-4/feed/ 0 http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/12/debunking-accountability-to-donors-part-3/ http://hildygottlieb.com/2008/05/12/debunking-accountability-to-donors-part-3/#comments Mon, 12 May 2008 20:16:57 +0000 Hildy http://hildygottlieb.com/?p=132

The notion that organizations are primarily accountable to their donors is a dangerous one indeed – dangerous because it misdirects organizational focus, thereby preventing organizations from creating an amazing future for their communities.

It is also a notion fraught with logic-leaps.

And so, here is Post #3, as I continue to debunk the illogical constructs at the heart of the Donor Accountability movement.

(If you have not read the posts leading up to this one, you can start at the beginning here.)

Donating What?
If an organization is first and foremost accountable to those who provide the resources to make their programs possible, are those organizations only accountable to donors who give them cash?

What about the donor who provides $100,000 in free rent every year? What about a volunteer who works 40 hours a week, every week, for free?

If we are primarily accountable to our donors, are we accountable to our volunteers and our in-kind donors to the same extent we would be accountable to our cash donors? And if not, why not?

These are not just glib arguments. Because we do indeed accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for, the issues in this thread are at the heart of what organizations can and will accomplish for the communities we all love.

If we hold ourselves accountable for creating an amazing future for our communities, our donors will be happy, because our communities will be healthy, vibrant, resilient, humane places to live.

Yes, one of the many contributing factors towards those lofty ends is the extent to which organizations are fiscally prudent and responsive to donors. However, ultimate accountability for a Community Benefit organization means more than a focus on the dollars.

Accountability asks and answers the question, “Whose expectations matter?”

And unless the primary answer to that question is, “The Community,” we will continue to see fiscally prudent organizations creating little impact in their communities.

Click here to go to the next post in this series.

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