The Institute for One World Health, the world’s first nonprofit pharmaceutical has announced a new breakthrough in the fight against cholera and diarrheal disease which combine to kill 1.5 million children a year. The drug they are developing could be the first synthetic drug to reduce fluid loss and work in combination with oral rehydration therapy. The ABC News coverage of the story can be found at http://saveone.net/filter/Cholera#1202193/Curing-the-disease-of-poverty-Non-profit-drug-development-org
Death from cholera is preventable but as the iOWH's Elena Pantjushenko points out, “neglected diseases are perpetuated by poverty. Those most affected are the poorest populations often living in remote, rural areas, urban slums or in conflict zones. With little political voice, neglected tropical diseases have a low profile and status in public health priorities. “
As a result there are no economic incentives and therefore no markets for solving such problems. Which is why a nonprofit pharmaceutical, that can serve as a proxy for market forces, is such a critical innovation. It took the classic “unreasonable” person to come up such an idea, which is one reason that founder Victoria Hale figures prominently in my new book, THE IMAGINATIONS OF UNREASONABLE MEN, @ http://www.amazon.com/Imaginations-Unreasonable-Men-Inspiration-Purpose/dp/1586487647/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292267953&sr=8-1
Monday, March 28, 2011
A government already shut down for too many
No matter how many times Congressional budget stalemates lead to the threat of a government shutdown, it is always front page news. It was again on this past weekend. A New York Times page 1 story warned that “with time running short … Congressional leaders are increasingly pessimistic about reaching a bipartisan budget deal that would avert a government shutdown in early April.” The Washington Post chronicled the impact of budget indecision on Navy shipbuilding and the space program.
The drama of such stand-offs, and the dire consequences that follow, are the bread and butter of journalism. But for millions of Americans – the most vulnerable and voiceless among us - the government has been effectively shut down for so long it is not even news.
Consider that of the 47 million Americans who live below the poverty line, 19 million (up from 12.5 million in 2000) live in extreme poverty – below half of the poverty line: $7500 a year for a family of three or $11,500 a year for a family of four. It is hard to imagine a more dire set of circumstances, and a more compelling reason for bold government action.
But for these fellow citizens the government has already been shut down to their needs. There has been no serious effort to create jobs for them. There is no national commitment to allocating the resources that would ensure a quality education for their kids. The national conversation is focused relentlessly elsewhere. Unlike wealthy Americans or corporate lobbyists, the poorest Americans have virtually no opportunity to speak with their Senators or members of Congress about their plight. They don’t belong to influential national organizations with offices on K Street. And unlike those from industries such as energy, banking, insurance, housing, etc. they have no national champion who can be counted on to be their voice.
Peter Edelman, a law professor at Georgetown University who was the top legislative assistant to Bobby Kennedy remembers when Kennedy played that role, visiting Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta and insisting that poverty be at the top of the national agenda. Interviewed in the March 22 issue of The Nation he asks: “I really do wonder why we don’t have people who hold elected office who speak more clearly? Where is the Robert Kennedy of this generation?”
“Something has to happen to get people off their tail”, Edelman continues “to get people back to the level of commitment and enthusiasm that they had—it turns out ever so briefly when they elected Obama to be president. And to get out into the streets—both literally and metaphorically. We had Madison, which we might say was our Cairo. And we need people all over the country to stand up in the same way and say, “I’m opposed to the direction that these things are going.” There has to be some sense of outrage about that and the only way that’s going to be is if people will stand up and speak up for themselves. Any sort of sustained change from the progressive side has got to come from the grassroots. We’re the side that depends on people power.” (The entire interview with Edelman can be found at http://www.thenation.com/article/159381/us-poverty-past-present-and-future)
Even the prospect of a government shutdown represents a profound failure of our political markets. It comes on top of the failure of economic markets to produce jobs to replace those that once existed in manufacturing. This is why the efforts of Share Our Strength and CWV to respond to such market failures, to at bridge the gap with innovative and entrepreneurial solutions, are so critical.
Even when the government is officially shut down there are always a few “essential personnel” required to show up at work to help avoid the most catastrophic consequences. For those for whom the government already seems to be shutdown to their needs – those who are hungry, homeless, unemployed - we are and have always been the essential personnel. One of our greatest responsibilities is to remember that even when, especially when, the news forgets.
The drama of such stand-offs, and the dire consequences that follow, are the bread and butter of journalism. But for millions of Americans – the most vulnerable and voiceless among us - the government has been effectively shut down for so long it is not even news.
Consider that of the 47 million Americans who live below the poverty line, 19 million (up from 12.5 million in 2000) live in extreme poverty – below half of the poverty line: $7500 a year for a family of three or $11,500 a year for a family of four. It is hard to imagine a more dire set of circumstances, and a more compelling reason for bold government action.
But for these fellow citizens the government has already been shut down to their needs. There has been no serious effort to create jobs for them. There is no national commitment to allocating the resources that would ensure a quality education for their kids. The national conversation is focused relentlessly elsewhere. Unlike wealthy Americans or corporate lobbyists, the poorest Americans have virtually no opportunity to speak with their Senators or members of Congress about their plight. They don’t belong to influential national organizations with offices on K Street. And unlike those from industries such as energy, banking, insurance, housing, etc. they have no national champion who can be counted on to be their voice.
