White Courtesy Telephone

Human Rights, Human Wrongs

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I.

I’m at a philanthropy conference luncheon listening to some household names speak about social justice.  They trade friendly barbs as they describe the horrors of Guantánamo and flog the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.  At intervals they draw polite applause.

One of the speakers describes President Bush’s vetoing of a bill to outlaw waterboarding.  ‘There should have been a public outcry,’ he chides us.

I gaze into my salad of mixed greens, my head heavy with guilt.  Is there any vegetable more melancholy than kale?

II.

I had been attending these conferences for years and had never heard such strong language coming from the dais.  The speakers’ calls to conscience felt like the blows of a blunt weapon, like acts of verbal insurrection.

At the same time, there was something inescapably ironic about a plenary luncheon on human rights in which everything from our underwear to the salt shakers on our tables was made in China.  If I wanted to understand what sustained human rights abuses in China, my inner voice told me, I needed only to inspect the labels on my BVDs.

III.

This last point deserves some elaboration.

I’m attending this conference at an opulent hotel that rises like a crystal box from the banks of the Potomac.  It’s large enough to have its own zip code.  The inner space of the building is defined by a dramatic atrium soaring hundreds of feet above a fountain that periodically dances to recorded symphonic music.  A picture window the size of two football fields looks across a sparkling river to Old Town, Alexandria.

As I sit here under the newly planted figs and paper birches, I struggle with the gauzy sense that the best I can do for human rights is vote the current pols out of office.  I feel it’s me, not them, I most need to worry about.  I’m fully implicated. The purchases I make, the time I devote to scanning ads, the television channels and websites I surf—all those things I do without a moment’s reflection—sustain a system of exchange that keeps some people in chains and allows others to walk free.  My government does its part, I suppose, by hiding most of the bodies overseas.  Sitting in this place, isolated as I am from the hurly-burly of the world, I forget that the wars we most recently waged in the name of human rights have been tied to the protection of American consumption—my consumption, and that of my family and friends.

The key to ending human rights abuses is written not only on the labels to my BVDs, but also on my paycheck—the income from investments in corporations not always friendly to their workers overseas.  The key to the puzzle lies in this grand hotel that few of my poorer neighbors can afford to use.

IV.

The system is complex.  Where is my place in it, as a consumer, as a citizen who wants to do right but who over-values his creature comforts?  To what degree do I permit the demands of conscience to interrupt the flow of cheap goods?  Each time I successfully boycott some brand or some nation, don’t my fellow wage slaves lose their jobs?  The entire edifice is built stone upon stone.  Pull on one stone with enough force and it appears the whole thing threatens to come down on our heads.

At the same time, I was never one to buy the stories we tell ourselves about triple bottom lines and more efficient markets.  These, in my view, are self-serving fairy tales that enable us to sleep with ourselves inside these beautiful jeweled boxes we build on the banks of the Potomac.

Postscript

The U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, touted from the stage of the luncheon mentioned earlier, is an odd document.  For starters, there’s no U.N. Declaration of Human Responsibilities to balance the publication.  One has to read through to Article 29, the second-to-last article of the Declaration, to discover that we have duties to the community “in which alone the free and full development of [our personalities] is possible.”  Twenty-eight articles detailing our rights.  One article alluding to unspecified responsibilities.

This is a striking asymmetry.  Twenty-eight articles before we reach what is for some the essence of good citizenship.  And even here our duties to the commonweal are framed in terms of the free and full development of our personalities, a hint of Aristotle in a document that tries its hardest to appeal to every man and nation.

Philanthropic Self-Help: The Rabelaisian Method

From GiftHub:

“Come let us drink!” as Rabelais would say, dressing as a King or Philanthropist, and rucking up his robes to show his buttocks, to the saturnalian laughter of the peasants beating their tankards on the table. “There is the real gold!,” cries he, letting loose a stream of urine, to rival Pantagruel himself.  “Dear God, giving back is such a blessed relief! I just couldn’t hold it anymore—I mean the laughter.” Unless, indeed, we laugh at sober virtue we will burst.

From a recent conference catalogue:

Wednesday, May 7
LAUGHING AT SOBER VIRTUE
10:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
This event is open to all conference attendees.  A small tankard fee may apply.

François Rabelais, writer, doctor, and humanist, will lead this highly interactive session during which he will lift his robes and micturate, comparing his emissions to the “gold” we foolishly seek in our personal lives and careers.  “Dr. Rabelais’s methods are unconventional,” comments Phil Cubeta, morals tutor to America’s wealthiest families, “but there’s a clear sense in which we begin to re-live as we relieve.”

