Tag: Truth
Non Profit: RE-invented as “For Purpose”
When you tell someone that you work for a non profit, (or a ministry, or a charity…)
You often get one of three reactions:
1. A strange and muted pity.
Some times this is accompanied by slow nodding and maybe an awkward silence and change of subject, or some refer to some one they know who sort of does the same sort of thing (awkward empathy).
“Oh, yeah, my uncle was a pastor. He died unappreciated and penniless.”
2. A bemused reaction, “Oh, okay. How…nice.”
3. A flummoxed stare.
They think something went wrong.
Or, that you must a be a bleeding heart, or maybe you are just confused about what you really want to do.
“Oh, I thought you were…um… (smart and industrious)…but, you can’t get paid much, right?”
Sadly, I had to leave a non-profit graduate school as the Director of Communications because I needed to pay bills.
I worked with the nicest group of people I’ve ever worked with. We did exciting and transformative things that make the world a better place. In the end though, my family needed, literally, a roof over our heads (lots of leaking in the attic). I had no choice but to look for work to meet that pressing need.
Strangely, I’ve sensed in all the non-profits I’ve worked with, so far, that there is going idea was that you have to give up something to be there. The rules are different and you just have to suck it up and put big girl pants on, and such.
You have to be okay with being very poorly compensated.
Now, it isn’t for lack of will to do it. The funding (really-the lack of funding) just can’t support something otherwise. However, there is something more. A kind of unconscious (maybe?) communal ascension to thinking is cemented way that makes change, improvement, and sometimes even success difficult.
It’s a disabling mindset, really.
We can get stuck is a false conundrum that subtly discredits the fulfilling work being done because it it conversely attached to a conflicting paradigm that claims profit = success. By definition then, non-profit = non-success.
(Any pockets of moralizing that all the hard work is to be for treasures in heaven one day, hardly makes it easier.)
I wonder if there is a better way.
Adam Braun thinks so. He gets to a great point: We shouldn’t start labeling ourselves as failures. We shouldn’t be apologizing for doing awesome things in the world asa 501C status.
(Have you ever done the old……”Oh, yeah, we’re a non profit.” …as eyes shift downward in shame…?).
The truth is…
Being centered on a purpose rather than existing for a profit is the most important sort of work on the planet.
The good news is that certain business models can be infused to make the whole system more successful. That’s how Adam set up “Pencils for Promise” (click on Adam’s photo to get to his website…but, wait…just a minute more).
I love what how he describes for-purpose organizations as a places…
“where idealism meets acumen.”
How great to see this important shift happening. I have GREAT hope in Millenials!
I look forward to infusing both purpose and profit into what I’m doing. Who says they have to be in silos!?
For me, it started with a passion project: the book I created with Doug Jackson in August (2013). Some proceeds are earmarked for 2 -for purpose- groups that care for dogs and cats.
The most exciting thing I’m involved with now is the new resource that keeps the underdogs (but not canines) in mind and offers a high Return of Investment (ROI).
The knowledge gained translates quickly into success (be that revenue, exposure, or impact).
The non profit (for PURPOSE) organizations are the ones with such heart. I want them to succeed.
If you are interested, click HERE.
Read what others are saying about it.
Have YOU ever worked for a ministry or other kind of non profit?
What was the mindset like?
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Mindset Followup: A [visual] framework for abundance
[scroll down for visual guide]
I used to think books with “daily affirmations” were goofy new-age baloney.
Why would reciting some sappy self-help mantra change anything?
I still don’t own a book of daily affirmations but I’ve learned a lot about transformation.
Plus, the recent empirical scientific data shows what many of us who’ve studied spiritual formation already knew from a long record of wisdom writings and human history:
“As a man thinks so he is.”
3D brain scans verify that our thoughts, habits, and patterns (physically) change our brains, down to the cellular level and even into our DNA!
Prayer works like focus. Meditation works like concentration. And yes, affirmations can truly transform attitudes.
All 6 can, and do, change us for the better. It comes down to effort.
With practice, bad habits get harder to break (not so great), but new thoughts and actions build new cortical pathways (hope for betterment!).