Peter Edelman, a law professor at Georgetown University who was the top legislative assistant to Bobby Kennedy remembers when Kennedy played that role, visiting Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta and insisting that poverty be at the top of the national agenda. Interviewed in the March 22 issue of The Nation he asks: “I really do wonder why we don’t have people who hold elected office who speak more clearly? Where is the Robert Kennedy of this generation?”
“Something has to happen to get people off their tail”, Edelman continues “to get people back to the level of commitment and enthusiasm that they had—it turns out ever so briefly when they elected Obama to be president. And to get out into the streets—both literally and metaphorically. We had Madison, which we might say was our Cairo. And we need people all over the country to stand up in the same way and say, “I’m opposed to the direction that these things are going.” There has to be some sense of outrage about that and the only way that’s going to be is if people will stand up and speak up for themselves. Any sort of sustained change from the progressive side has got to come from the grassroots. We’re the side that depends on people power.” (The entire interview with Edelman can be found at http://www.thenation.com/article/159381/us-poverty-past-present-and-future)
Even the prospect of a government shutdown represents a profound failure of our political markets. It comes on top of the failure of economic markets to produce jobs to replace those that once existed in manufacturing. This is why the efforts of Share Our Strength and CWV to respond to such market failures, to at bridge the gap with innovative and entrepreneurial solutions, are so critical.
Even when the government is officially shut down there are always a few “essential personnel” required to show up at work to help avoid the most catastrophic consequences. For those for whom the government already seems to be shutdown to their needs – those who are hungry, homeless, unemployed - we are and have always been the essential personnel. One of our greatest responsibilities is to remember that even when, especially when, the news forgets.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
"Cost to Society Incalculable" says Hartford Courant op-ed endorsement of No Kid Hungry
While I was on vacation last week during my son’s spring break (so I take no credit for what follows) our team did an excellent job of launching No Kid Hungry in yet another state; this time Connecticut with newly elected Governor Dan Malloy. The Hartford Courant ran an important editorial focusing on an angle that rarely gets the attention it deserves, which is the long-term economic consequences and costs to society of letting children go hungry. I thought you’d find it of interest and include the link below.
The editorial concludes: “The cost of having children go hungry — or feeding them overly processed, filling-but-not-healthy meals — is nearly incalculable. How do you measure a generation's lifelong loss of income due to a lack of mental development brought on by a lack of good food? How do you measure what that lost generation could have contributed to the greater society? Either way, there's always a bill coming due. We can pay now, or we can pay much, much more later.”
We are pleased with the success so far in bringing childhood hunger into the national conversation, and in redefining why it is in the interest of policymakers and average citizens (and taxpayers) alike to get behind our No Kid Hungry strategy.
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-campbell-hungry-kid-0327-20110327,0,4544896.column
The editorial concludes: “The cost of having children go hungry — or feeding them overly processed, filling-but-not-healthy meals — is nearly incalculable. How do you measure a generation's lifelong loss of income due to a lack of mental development brought on by a lack of good food? How do you measure what that lost generation could have contributed to the greater society? Either way, there's always a bill coming due. We can pay now, or we can pay much, much more later.”
We are pleased with the success so far in bringing childhood hunger into the national conversation, and in redefining why it is in the interest of policymakers and average citizens (and taxpayers) alike to get behind our No Kid Hungry strategy.
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-campbell-hungry-kid-0327-20110327,0,4544896.column
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Share Our Strength's unprecedented growth: secrets of success, lesson #9
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson # 9 Margaret Mead Was Wrong.
Randomly visit the headquarters of any ten nonprofits and you’ll find that at least nine have a poster somewhere on their wall with the iconic and reassuring words of Margaret Mead to “never doubt that a small group of people can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” The words are reassuring and inspiring but would be more accurate if amended to read “can begin to change the world.” Actually changing the world takes a lot more than a small group. In fact it takes more people than you can know, speak with, meet with, and a commitment to reaching out to circle after circle of potential allies in ways that are accessible to them and empowering them.
Whenever we stopped to think about what it would really take to leverage (as opposed to raise) the billions of dollars necessary to change the lives of millions kids across thousands of miles and numerous cultures, it became obvious that no matter how committed our staff of 50 or 100 or 150 might be, that was just a fraction of the people that would be necessary.
One of the critical operating principles of an organization should be to relentlessly increase the number of shareholders that has genuine ownership for creating change. This not only means collaborating, partnering, forging coalitions, etc., but also giving real ownership to others so that they are working with you or even independently of you, toward a shared objective. Whenever you think your ambitious mission is the sole province of your own small dedicated team, you are thinking too small and destined to fall short.
Tomorrow: Lesson #10 Pay Attention to What Matter Most, Not to What Others Think Matters Most
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson # 9 Margaret Mead Was Wrong.