March Metrics Madness

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I was recently invited by Bill Schambra, director of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy & Civic Renewal, to speak on a panel titled Metrics Mania.  Panelists were asked to comment on an essay commissioned from Gary Walker, the founding director of Public/Private Ventures, on the subject of evaluating social programs.  Here is the text of my remarks ...

Bill Schambra saw my role on this panel as the guy who when asked about metrics replies “metrics schmetrics,” but I’m going to have to disappoint him—to some extent.  Measurement and evaluation, when done properly, are not just a bit of value-added for philanthropic or nonprofit work, they’re absolutely essential.  Only a fool would disagree with that proposition. 

But here I mean not just the kinds of formal evaluations described by Gary Walker in his essay, but informal evaluation as well: the kinds of course corrections we naturally make when we embark on a project, take a false step, and adjust what we do accordingly.  Evaluation is not and should not be the sole province of the highly compensated consultant.  We evaluate all the time; our own eyes and ears notice things the most astute consultant will never notice; and we’ll often be our own worst critics.

Now here’s where the metrics schmetrics comes in, perhaps: More nonsense has been spoken and written about evaluation than about any other subject in philanthropy.  The number of people practicing evaluation without a license and without a proper scientific and philosophical grounding in the subject is, in my view, a scandal.  Worries about evaluation, engendered in part by logic models the length of whale intestines, have become the math anxiety of the philanthropic world.

My general thesis—if I could call it that—is that from the perspective of somebody like Mr. Walker whose organization has been commissioned to conduct lucrative, large-scale evaluations of social programs (lucrative by nonprofit standards), the Impact Revolution might seem like a good thing.  But from the ground, from the perspective of many people working in community-based organizations, this so-called revolution has brought with it new sources of irritation, new ways of adding meaningless make-work to already overburdened nonprofit staff members.

It has not been a people’s revolution, in other words, but rather one championed by elites—like myself, I’m afraid— unable to see far enough beyond our own measuring sticks to understand the limitations of formal evaluation techniques, and the trade-offs in staff time and other resources that these formal techniques require.

A Message for Ben Bernanke

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My friend Rick Hohensee is back.  He’s single and a Virgo, and you can visit him at his MySpace page or in front of the Treasury building in Washington, DC.  As for his credit line proposal, perhaps Rick can offer his talent for satire as collateral.  I believe the expression is “Oh, snap” …

R U Ready 2 Lead?

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Assuming the impending nonprofit workforce crisis is real and not imagined, we have some work to do.  The latest report on the subject, Ready to Lead: Next Generation Leaders Speak Out,* reviews the various factors that will make nonprofit leadership recruitment more difficult in the years to come.  The report is based on a survey of close to 6,000 mostly younger next generation leaders—the largest survey of its kind to date.

Retiring Baby Boomers and the money worries of Gen Xers and Gen Yers will constrain the supply of would-be leaders even as nonprofits are drawn into an all-out “war for talent” with the government and business sectors.  Meanwhile, a lack of support and mentorship from incumbent executives will make it difficult for younger staffers to develop the skills they need to lead a nonprofit organization.

We’ll soon see if market forces will, as some predict, smooth out the bumps in the road ahead.  It’s possible that with more openings in the leadership ranks, more young people will look for careers in the nonprofit sector.  Sector leaders may rally and create new training programs and new incentives for charitable work.

I’d worry less about the impact of this impending crisis if the sector were, in general, better bankrolled.  Instead, charitable organizations operate in an environment of chronic scarcity as they struggle to meet the demand for services.  In this kind of environment, current leaders neglect to nurture the younger talent in their ranks; board members lose touch with the overhwelming fundraising burdens on executive directors.

But if there’s a theme that runs through these various workforce reports, it might be this: Because it’s so hard to raise charitable dollars, those of us who direct the work of the sector—current executive directors and board members, in particular—are frequently tempted to recruit and retain good talent on the cheap; but our investments in staff are the absolute last places we should be looking to cut costs.

It used to be that if one applicant turned his nose up at a nonprofit job, there’d be three waiting in the wings to apply.  We’re moving into an era when the demographics will turn sharply against us.

_____

* I was one of the authors of this report together with Marla Cornelius of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and Patrick Corvington of the Annie E. Casey Foundation.  I serve as vice president for programs and communications at the Meyer Foundation, one of the report’s primary sponsors.

Equity and Philanthropy

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Editor’s note: Guest blogger Chris Cardona worked for eight years in philanthropic affinity groups and is chair of the advisory board for the NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund, a new giving circle that supports NYC-based social entrepreneurs in developing innovative solutions to persistent social problems.  In this post, he riffs on the effects of diversifying the ranks of professional philanthropoids …

“Equity and philanthropy” was the theme of a convening for emerging leaders of color in philanthropy hosted last week by the AIM Alliance, a partnership of three philanthropic-studies academic programs in Arizona, Indiana, and Michigan.  I walked away with mixed feelings.  My colleagues are doing important work, and more and more academic centers are taking the challenge of forming philanthropic skills.  But this discussion remains in its infancy.  We are far from understanding the causal connection between greater representation of diverse groups in philanthropy and more grantmaking dollars flowing (or not) to these nonprofits.

For example, the numbers tell us that the representation of diverse communities on the staffs of foundations has risen since the early 80s, though not on pace with their growth in the population. The level of giving to diverse communities has remained stagnant at levels far below proportionality.

Representation of diverse communities increases, giving to them does not. Doesn’t look good, eh?

But here’s the thing: The growth in representation among people of color has been concentrated at the program and support levels.  At the CEO and trustee levels, it’s largely business as usual (with the important exception of white women making inroads as CEOs).  So people of color continue to be underrepresented in the key decision-making roles.

It’s involvement in decision-making that we need to be pushing on.  From diversity we move to equity: the point is not just to have more diverse people in philanthropy, but for more grant dollars to flow to diverse communities. And from equity we move to democracy: the point is not just for more grant dollars to flow to diverse communities, but for members of these communities, the direct beneficiaries, to be involved in the process of decision-making. That’s democratizing philanthropy, and it’s where advocates for diversity can have the most long-term impact.

The Axiology of Nonprofit Impact

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In a celebrated 2001 essay, wordsmith Tony Proscio asked, “Are grantmakers a species of investor, building benevolent enterprises that produce a measurable return for society, or are they more passive enablers of good, seeking mainly to support those who pursue charitable ends by whatever path?”

He was commenting on the tendency of the foundation sector to import the language of business while remaining largely oblivious to its insights.  But his question still manages to provoke.  The debate over the “measurable return” of charitable enterprises rages on between the pointy-headed wielders of business metrics and the addled hippies who oppose them.

The Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington attempts to stake a middle ground with a new report titled, Beyond Charity: Recognizing Return on Investment.  The report includes the kinds of cost-saving arguments familiar to many of us: each dollar spent on Johnny’s education saves us tens of thousands of dollars in prison costs and helps turn Johnny into a productive citizen who pays taxes to support local schools and fire fighters.  But the report also attempts to highlight nonprofit contributions that are a little harder to quantify—strengthening community, improving the quality of life, stimulating reform.

I understand the need for return-on-investment arguments, but I also worry about their impact on audiences that have a limited understanding of the civilizing effects of the nonprofit sector.

What’s the ROI, for example, on a provocative question that interrupts, if only for a moment, our relentless consumerism and reminds us of what we once aspired to become?  And where do we learn to distinguish between those cases in which metrics apply and those in which social goods are less susceptible to measurement? 

It used to be that notions like “character” and “good citizenship” figured prominently in arguments for maintaining the quality of a good public education.  Now it’s mostly about the dreary but important business of building a better workforce.

What do we lose when we attempt to convert every currency to a single coin?  What kind of creature is it that looks for a return on investment first, and for other values only if it must?

Raising Awareness of Our Awareness of Darfur

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The Darfurians “don't know the significance of the fact that Matt Damon is worried about them.”

Get ready to hit the mute button when the Dewars commercials come on.  Otherwise enjoy this Washington Week-style satire from our friends at The Onion.  Happy Thanksgiving! ...

Selling Soap, Saving Lives

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Susan Herr’s recent post on Filmanthropy raises some interesting questions in aesthetics: Why is it so difficult to marry art with advocacy?  Why is so much political art shrill or heavy-handed?

Population Communications International, a New York-based nonprofit organization, has, for the past twenty years, pioneered the use of telenovelas in the fight against poverty, AIDS, and other social ills.  The organization has politely rejected every socially conscious script I’ve sent them, including this latest, titled, La Flor Apolonia:

(Apolonia is a beautiful woman with big beauty-parlor hair and long nails.  Her dress makes a small “X” across her chest, barely concealing her breasts.  Marta, her closest friend, wears a white mini-skirt, a bright blue Spandex top, and long, bangly earrings.  She has applied her makeup with unmatched zeal.  The two women speak in quick, unaccented Spanish.)

Apolonia:  Enrique told me that his parents had disowned him.  I pitied him, Marta—you’ve seen those big brown eyes of his!  (Apolonia juts out her chin defiantly.)  The barbarian repaid my kindness by forcing himself on me.  (The orchestra swells, heavy on the strings, as Apolonia clenches her teeth.)  Now I’m pregnant with Enrique’s baby and I’m afraid I might have AIDS!  (Music sting.)

Marta:  You were clearly born to suffer, Apolonia!  Listen, I know a woman who works at the local health collective.  Just the other day she was telling me how they had convened diverse community stakeholders around issues relating to the sourcing of positive health outcomes for economically-challenged persons of female.  Let’s go see her …

What’s the secret of seamlessly integrating the preachy earnestness of poverty-fighting messages, say, into melodramas starring sexy Latinas and hunky vaqueros?  Apart from being one of the greatest playwrights of the last century, what made Bertolt Brecht so good at using theatre as a forum for political ideas?

Countess Apraxina Does the Hudson Institute

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Editor’s note:  We publish occasional letters written to us—typically on hotel stationery—by the Countess Apraxina.  We’ve invited her to be a regular contributor to the White Courtesy Telephone, but she consistently refuses, stating flatly that “Apraxina does not blonk.”  In this missive she takes WCT editor Albert Ruesga to task for his lackluster performance at a recent panel discussion sponsored by the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal, a conservative Washington, DC think tank ...

My Dearest Alyosha:

You will know by now that I am go see you speak at Hudson Institute.  I am arrive late, during remarks of charming Mr. Shamrock.  Why you always fight with him like Russian bear?  So handsome!  Groomed to within inch of life—unlike you, my little gemorróy, who look like bony chicken stuffed into ill-fitting suit from Wal-Mart.  You have learn nothink, nothink about fashion in all these years with Apraxina!

And who could understand one little think you say?  Your words flow over audience like embalming fluid—and I mean this only in nicest way.  Sin.  Atonement.  What is this you are saying, my little zaychick?  You remind me of Aunt Sofia, may she rest in peace, who cross herself each time she had impure thoughts.  The woman was in perpetual motion.

You were so focus on inducing narcolepsy in audience, you didn’t notice when Apraxina passed out from boredom and hit head on tray of undercooked brownies.  Fortunately, two very handsome Libertarians carried me out of conference center.  I am meet my good friend Mr. Scooter Libby while I wait in Hudson lobby for ambulance.  He told me he is writing monograph on how to re-introduce honesty and respect for rule of law into low-income African American communities.  I am also ask after childhood friend, Lord Conrad Black, and am surprise when told he has “no comment on allegations.”

New personal secretary, Dmitri, has attach photographs and notes he took at event.  I will use these to sue Hudson Institute, you will believe me! ...

	Mr. Rezga reacts to this comment by Mr. Ed Skloog: “[B]y tying together seriously rich people with harder metrics and better long-term strategy, we may be seeing a new role being created for social capital. And social entrepreneurship—as it is called now, or one of the many terms—may well be getting traction.”
	Mr. Rezga is deep in thought when Mr. Ed Skloog says: “Andrew Kassoy and a couple of his colleagues are talking about the creation in law of a new form of institution that is not an NGO and it’s not a for-profit. It’s a B Corporation, or a Benefit Corporation, whose charter of incorporation speaks not just to serving shareholders but serving all stakeholders ... It’s very, very exciting. B Corporations.”
	Mr. Rezga flubs pronunciation of word “epistemological.”
	Mr. Rezga’s reaction when Mr. Besharov says: “So what do I think is actually happening out there? I think that my colleagues in the academic world and my colleagues in the think tank world ... go through a sort of a charade with the foundations: ‘Oh, yes, you’re very wise, and oh, yes, it’s right—this is the year to worry about black men.’”
	Mr. Rezga is stumped by question from audience member who managed to stay awake during his remarks.

Images: Lake Oswego Public Library; Rezga photos by Max Niedzwiecki

Seat of the Pants Philanthropy: Riffing on Strategy

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1.  The Center for Effective Philanthropy recently published Beyond the Rhetoric: Foundation Strategy.  It should have made front page news, but it barely made a splash, even inside the world of foundations.  Here’s its primary finding:

We learned that even though most [foundation staff] interviewed believe that having and using a strategy increases a foundation’s ability to create impact, many do not use strategy in their own work. We asked respondents to describe the frameworks they use to guide their decisions. While some decisionmaking frameworks met our basic definition of strategy, a majority did not.

If I may be permitted to do a little translating: The majority of foundations do their grantmaking completely by the seat of their pants.  There’s no framework; no well articulated strategy for achieving desired ends.  The fate of some of our most vulnerable communities rests in the hands of grantmakers who do their work by feeling their way in the dark, as many of us do.

This sounds like a bad thing.  Is it?

2.  Keep in mind that for many people inside the foundation world, charity represents a kind of weak, emotional response to a social problem, while philanthropy, because it is strategic, attempts to get to the root of a problem and solve it once and for all.  Strategy is also what keeps our grantmaking from becoming a random walk through many bogus ideas about the mechanics of social change.

We use the word “strategy” frequently in our work.  But what is it really?

3.  Here’s the definition of “strategy” used by the Center for Effective Philanthropy:

A framework for decision-making that is 1) focused on the external context in which the foundation works and 2) includes a hypothesized causal connection between use of foundation resources and goal achievement.

What’s most striking about this definition is that it’s absurdly weak: Which foundation’s grantmaking doesn’t focus on the external context in which it does its work?  Which foundation CEO, when challenged, cannot articulate a connection between what his foundation funds and what his foundation sets out to accomplish?

Consider this example:  The Levittown Community Foundation aims to end gang violence in Levittown’s low-income neighborhoods.  Its strategy is to fund gang summits to achieve this end.  Foundation board and staff members believe that bringing members of different gangs together can help these gangs resolve their differences.

This has all the earmarks of a strategy, according to the Center for Effective Philanthropy definition: a framework for decision-making focused on the external context (Levittown’s low-income neighborhoods), positing a causal connection between what the foundation funds (gang summits) and its goals (the ending of gang violence).

And yet this strategy has almost no chance of succeeding.  It doesn’t address the issues that bring members of youth gangs into conflict; it does nothing to prevent young people from being drawn into gangs in the first place; it doesn’t incorporate what others have learned from failed attempts to sponsor gang summits; etcetera.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy definition is so broad that almost any kind of nonsense can count as a strategy.  And therein lies its strength:  Despite the fact that the definition is broad, it’s still the case that a majority of foundations fail to use any kind of strategy at all—good or bad—in their grantmaking.

The conclusion, lurking just behind the study’s primary finding, is that the foundation field is in disarray, having little effect, at best, and squandering enormous sums of money, at worst.

Is this a fair assessment?

4.  I suspect not.  We have yet to determine empirically the correlation between well articulated foundation strategies and the production of social goods.  I’m not yet convinced that business wonks armed with strategies and metrics will consistently outperform grantmakers who work opportunistically, without a rigid plan, constantly adjusting their tactics to a landscape that presents new opportunities and challenges.  Napoleon, for example, never developed a theory of change before going into battle.  Yet very able was he ere he saw Elba.

Keep in mind also that a strategy only makes sense when the path to your goal isn’t direct, when there’s some significant uncertainty about whether your efforts will achieve your ends.  You don’t need a strategy for driving to the grocery store, but you might need a strategy for getting your school-aged child out of bed in the morning.  Likewise, a grantmaker who sets out simply to “improve the lives of children in our region” doesn’t need anything as complicated as what the word  strategy would suggest.  Just about any kindly act toward a child would achieve his desired end.

I suspect that many of the foundations studied by the Center for Effective Philanthropy had goals that were equally open-ended.  This fact, if it is a fact, would tend to inflate the numbers of the “unstrategic,” making the study’s conclusions appear much more dramatic than they are.  Why so many grantmakers would have such fuzzy goals must remain the subject of another post ...

The Foundation Board in 60,000 B.C.

White Courtesy Telephone reader Tidy Sum set the Way Back Machine to 60,000 B.C. to visit the Upland Neanderthal Fund’s board meeting.  Here’s his report ...

It was not much different than what you see now only it smelled real stinky and I had to eat a rat.

They spent a lot of time talking about the high and lows of their hunting. (Lots of posturing from the men on this subject.)

They funded an evaluation of their arts initiative—some cave thing. Nobody really cared about it but old Grogg.  He’s 24 and will die soon so they did not argue.

They funded a nice community program celebrating bipedalism and morphological diversity.

They funded a small stone tool-making program for youth after the stern objections of one trustee who wanted better data on spear effectiveness.

One member, Oog from Dear Clan, raised the big extinction issue in reference to news about Cro-Magnons and humans but this discussion was squelched because someone wanted to talk about the new CavePoint mapping antler that would track their donations.

I guess some things never change.

Some Bold, Inexpensive Predictions About Philanthropy's Future

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Maureen Robinson, the mother character in the 1960s TV series, Lost in Space, is the perfect metaphor for the future of philanthropy.  Her silvery space suit and other-worldly hairdo represent philanthropy’s progressive aspirations.  She’s the imagined future of a philanthropy transformed by cosmic sums of money, by networked donors and metrics-wielding CEOs.

And yet while Maureen packs a ray gun and travels from planet to planet in a flying saucer, she also plays the reassuring role of post-war housewife and mom, staying at home to prepare a nice meatloaf while her husband goes off to protect the ship from tentacled aliens.  Let’s face it: she’s a bit of a throwback.  It’s easier for us to imagine a world in which solid objects spontaneously shift form than one in which the basic relations of power between men and women are renegotiated.

In philanthropy, as in science fiction, we tend to imagine a future in which everything changes—except us.  We’ll bring to the year 2173 our small ambitions, our competitiveness and unwillingness to collaborate, our downstream attempts to solve upstream problems.  The new donor will arrive at the spaceport with an appalling ignorance of philanthropy’s past.

Foundations periodically commission consultants to picture philanthropy’s future.  Perhaps it’s too much to expect these consultants to tell the truth about how eerily familiar that future is likely to be.

America's Next Top Nonprofit Staff Member

On the eve of the consumerist orgy we call “the holidays,” we republish this classic Phil Anthropoid satire.  It’s a cheeky take-off on America’s Next Top Model, a reality television show in which 13 beautiful young women compete for a grand prize that includes multi-page photo spreads in Seventeen magazine and lucrative modeling contracts.  Each week the competitors are given a new fashion challenge, and one of them is eliminated from the competition.  Our colleague Phil explores what would happen if nonprofit staff members were forced out of their comfort zone and into the world of modeling …

ANNOUNCER	Tonight on America’s Next Top Nonprofit Staff Member, it’s down to the final three: Arthur, the 57-year-old executive director from Services, Inc. in Hendersonville, North Carolina; Bebe, the 43-year-old artistic director from the Granite Falls Community Theater in Oregon; and Cheryl, the fiery 26-year-old communications coordinator from People for a Better Universe Overall. As the final elimination looms, each contestant faces his or her own special challenge. Arthur must overcome the limitations of his geography and upbringing ...
ARTHUR	Nobody in Hendersonville calls minorities “people of color.” What does that make me? A person of clear?
ANNOUNCER	Bebe needs to prove she’s open-minded enough to work in any nonprofit environment ...
BEBE	Well, yes, I did make some unguarded remarks about Cheryl during the Nonprofit Advocacy photo shoot, but these New York princesses really chap my ass!
ANNOUNCER	Cheryl needs to find a style that her more experienced colleagues can connect with …
CHERYL	I mean, if we’re about progressive social change, why don’t we just say so?
ANNOUNCER	Tensions run high as our three contestants approach their final challenge.
	(Scene: The inside of the contestants’ apartment. The contestants are in various stages of undress as the camera pans to a large envelope perched on an easel. Bebe’s the first to see it. She snatches up the envelope, tears it open, and reads the message out loud.)
BEBE	“A limousine will pick you up at noon for today’s challenge. Once you get to the studio, you’ll have 15 minutes to throw together an outfit for a photo shoot on the theme, ‘Haute Couture Site Visit.’ Here’s the catch: You don’t know what your program officer is going to ask you because you didn’t write the proposal!”
	(Music sting. The three contestants shriek. Close-up on Bebe.)
BEBE	Oh my God!
CHERYL	You look like a scabby old egret, Arthur. You’re going down!
ARTHUR	Shut up, bitch.
	(Shot of limousine picking up the contestants at their apartment and dropping them off at the studio. They’re led into a room filled with clothes racks, shoes, and accessory bins.)
MESSENGER	You have 15 minutes. Go to it, contestants!
	(We see tantalizing images of the contestants pulling clothes from the racks and trying on shoes. As Arthur undresses, the camera does a tight close-up on his boxer shorts which are decorated with little fox hounds. Bebe uses her considerable girth to push Cheryl out of the way as she reaches for a leather belt. Cross fade to the judges’ room where we see the three contestants fidgeting in front of a panel consisting of head judge Tyra Banks, fellow judges Jay Manuel and Twiggy, and guest judge Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector.)
JUDGE TYRA	Welcome, contestants. Today we’ll determine who moves on to the final round of America’s Next Top Nonprofit Staff Member. Let’s start with you, Cheryl. Here’s your best photograph from today’s shoot. (Some of the judges roll their eyes, others sigh.) What were you trying to do here, Cheryl? (Cheryl is too shocked to respond.)
JUDGE TWIGGY	You look like the headmistress of a school for proctologists.
JUDGE DIANA	It’s very Senator Grassley—not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
CHERYL	(Defiantly.) Last week you said I needed to tone down my enervating youth and arrogance.
JUDGE JAY	The look isn’t working for you, Cheryl. It’s hyper-zombie, totally glacial.
	(Music sting as camera cuts to Cheryl who wistfully cracks her gum.)
JUDGE TYRA	You’re next, Arthur. Here’s your best photograph from today’s shoot. (The judges shake their heads.) Tell me about your outfit, Arthur.
ARTHUR	Well, I saw this tan bedspread and I thought I could use it as a scarf …
JUDGE JAY	You look like a giant buttocks.
JUDGE DIANA	Or perhaps something flatter, like the Principles for Good Governance report recently released by the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector ...
JUDGE TYRA	Hold that thought, Diana. (Coldly.) Arthur, I think we all agree you look like a giant buttocks. (Music sting as Arthur is left twisting in the wind.) Bebe, let’s look at your best photograph.
JUDGE JAY	The look is fierce!
JUDGE TWIGGY	I like how you use the nun shoes to balance the effect of the whip. Sister Bertrille meets Candidia Cruikshanks. (Camera cuts to Bebe, who smiles, exposing a row of yellow teeth.)
JUDGE TYRA	Bebe … (Suspense music as the camera cuts first to Arthur, then Cheryl, then Bebe.) … you’ll be moving on to the final round! Congratulations, girlfriend!
BEBE	(In tears, turning to Arthur and Cheryl.) Hah! Eat my dust! Eat my not-for-profit dust!
ANNOUNCER	When we return: Who will be America’s Next Top Nonprofit Staff Member? ...

Doing the Board Thing Right

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Get a group of nonprofit executive directors in a room away from their funders and away from any recording devices, then ask them about their boards.  Seven times out of ten the invective will be so intense you’ll wish you had worn your asbestos underwear.

Sure, sure—each of them will have a tale to tell about a supportive board chair or a superlative fundraiser.  But more often than not, nonprofit EDs will gripe about the “dead wood” on their boards, about board members who require enormous amounts of care and feeding, about micromanagers and broken promises.  Effective board members exist, but they appear to be rare birds indeed.

I’ve heard of trustees acting out their power fantasies in the boardroom, becoming peevish and exacting, like royals accustomed to better treatment.  Stewardship for these board members means enjoying the spoils of privilege, governance amounts to petty tyranny.

There’s often a gulf between the way EDs view their boards and the way their boards see themselves.  What feels like a satisfying, high-level policy discussion to a board member may strike the ED of the organization as an exercise in self-indulgence.  Staff members might dissemble and congratulate trustees on their program suggestions all the while thinking that these trustees are more than a little disconnected from the work of the organizations they supposedly govern.

I don’t know why those of us who serve as board members so often get it wrong.  My sense is that the mentorship and nurturing of young leaders by more senior colleagues is hopelessly out of fashion.   We accept the ten basic responsibilities of board membership but forget the norms of basic human decency.

Board members: How do you treat the staff of an organization on whose board you serve?  Do you treat them as colleagues, as equals? or are you frankly full of yourself?  Are you giving significantly more to the organization than you’re taking from it? or are you a drain on the organization and its resources?

Perhaps a code of board behavior for these nefarious times should begin with the proposition that our first duty is to support and nurture, followed quickly by the proposition that at the very least we should do no harm.

New Advances in Conference-Related Medicine

Innovations in Fundraising: Spinning Straw Men into Gold

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The October 20th New York Times brought us this item*:

After Rush Limbaugh referred to Iraq war veterans critical of the war as “phony soldiers,” the CEO of Clear Channel Communications, the parent company of Mr. Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, received a letter of complaint signed by 41 Democratic senators. Mr. Limbaugh decided to auction the letter, which he described as “this glittering jewel of colossal ignorance,” for charity, and he pledged to match the price, dollar for dollar.

On Thursday night, Mr. Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host, said he thought the letter would bring in as much as $1 million. He was wrong.

When the eBay auction closed yesterday afternoon, the winning bid was $2.1 million. It is the largest amount ever paid for an item sold on eBay to benefit a charity.

The money will go to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation Inc., a nonprofit organization in New Jersey that provides scholarships and other assistance to families of marines and federal law enforcement officials who die or are wounded in the line of duty. Mr. Limbaugh is a director of the organization, which had total revenues of $5.2 million last year.

Having made his own fortune by underestimating the intelligence of the American public, it was only a matter of time before Mr. Limbaugh would explore new markets.  People will pay top dollar, apparently, for the artifacts of boneheaded self-righteousness.

Mr. Limbaugh’s action suggests a new frontier for fundraisers.  Can the indicted members of nonprofit and foundation boards  make it up to their disgraced organizations by auctioning off their arrest warrants, for example, or their prison dungarees?  Suppose the housekeeper who dusts Alberto Gonzalez’s empty office (Mary, are you reading this?) were to donate to the ACLU the series of memos establishing the United States as a nation that tortures.  How much would these fetch on eBay?

Some of you will recall that several years ago, Mr. Limbaugh’s housekeeper, Wilma Cline, approached Florida authorities to reveal that she had acted as his drug buyer for years, illegally purchasing more than 30,000 painkillers.  Perhaps Mr. Limbaugh would consider auctioning off the court briefs that helped him avoid prosecution, or the master recording of the radio show in which he called defenders of medical marijuana “potheads.”

My advice to fundraisers: Hop on this gravy train as quickly as possible.  The bottom will fall out of the market once consumers realize the tokens of human folly and vice are in liberal supply.

_____

* “Critical Letter to Limbaugh Fetches $2 Million,” by Stephanie Strom.

Black Courtesy, White Courtesy: The Great ARNOVA Race Debate

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Editor’s note: Two weeks ago an ARNOVA member set off a campfire of controversy by warmly recommending the White Courtesy Telephone blog to his colleagues.  For those of you unfamiliar with the group, ARNOVA is an association of extremely intelligent people who study the nonprofit sector.  WCT investigative reporter Rachel Tension was able to obtain a transcript of the highly charged ARNOVA discussion, parts of which are reproduced below.  (We changed the participants’ names because we were too lazy to ask their permission to use their real names.)  In Washington, DC, it’s dog eat dog.  In academia, it’s the opposite, so we were frankly hesitant to approach the subject without some professional assistance.  We invited WCT semiotician-on-retainer, Monique Nescafé, to help interpret the transcript for us.  Dr. Nescafé’s work for the past several years has focused on neomaterialist narratives in the novels of Jennie Adams.  This is her first guest post with WCT …

I am so very happy to be invited to write for the White Telephone of Courtesy, and especially to comment on the post-capitalist discourse of ARNOVA members.  They say the American mind is closed.  No, my friends, he is wide open, like the pore of some gigantic sweat gland.

Consider this small exchange:

Alas, … I find the name [White Courtesy Telephone] unfortunate. It may indeed be useful but the title is off-putting.
—Betty

I am in the process of considering the title for my upcoming book, so I have titles on my mind.  Can you clarify what it is about the title of the White Courtesy Telephone blog that makes it off-putting? …
—Dorothy

I think the title of “white courtesy” gives the impression that there is something else possible like “black courtesy”—i.e. that there are disparate courtesies for different groups. Or even worse—that there is no other courtesy other than white courtesy.  I have been involved in discussions with other groups who would therefore find the title offensive. Unless of course you mean it ironically (like we don’t have white courtesy).  At the very least, I do not actually understand what “white courtesy” means.
—Betty

In her brilliant rejoinder,  Betty lays bare the racial insensitivity of the White Courtesy Telephone editors.  This is not in dispute: these editors often make light of subjects that would be better treated with reverential silence.  I applaud Betty.  Her act of problematization, of affirming a posttextual paradigm of reality—the impression of a racialized there-for-me—is, in my view, an intellectual tour de force.

How does she do it?  She describes herself as being in a superposition of affective eigenstates: while it’s true that she feels “put off,” she simultaneously postpones her feelings of offense as she considers an ironic reading of “white courtesy.”  She is put off, but she is not quite yet put off.  (A monk asks Dongshan Shouchu, “What is Buddha?” Dongshan answers, “Three pounds of flax.”)  And although Betty does not actually understand what “white courtesy” means, she complains about the phrase anyway.  If confusion is the first step to knowledge, then Betty is clearly very knowledgeable.

Betty also brilliantly presences the elided contextuality of the ARNOVA discourse by referring to “other groups” that would find the blog’s name offensive.  This kind of offense-by-proxy is the mark of a generous individual, willing to be offended not only for herself but on behalf of others as well.

And so, what is it ultimately that puts the “white” in White Courtesy Telephone?  Another ARNOVA commentator chimes in:

… we know words make a difference, so what I’m interested in is: why did the creators of white courtesy telephone pick that name, rather than, say, ‘black courtesy telephone,’ or just plain old ‘courtesy telephone’?

Was it in order to prompt this very discussion?

Or do white courtesy telephones have a special connotation not shared with courtesy telephones of other colours?

I may be exposing my ignorance here—but that’s because I’m ignorant.
—Nigel

Did Monsieur Ruesga, when he chose the name White Courtesy Telephone, choose it in order to “prompt this very discussion”?  It is possible, n’est-ce pas?  He might very well have anticipated the ARNOVA exchange as a sommelier anticipates a Montrachet 1978 from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.  How delicious, to inquire after coloured telephones through the fog of a fine wine.  While these coloured telephones may have a special significance, we will henceforth, in deference to our subject, refer to them as telephones of colour.

Children in Detention

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The mood in House 5 is somber.  Eight children ranging in age from 14 to 17, three of them girls, sit patiently as a young lawyer reviews their rights.  Several days or weeks earlier, the children, unaccompanied by family members, had been arrested at different parts of the U.S.–Mexico border attempting the dangerous crossing.  They were fleeing the poverty of their home countries.  They had come for work or to be reunited with their parents.

“How many of you are from El Salvador?” the lawyer asks them in Spanish.  Four children raise their hands.  “How many from Guatemala?”  Three more hands go up.

One young boy who looks a little taller and fairer than the others explains as best he can that he’s Romani—a Gypsy—but also speaks a little Romanian.  The advocate assures him he’ll be briefed later that day