I have some firm beliefs that I’m bent on making a potent reality:
1. My perspective can determine my actions.
2. My attitude can improve my life.
3. Reminding myself of the truth about abundance can transform me.
4. Connecting to a positive version of reality can revitalize me.
5. Hope is my choice.
I decided to create a handy guide to make each day better.
If you ever struggle with being positive and hopeful, I hope this makes it easier.
It’s really helped me to see the path visually.
I’m hoping to improve how I determine and live out my outlook and actions each day. How about we do it together?
Sure, we’ll fail sometimes, but maybe some guidance will steer us right again, soon.
Skeptical? Give it a chance.
Seriously. Try it for a few days:
1. Use this visual guide to help you.
2. Remind yourself throughout the day about your choice of a scarcity or an abundance mindset.
3. At the end of each day, review and see if you lost track of your perspective–then recommit to keep at it.
3. Note your mood and attitude throughout the day to gauge your progress.
4. Share your progress and this guide with others, if you’ve been helped.
I made it for you to ebed at your website, or share on Facebook or pinterest.
Want to pass it along? I’d love that.
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Interested in brain science?
I recommend this:
Are you using a GPS? (advice to communicators and startups)
We tend to think that we operate out of our values as if it’s like a default setting on a washing machine.
The truth is, at best, we are consistent at that stuff only sometimes. Not because we are horrid cads, but because we get busy.
If you are a person of faith or want to live from a set of important values, you can’t take this modus operandi for granted.
You have to do some groundwork. (I’ll get to specifics in a moment.)
First, the short story of Jackie will help us out.
Jackie is tax consultant. She had worked for a national brand firm in town and was striking it out on her own–almost by accident and not all at once.
It started when she kept noticing that some of her friends and family members didn’t know what they were doing. In a panic, usually at the end of March, they started asking her for help. Most of them didn’t know enough to get the best refund, and she heated the idea of that.
She picked up some side work, and within two tax seasons she had herself completely booked at tax time. About 20% of those clients needed accounting help throughout the year for their small business. She also found a few non profits clients too. She really needed help by the third year and had left her other job by then.
Like you would expect, she hired help and plunged into her work.
I didn’t put too much weight into the particulars of hiring. I was so busy with the details of getting the work done. So, the most important thing got steamrolled by the urgency of my work.
Things started going badly.
Out of the 3 part-time workers, only one of them actually had the same values as she did. She realized this too late and it created friction and a tense working environment. One person left and started bad-mouthing her in her small town. The other position seemed like a revolving door of employee turnover. She almost quit the whole thing. It was keeping her up a lot at night.
Jackie didn’t have Human Resources Training or organizational management training. She just had a bunch of work and she was good at those skills. She needed to clone herself.
It didn’t come to that, of course.
Fortunately, a mentor gave her some great advice. She said,
Back up a bit. Sit down and put your most important values and business aims down with ink on paper. It’ll work like a compass or GSP. It will help with both the route and destination.
It worked. Her commitment statements guided all her business decisions after that. Hiring, training, working with clients, getting new clients, and getting her little company running smoothly needed that solid foundation.
It’s a great lesson. If you aren’t using a GPS you’re going to get lost.
Before you take on side work. Before you hire someone. And most importantly, before you get busy, do the ground work so that your priorities and core guiding principles are something that flow out and throughout all your interactions, not get tacked on afterword.
If you value honesty, joy, compassion, and persistence, for instance, make them the anchor for all the skills you execute and all the projects you take on.
Have you initiated your GPS? Do you have your guiding principles on paper and operate from them?
I hope that was helpful.
Do you know someone who might need this advice?
Please share!
Essay: Is Blogging like Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Nano Pop?
It seems like good writing, the kind of rewrites, and reflection, and deliberation is in short supply, chiefly in the blogosphere and the slapdash sphere of most internet magazines. This post will reflect that flavor too. It will seem to you to (mostly) mirror what I am critiquing. It may seem instant or undercooked. It is caught in the vortex of the medium. I won’t pretend otherwise.
But, it’s also a start.
Blogs, we recall were so-named as a combination (or perhaps even slang) of the words Website and Log. An online record of passing thoughts captured in 1s and 0s for internet reader consumption. Outdated posts not recycled as fish wrapper but buried deep under a mountain of newer posts, like digital tels. The more content the more recognition, so say the experts. Plus, the all-important the SEO. We can’t forget that.
Or, at the very least blogs were and are a chance to make a mark on the world, or to a few friends with knowledge of your URL. Are they more than this? Are they less? (You can tell me in the comments section. I’m working the system.)
The Heights
And we have too-often elevated them to a place inappropriate. At times confusing there position–determining what is prolific to be paramount. Though airy they shimmy under their own weight more than they don’t. But with their own magic, they may sting or bite. They may incite vibrant feuds that recall schoolyard antics–digital spilt lips. They may seem like a sand lot variety of King of the Mountain, riffing on zingers and cultural assertions. Though not long after, they reek of the “My dad can beat up your dad!” slurs. And these too gain vigor as referenced links in posts fueling more of the same. (I won’t give you links. You probably already know of some.)
Blog posts, plentiful like the sands on our cultural shore-scape have piled up like dunes but don’t seem to become a bulwark–an art form like a Pulitzer article, or piece of superb literature, or even a good film. There are some rare exceptions and there are some blog postings that somehow change lives.
More often though something vital is traded for the speed and convenience of the quick write-up. I’m stating the obvious, right?
What is it really?
Like instant coffee, the full-bodied flavor textures and aromas of this medium don’t quite work. Chronically under-brewed, the bulk of the speedily-penned internet articles too reveal not just slapped together writing but the slapped-together thinking ungirding it. We are awash in sloppiness. I don’t exclude myself either.
The passion and angst of any given post may drown out this feature and we may be convinced that we have meat to chew on, that is, until we read really good writing.
Maybe a precise poem, birthed not just from suffering or bliss or insight but from the careful gathering of words like seed beads and the arranging of them like art and embellished patterns on a long gown of societal topography.
Maybe a travel article written not for the rushed, tired, and ravenous tourist consumer, but for the person who truly wonders about other cultures and ways of being human in distant regions. A piece of craft that may include the underlying philosophies escaping the mind of a deeply thoughtful and curious person who can and does take the time. Here there is peace of a certain kind that never makes its way properly to Facebook.
Survival
Will the banter or the sarcasm of blogging (and commenting) last through the arc of observable time, at all?
Will it survive weeks, years, decades, after the refinement of reflection and chronological distance makes its way down through it like canyon whitewater? Or will blog posts be captured digital bits of immature polemics, impolitic reverie, and dated fervor of a begone time, like Allen Ginsberg ‘s once criminally obscene 1955 poem Howl reads for us now? A once-debauched and revolutionary vocalization now a kind of caricature of a ruckus time; now a relic of a frenzied, outlying beat–a strange light from a olden day.
Will blogging be frittered like a summering free-love hippie of this time in the Connection and Communication Age, rendered not in the insensate fog of drugs, but in the fever of hot blithering and the lechery of notoriety.
What will be the classic (masterly) posts of blogs from our era, if any? What will be the wheat amongst all the gusting chaff?
Where will there be instead that lasts? Perhaps commentaries well-researched and produced in a arduous string of revisions and heartache and a probing of not just of the topic by of the writer’s own inner world. Questions and ideas that could perhaps give voice to something true, useful, universal and somehow everlasting? The shoulders to stand on.
Archival
Will blog posts be like cultural postcards, the scraps from a newly-formed, digital age whose populace didn’t yet crave more than boilerplate reports and passing thoughts? Tweets like echoes of something that mattered. Facebook the endless ticker cataloguing our lives in bits and bytes.
What, if anything, in this blogosphere and this ephemeral epoch will collese and age like well-kept merlot for future readers in future times? Things truly enjoyable and worth saving? Something, say, for high school English classes to ponder 20 years removed?
The postings might go bleached like Polaroids, capturing in anemic hues a snap swatch; the evanescent blush of the solipsistic maiden: the early 2000s cultural zeitgeist.
Not Warhol’s Pop but something slimmer.
To coin a term: Nano-Pop.
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I’d love your links to blog articles that you feel will not just stand the test of time, but may well be considered paragon of blog posting as a literary art form in our times. If you can find any, please put them in the comments section.
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Thanks for reading today.
-Lisa