Randomly visit the headquarters of any ten nonprofits and you’ll find that at least nine have a poster somewhere on their wall with the iconic and reassuring words of Margaret Mead to “never doubt that a small group of people can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” The words are reassuring and inspiring but would be more accurate if amended to read “can begin to change the world.” Actually changing the world takes a lot more than a small group. In fact it takes more people than you can know, speak with, meet with, and a commitment to reaching out to circle after circle of potential allies in ways that are accessible to them and empowering them.
Whenever we stopped to think about what it would really take to leverage (as opposed to raise) the billions of dollars necessary to change the lives of millions kids across thousands of miles and numerous cultures, it became obvious that no matter how committed our staff of 50 or 100 or 150 might be, that was just a fraction of the people that would be necessary.
One of the critical operating principles of an organization should be to relentlessly increase the number of shareholders that has genuine ownership for creating change. This not only means collaborating, partnering, forging coalitions, etc., but also giving real ownership to others so that they are working with you or even independently of you, toward a shared objective. Whenever you think your ambitious mission is the sole province of your own small dedicated team, you are thinking too small and destined to fall short.
Tomorrow: Lesson #10 Pay Attention to What Matter Most, Not to What Others Think Matters Most
MArian Wright Edelman bearing witness to child poverty
There is probably no one who has thought longer and more passionately about children in poverty than Marian Wright Edelman, the legendary founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. This week she had an article in the Huffington Post describing their recent report “Held Captive: Child Poverty in America” whose title comes from looking at the issue through the eyes of a 13 year old girl in rural Mississippi. I found Marian’s effort to “capture a particular truth about poor children’s lives” to be provocative reading and thought you might too. Her article can be found at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/poor-children-stranded-at_b_837792.html
Billy
Billy
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Share Our Strength's unprecedented growth: secrets of success, lesson #8
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #8
Most failures are failure of imagination. As far back as the 1500’s Michel De Montaigne “Fortis imagination generat casum”: a powerful imagination generates the event. Imagination makes it possible to envision and create a world which does not yet exist but is within our grasp. No one thought it realistic that college graduates without teaching degrees could succeed in underserved schools until Wendy Kopp and Teach For America imagined it. No one assumed that a pharmaceutical devoted to developing medicines for neglected diseases like malaria could operate as a nonprofit until Victoria Hale imagined it and created the Institute for One World health. At Share Our Strength our initial failure of imagination was to focus on feeding people not ending hunger. Once we made that leap everything changed, as described in greater detail, and with plenty of other examples, in my new book, The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men.
Tomorrow: lesson #9: Margaret Mead was wrong. It takes more than a small group!
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #8
Most failures are failure of imagination. As far back as the 1500’s Michel De Montaigne “Fortis imagination generat casum”: a powerful imagination generates the event. Imagination makes it possible to envision and create a world which does not yet exist but is within our grasp. No one thought it realistic that college graduates without teaching degrees could succeed in underserved schools until Wendy Kopp and Teach For America imagined it. No one assumed that a pharmaceutical devoted to developing medicines for neglected diseases like malaria could operate as a nonprofit until Victoria Hale imagined it and created the Institute for One World health. At Share Our Strength our initial failure of imagination was to focus on feeding people not ending hunger. Once we made that leap everything changed, as described in greater detail, and with plenty of other examples, in my new book, The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men.
Tomorrow: lesson #9: Margaret Mead was wrong. It takes more than a small group!
Monday, March 21, 2011
Share Our Strength's unprecedented growth: secrets of success, lesson #7
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #7
Social entrepreneurship without public policy is like a garage band without amps. It may be fun, cool, and trendy, but it won’t reach very far. If your mission is ambitious and impactful the odds are it cannot be achieved without a public policy component. At its most basic building political will simply means that you’ve succeeded in getting a broader base of people to care about your mission than just those immediately affected by it.
There are many things nonprofits can do that government cannot. They can innovate and take risks and be closer to the people they serve. But once they’ve built a better mousetrap, it requires public support to get it to scale. Otherwise you are pushing a boulder up a hill and it will slide down again.
This need not necessarily mean lobbying. But it does mean building some capacity to engage in policy development at both the federal and local level, share and advance ideas with policy makers and ultimately bring some political pressure to bear on behalf of your ideas. Political will is the fuel that brings effective ideas to scale through the enactment and execution of policy.
Tonmorrow: Lesson #8. Most failures are failures of imagination
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #7
Social entrepreneurship without public policy is like a garage band without amps. It may be fun, cool, and trendy, but it won’t reach very far. If your mission is ambitious and impactful the odds are it cannot be achieved without a public policy component. At its most basic building political will simply means that you’ve succeeded in getting a broader base of people to care about your mission than just those immediately affected by it.
There are many things nonprofits can do that government cannot. They can innovate and take risks and be closer to the people they serve. But once they’ve built a better mousetrap, it requires public support to get it to scale. Otherwise you are pushing a boulder up a hill and it will slide down again.
This need not necessarily mean lobbying. But it does mean building some capacity to engage in policy development at both the federal and local level, share and advance ideas with policy makers and ultimately bring some political pressure to bear on behalf of your ideas. Political will is the fuel that brings effective ideas to scale through the enactment and execution of policy.
Tonmorrow: Lesson #8. Most failures are failures of imagination
lessons from Los Angeles launch of No Kid Hungry campaign
Last week we launched our No Kid Hungry campaign in Los Angeles, first at a fundraising event generously hosted by Ron Burkle and then at a press conference with Mayor Villaraigosa at an L.A. elementary school. These are some of the valuable lessons either learned or reinforced:
First, when pressure tested, our strategy holds up. The logic of leveraging existing federal dollars to increase participation in programs like school breakfast, summer feeding, and child care was well received in Los Angeles as it has been elsewhere. In the course of a week we’ve had the tires kicked by our board colleague Scott Schoen, who as a private equity investor has significant experience in testing the strategies of organizations in which he invests, to Jeff Skoll, E-Bay’s first president who knows a thing or two about taking entrepreneurial ideas to scale.
Second, we must sell our strategy retail and wholesale. As important as is the press in reaching a larger audience, the real opinion makers and influences need to see us in their living rooms and offices, up close and personal. Strip away the trappings of Hollywood and this event was in the genre of road shows we’ve done in many communities, and we need to keep doing them, combining targeted sales with broadcast messaging. Such events are an investment of time and money but relationships are not built or maintained any other way.
Third, we must continue to relentlessly champion innovation and imagination, and help others imagine a future that may not yet exist but is within our grasp to achieve. Visiting Rosecranz Elementary School in Compton on the morning of the launch we witnessed their success in removing the two of the biggest obstacles to breakfast in the classroom. By having one student leader from each classroom come to the school’s kitchen and wheel the breakfast cart to their class, and another wheel the trash barrel, they eliminated additional labor costs and imposing on teachers who did not want to be turned into lunch ladies. It’s a small point but part of a growing collection of best practices we are amassing and able to help spread.
Fourth, great chefs create great community. Even with a crowd as accomplished and as celebrated as this, our chefs made them feel event more special. Given all of the culinary activities in which we engage, it would be easy to take for granted the role of chefs and food. But it is has been at the very core of Share Our Strength for all of these years, because it is core to creating the community we aspire to build. The chefs themselves personify everything we want to convey about our work and brand: innovation, passion, caring, feeding, and community.
Finally, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stole the show at the launch press conference, reducing the messaging to its most basic and most powerful. He asked two young students, Eddie and Debbie, to help him out, and he asked each one what they’d like to be when they grow up. Eddie hoped to be a painter. I didn’t quite hear what Debbie said. But after each spoke Vilsack turned to the audience and said “Each of these students has a dream. But kids can’t achieve their dreams if they are hungry. That’s what No Kid Hungry is all about.
First, when pressure tested, our strategy holds up. The logic of leveraging existing federal dollars to increase participation in programs like school breakfast, summer feeding, and child care was well received in Los Angeles as it has been elsewhere. In the course of a week we’ve had the tires kicked by our board colleague Scott Schoen, who as a private equity investor has significant experience in testing the strategies of organizations in which he invests, to Jeff Skoll, E-Bay’s first president who knows a thing or two about taking entrepreneurial ideas to scale.
Second, we must sell our strategy retail and wholesale. As important as is the press in reaching a larger audience, the real opinion makers and influences need to see us in their living rooms and offices, up close and personal. Strip away the trappings of Hollywood and this event was in the genre of road shows we’ve done in many communities, and we need to keep doing them, combining targeted sales with broadcast messaging. Such events are an investment of time and money but relationships are not built or maintained any other way.
Third, we must continue to relentlessly champion innovation and imagination, and help others imagine a future that may not yet exist but is within our grasp to achieve. Visiting Rosecranz Elementary School in Compton on the morning of the launch we witnessed their success in removing the two of the biggest obstacles to breakfast in the classroom. By having one student leader from each classroom come to the school’s kitchen and wheel the breakfast cart to their class, and another wheel the trash barrel, they eliminated additional labor costs and imposing on teachers who did not want to be turned into lunch ladies. It’s a small point but part of a growing collection of best practices we are amassing and able to help spread.
Fourth, great chefs create great community. Even with a crowd as accomplished and as celebrated as this, our chefs made them feel event more special. Given all of the culinary activities in which we engage, it would be easy to take for granted the role of chefs and food. But it is has been at the very core of Share Our Strength for all of these years, because it is core to creating the community we aspire to build. The chefs themselves personify everything we want to convey about our work and brand: innovation, passion, caring, feeding, and community.
Finally, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stole the show at the launch press conference, reducing the messaging to its most basic and most powerful. He asked two young students, Eddie and Debbie, to help him out, and he asked each one what they’d like to be when they grow up. Eddie hoped to be a painter. I didn’t quite hear what Debbie said. But after each spoke Vilsack turned to the audience and said “Each of these students has a dream. But kids can’t achieve their dreams if they are hungry. That’s what No Kid Hungry is all about.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Share Our Strength's unprecedented growth: secrets of success, lesson #6
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #7 Accountability is a powerful differentiator in a crowded, competitive marketplace.
Accountability is a powerful differentiator in a crowded, competitive marketplace. Good intentions have long been the Achilles heel of the nonprofit universe because they are often the rationale for not being rigorous about measurement. But as the philanthropic marketplace gradually becomes more responsive and begins to reward high performance and superior strategy and execution and penalize low performance, stakeholders look for accountability.
Support for rigorous accountability is found in inverse proximity to geography. Those inside and closest to you will be the least comfortable with it. When we first gathered about 60 of our closest allies in the anti-hunger community to share our vision for ending childhood hunger, about 59 of them were against it, for a variety of predictable reasons: “How would we measure? What if we failed?” Mostly the culture of our sector was one of discomfort with accountability. When we presented the same notion to our business partners their response was the mirror image opposite: “If you are telling us that you have a goal line, and you know how far you are from it, and what it takes to get across, we are in.”
For most donors and partners in the nonprofit sector, there are no apples-to-apples measurement for return on investment. How do you know if you get more impact putting your dollars into Share Our Strength or Feeding America? In Teach For America or College Summit? In City Year or Experience Corps? But if one of the choices holds itself accountable to specific outcomes and the others only to aspirations, that is at least a clear and powerful differentiator.
But accountability doesn’t come cheap. It costs money to measure and to communicate what you’ve measured. That is money that might have gone instead into providing even more service or benefits to the population you serve. In the short-term. But the bet is that in the longer term accountability will eventually yield ever more resources so that you can serve more than you otherwise would have.
Tomorrow: lesson #7 Social Entrepreneurship and Public Policy
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #7 Accountability is a powerful differentiator in a crowded, competitive marketplace.
Accountability is a powerful differentiator in a crowded, competitive marketplace. Good intentions have long been the Achilles heel of the nonprofit universe because they are often the rationale for not being rigorous about measurement. But as the philanthropic marketplace gradually becomes more responsive and begins to reward high performance and superior strategy and execution and penalize low performance, stakeholders look for accountability.
Support for rigorous accountability is found in inverse proximity to geography. Those inside and closest to you will be the least comfortable with it. When we first gathered about 60 of our closest allies in the anti-hunger community to share our vision for ending childhood hunger, about 59 of them were against it, for a variety of predictable reasons: “How would we measure? What if we failed?” Mostly the culture of our sector was one of discomfort with accountability. When we presented the same notion to our business partners their response was the mirror image opposite: “If you are telling us that you have a goal line, and you know how far you are from it, and what it takes to get across, we are in.”
For most donors and partners in the nonprofit sector, there are no apples-to-apples measurement for return on investment. How do you know if you get more impact putting your dollars into Share Our Strength or Feeding America? In Teach For America or College Summit? In City Year or Experience Corps? But if one of the choices holds itself accountable to specific outcomes and the others only to aspirations, that is at least a clear and powerful differentiator.
But accountability doesn’t come cheap. It costs money to measure and to communicate what you’ve measured. That is money that might have gone instead into providing even more service or benefits to the population you serve. In the short-term. But the bet is that in the longer term accountability will eventually yield ever more resources so that you can serve more than you otherwise would have.
Tomorrow: lesson #7 Social Entrepreneurship and Public Policy
Monday, March 14, 2011
Share Our Strength's unprecedented growth: secrets of success, lesson #5
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #5:
Capacity equals impact. Because nonprofits are not typically engaged in manufacturing, or supply chain, or warehousing, capacity usually means staff and technology as opposed to equipment, facilities, etc. It is difficult to increase impact without increasing capacity. If you don’t assert the correlation between capacity and impact, then no one will assert it for you. In fact, you will fall victim to precisely the opposite bias and be measured against metrics stacked to ensure you don’t win: administrative overhead, salary, fundraising costs, etc.
All of the incentives in the nonprofit sector run against long-term investments in capacity. As Clara Miller, founder of the Nonprofit Finance Fund has explained: Philanthropy is enterprise blind and therefore enterprise unfriendly. All of the stakeholders of an organization – staff, board, donors, and beneficiaries are so committed to creating social value everywhere and all the time that they favor investing in program instead of capacity and consequently, even if unintentionally, exploit the enterprise and ultimately hollow out the enterprise.
Just as Warren Buffett has often explained that he always favors investing in building long-term competitive strengths over reaping short-term profit, organizational leadership must assert and defend the direct connection between capacity and impact.
Tomorrow: Lesson #6: Accountability is a powerful differentiator in a crowded and conmpetitive marketplace
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #5:
Capacity equals impact. Because nonprofits are not typically engaged in manufacturing, or supply chain, or warehousing, capacity usually means staff and technology as opposed to equipment, facilities, etc. It is difficult to increase impact without increasing capacity. If you don’t assert the correlation between capacity and impact, then no one will assert it for you. In fact, you will fall victim to precisely the opposite bias and be measured against metrics stacked to ensure you don’t win: administrative overhead, salary, fundraising costs, etc.
All of the incentives in the nonprofit sector run against long-term investments in capacity. As Clara Miller, founder of the Nonprofit Finance Fund has explained: Philanthropy is enterprise blind and therefore enterprise unfriendly. All of the stakeholders of an organization – staff, board, donors, and beneficiaries are so committed to creating social value everywhere and all the time that they favor investing in program instead of capacity and consequently, even if unintentionally, exploit the enterprise and ultimately hollow out the enterprise.
Just as Warren Buffett has often explained that he always favors investing in building long-term competitive strengths over reaping short-term profit, organizational leadership must assert and defend the direct connection between capacity and impact.
Tomorrow: Lesson #6: Accountability is a powerful differentiator in a crowded and conmpetitive marketplace
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The power of bearing witness, as seen at Lincoln's Summer Cottage
It’s probably the most profound example of the power of bearing witness that I’ve seen yet. And it’s 150 years old and only beginning to be understood.
This weekend Rosemary had the great idea to take Nate and Sofie to see Lincoln’s Summer Cottage which had recently been renovated by the National Trust For Historic Preservation, and since 2008 has been available for tour in small groups with advance reservations. The cottage sits three miles from the White House on 250 acres of land, on the third highest elevation in DC, with the Soldiers Home that had been established in 1851 and a national cemetery that predates Arlington (but is administered by Arlington Cemetery). It’s a 15 minute ride from our office (details can be found at http://www.lincolncottage.org/ ) Dick Moe, who led the National Trust for many years, remembers seeing the cottage for the first time and thinking “this is a treasure hiding in plain sight.”
President Lincoln spent a quarter of his presidency at his Summer Cottage, especially every May through October during the critical Civil War years of 1862-1864. It was cooler there and with less swamp-like humidity and odor than the rest of DC during the mid 19th century. For Lincoln it offered some respite from the pressures of the White House. Kind of a precursor to the way modern presidents have used Camp David. The Summer Cottage was where Lincoln did some of his deepest reflection on matters ranging from the Emancipation Proclamation to his re-election in 1864. While there he commuted to the White House each day on horseback. He was on the grounds of the Summer Cottage the day before he was assassinated at Ford’s Theater.
The tour of the Cottage takes less than an hour. It is mostly unfurnished, with a few furniture reproductions to which they will likely add as funding permits. There are better records of who visited there than of what was inside. But it’s not what’s inside the Cottage that is as important as what Lincoln was able to see right outside his window or during his frequent strolls on the grounds.
The Soldiers Home had originally been established as a hospital and retirement center for invalid and disabled soldiers. The administrators invited President Lincoln (as well as his predecessor James Buchanan, and several successors) to stay on the grounds as a way of trying protect themselves from budget cuts. One result of Lincoln accepting the invitation is that he was surrounded by recovering Civil War soldiers and sometimes witnessed 30-40 burials a day at the cemetery not 200 yards from his cottage.
His words and the recollections of those who spent time with him are testimony to just how much what he saw weighed on him. And how much it drove him to put the national interest ahead of all other interests. How could it not? Imagine if our leaders today had any such direct and constant exposure to the impact of their decisions. Imagine the sense of urgency they might have if they came face to face with millions of children suffering from hunger – and saw them not at an occasional media event with cameras rolling, but every day right by their own home. Imagine whether they would dare to put politics ahead of principle if they looked into the eyes of those who suffered so grievously as a consequence of their decisions.
With Lincoln’s Summer Cottage only recently restored and opened to the public, historians are just beginning to assess, and reassess, the impact of this place on Lincoln and the decisions he made. A visit to the Summer Cottage at the Soldiers Home makes clear that of Lincoln’s many extraordinary qualities, one such quality was not only a capacity to bear witness, but almost an insistence on making it part of his daily routine. And that insistence on bearing witness translated into a power, perhaps more so than for any other figure in our history, to advance equality and hold our nation together.
This weekend Rosemary had the great idea to take Nate and Sofie to see Lincoln’s Summer Cottage which had recently been renovated by the National Trust For Historic Preservation, and since 2008 has been available for tour in small groups with advance reservations. The cottage sits three miles from the White House on 250 acres of land, on the third highest elevation in DC, with the Soldiers Home that had been established in 1851 and a national cemetery that predates Arlington (but is administered by Arlington Cemetery). It’s a 15 minute ride from our office (details can be found at http://www.lincolncottage.org/ ) Dick Moe, who led the National Trust for many years, remembers seeing the cottage for the first time and thinking “this is a treasure hiding in plain sight.”
President Lincoln spent a quarter of his presidency at his Summer Cottage, especially every May through October during the critical Civil War years of 1862-1864. It was cooler there and with less swamp-like humidity and odor than the rest of DC during the mid 19th century. For Lincoln it offered some respite from the pressures of the White House. Kind of a precursor to the way modern presidents have used Camp David. The Summer Cottage was where Lincoln did some of his deepest reflection on matters ranging from the Emancipation Proclamation to his re-election in 1864. While there he commuted to the White House each day on horseback. He was on the grounds of the Summer Cottage the day before he was assassinated at Ford’s Theater.
The tour of the Cottage takes less than an hour. It is mostly unfurnished, with a few furniture reproductions to which they will likely add as funding permits. There are better records of who visited there than of what was inside. But it’s not what’s inside the Cottage that is as important as what Lincoln was able to see right outside his window or during his frequent strolls on the grounds.
The Soldiers Home had originally been established as a hospital and retirement center for invalid and disabled soldiers. The administrators invited President Lincoln (as well as his predecessor James Buchanan, and several successors) to stay on the grounds as a way of trying protect themselves from budget cuts. One result of Lincoln accepting the invitation is that he was surrounded by recovering Civil War soldiers and sometimes witnessed 30-40 burials a day at the cemetery not 200 yards from his cottage.
His words and the recollections of those who spent time with him are testimony to just how much what he saw weighed on him. And how much it drove him to put the national interest ahead of all other interests. How could it not? Imagine if our leaders today had any such direct and constant exposure to the impact of their decisions. Imagine the sense of urgency they might have if they came face to face with millions of children suffering from hunger – and saw them not at an occasional media event with cameras rolling, but every day right by their own home. Imagine whether they would dare to put politics ahead of principle if they looked into the eyes of those who suffered so grievously as a consequence of their decisions.
With Lincoln’s Summer Cottage only recently restored and opened to the public, historians are just beginning to assess, and reassess, the impact of this place on Lincoln and the decisions he made. A visit to the Summer Cottage at the Soldiers Home makes clear that of Lincoln’s many extraordinary qualities, one such quality was not only a capacity to bear witness, but almost an insistence on making it part of his daily routine. And that insistence on bearing witness translated into a power, perhaps more so than for any other figure in our history, to advance equality and hold our nation together.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Share Our Strength's unprecedented growth: secrets of success, lesson #4
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #4 Surplus (playing offense) is better than debt (playing defense)
Financial instability and/or peril is distracting, demoralizing and debilitating. If all of your energy is absorbed on the issue of how to make your payroll and your budget you will not have enough left over to devote to strategy, growth, and mission. Every unanticipated expenditure – and there will always be some - becomes a crisis. There were periods at Share Our Strength where we had so little margin for error that we spent countless hours debating $3000 decisions that felt like they were make-or-break, and that may well have been. But the opportunity costs of spending our time that way were both high and corrosive. For many organizations this is so ingrained as the norm that it is almost accepted without question. But there is another way.
Ultimately it is like the difference between playing offense and defense in football. Think of the football as financial stability. When you have possession you define the game, set the terms, and call your own shots. When you lose possession you find yourself in a defensive crouch, not playing to win, not playing to move things forward, simply playing not to lose, and to continue to survive. A good defense can keep you in the game for a long, long time. But it cannot win it for you. If you want to score big points against your mission, if there is a goal line you want to cross, you must put financial crisis and financial instability behind you and play an offensive game.
Obviously this is easier said than done. There are never sufficient revenues for doing all you want and need to do. And you can’t print money. But you can slow expenditures. Defer and cut expenses, stretch plans and corresponding spending out over a longer time frame. But whatever tough decisions have to be made, make ‘em now. The odds are that they are inevitable anyway, so get on with it and to the other side. The challenge for an organization’s leadership is to keep everyone’s eyes on the prize and ensure that they see financial discipline not as a frustrating or bureaucratic hindrance to achieving mission, but as a tool for pursuing that achievement more effectively.
Tomorrow: Lesson #5: Capacity Equals Impact
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson #4 Surplus (playing offense) is better than debt (playing defense)
Financial instability and/or peril is distracting, demoralizing and debilitating. If all of your energy is absorbed on the issue of how to make your payroll and your budget you will not have enough left over to devote to strategy, growth, and mission. Every unanticipated expenditure – and there will always be some - becomes a crisis. There were periods at Share Our Strength where we had so little margin for error that we spent countless hours debating $3000 decisions that felt like they were make-or-break, and that may well have been. But the opportunity costs of spending our time that way were both high and corrosive. For many organizations this is so ingrained as the norm that it is almost accepted without question. But there is another way.
Ultimately it is like the difference between playing offense and defense in football. Think of the football as financial stability. When you have possession you define the game, set the terms, and call your own shots. When you lose possession you find yourself in a defensive crouch, not playing to win, not playing to move things forward, simply playing not to lose, and to continue to survive. A good defense can keep you in the game for a long, long time. But it cannot win it for you. If you want to score big points against your mission, if there is a goal line you want to cross, you must put financial crisis and financial instability behind you and play an offensive game.
Obviously this is easier said than done. There are never sufficient revenues for doing all you want and need to do. And you can’t print money. But you can slow expenditures. Defer and cut expenses, stretch plans and corresponding spending out over a longer time frame. But whatever tough decisions have to be made, make ‘em now. The odds are that they are inevitable anyway, so get on with it and to the other side. The challenge for an organization’s leadership is to keep everyone’s eyes on the prize and ensure that they see financial discipline not as a frustrating or bureaucratic hindrance to achieving mission, but as a tool for pursuing that achievement more effectively.
Tomorrow: Lesson #5: Capacity Equals Impact
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Where politics and science meet
For thousands of years the malaria parasite has adapted to resist every attempt to combat it, and today infects a staggering 300-500 million people a year, mostly in Africa and Asia. There has never been a vaccine to prevent it. The reasons are both scientific and political. The parasite is complex and evolutionarily evasive. But malaria is also a classic case of a problem affecting people so economically marginalized and voiceless that there are no market incentives or political incentives for solving it. Now, with almost a million children a year dying from the disease, the person who may be closest to ridding the world of malaria is the one most experts had once not only dismissed but even ridicule.
A decade ago Dr. Steve Hoffman left the security of a distinguished 21 year career in the Navy, where he helped coordinate malaria vaccine development, and turned instead to the high risk, high reward uncertainties of his own bio-tech start-up.
His entire enterprise is built on a slender but tantalizing experiment to test the 1967 research of a New York University doctor named Ruth Nussenzweig, by convincing 14 volunteers to allow themselves to be bitten by irradiated mosquitoes about 1000 times to simulate a natural immunity.
When later challenged by being exposed to and bitten by regularly infected mosquitoes, 13 of the 14 were protected from malaria infection. From this Hoffman parleyed his passion and power of persuasion into millions of dollars of grants and ultimately FDA approval for clinical trials using weakened parasites as a vaccine.
The problem is that it has always been considered clinically and logistically impractical to immunize large numbers of people with a vaccine comprised of irradiated parasites extracted by hand from the salivary gland of a mosquito and preserved for intravenous injection. Other experts scoffed at such a cumbersome approach. But Hoffman saw an opening between impractical and impossible, and drove a truck through it. He saw the challenge not as scientific discovery but biotech engineering to scale something proven to work. His lab invented the necessary techniques.
Today Hoffman is up against the giant pharmaceutical Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) which has its own malaria vaccine candidate, effective only about half the time, now in the third phase of clinical trials. Many observers believe GSK’s vaccine will be first, but that in the long-run Hoffman’s will be best.
Hoffman’s personal qualities can be summarized in three words: imagination, entrepreneurship, and leadership. His hard earned technical successes transformed the perception of his vaccine from preposterous to miraculous. More important, he had the imagination and vision to see each scientific and technological breakthrough not as an end in itself but as a means to a larger end. The time he devoted to science was more than matched by the time he spent coaxing the scientific community up and over Mount Improbable, that Everest-like mountain of skepticism that had prevented them from seeing a solution lying long dormant, but nevertheless in front of them all along. He demonstrated persistence bordering on stubbornness, confidence bordering on arrogance, and a boxer’s willingness to take a punch and come up off the canvas, affirming George Bernard Shaw’s observation that all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
A decade ago Dr. Steve Hoffman left the security of a distinguished 21 year career in the Navy, where he helped coordinate malaria vaccine development, and turned instead to the high risk, high reward uncertainties of his own bio-tech start-up.
His entire enterprise is built on a slender but tantalizing experiment to test the 1967 research of a New York University doctor named Ruth Nussenzweig, by convincing 14 volunteers to allow themselves to be bitten by irradiated mosquitoes about 1000 times to simulate a natural immunity.
When later challenged by being exposed to and bitten by regularly infected mosquitoes, 13 of the 14 were protected from malaria infection. From this Hoffman parleyed his passion and power of persuasion into millions of dollars of grants and ultimately FDA approval for clinical trials using weakened parasites as a vaccine.
The problem is that it has always been considered clinically and logistically impractical to immunize large numbers of people with a vaccine comprised of irradiated parasites extracted by hand from the salivary gland of a mosquito and preserved for intravenous injection. Other experts scoffed at such a cumbersome approach. But Hoffman saw an opening between impractical and impossible, and drove a truck through it. He saw the challenge not as scientific discovery but biotech engineering to scale something proven to work. His lab invented the necessary techniques.
Today Hoffman is up against the giant pharmaceutical Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) which has its own malaria vaccine candidate, effective only about half the time, now in the third phase of clinical trials. Many observers believe GSK’s vaccine will be first, but that in the long-run Hoffman’s will be best.
Hoffman’s personal qualities can be summarized in three words: imagination, entrepreneurship, and leadership. His hard earned technical successes transformed the perception of his vaccine from preposterous to miraculous. More important, he had the imagination and vision to see each scientific and technological breakthrough not as an end in itself but as a means to a larger end. The time he devoted to science was more than matched by the time he spent coaxing the scientific community up and over Mount Improbable, that Everest-like mountain of skepticism that had prevented them from seeing a solution lying long dormant, but nevertheless in front of them all along. He demonstrated persistence bordering on stubbornness, confidence bordering on arrogance, and a boxer’s willingness to take a punch and come up off the canvas, affirming George Bernard Shaw’s observation that all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Share Our Strength's unprecedented growth: secrets of success, lesson #3
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson # 3: Talent trumps all else. Invest in talent first. Everything flows from it. Great ideas, great strategy, and great execution will not flow from a less than great team. Such talent is expensive and must be searched for in places that nonprofits do not always search. There are infinite rationalizations for not paying higher salaries, not replacing loyal but low performing team members, not investing in seasoned managers when you need them. