More Than A Plan, More Than a Dream: A Belief

Martin Luther King didn’t just have a dream, he had a plan: marches, sit-ins, legislative advocacy.  But no amount of dreaming, and no amount of planning, could comfort him when the death threats rained upon him, when the Churches were bombed and the dogs set loose; no, in those all-too-frequent (if not constant) moments, he needed something else: belief.  Belief that was not always justifiable; belief that strained the bounds of credulity; belief that he almost certainly struggled to believe himself.  Yet that belief remained, and it resonated in the hearts and minds of the countless thousands that risked their lives for justice, and it resonated even in the hearts and minds of those who would prefer to look the other way–but couldn’t, because the Civil Rights movement forced them to…forced them to believe that change was coming.

O, but it’s so hard.  During the darkest days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Battle of Britain, or the Civil War, or the American Revolution, or the myriad other events that shaped history, how many times did the way forward seem impossible, unthinkable?  How often were the best of plans laid to waste, the best thinkers proven wrong?  And yet sometimes, in the midst of strife–moments when all the roads to Justice have been washed away by a torrent of hopelessness–a path is forged.  It is a path that defies logic, that shouldn’t work…and then somehow does.

Money is King

Money is king, whether you are a for-profit, non-profit or government agency.  Without money you can’t pay salaries, you can’t pay the rent, and you certainly can’t deliver products or services.  This is a truth that often masquerades as a dirty word in the social change sector…but it’s still a truth.  Managing cash flow is the only way to keep the doors open at any organization.  I’d argue, however, that running a non-profit presents unique challenges, because not only do you need to meet payroll, you have to run programs for which it is inherently difficult to charge.

This creates a fundamental tension between the need to raise money and the need to change lives. How to maintain a balance between the two?  For me, it comes down to asking three questions every time we make a decision: Will this have an impact on the client’s life?  Will this make the client happy?  And will this bring in revenue?  These questions form a decision matrix: programs on which we lose money better have tremendous social impact; programs that don’t have impact better make money; and regardless of what we do our customers better have a good experience.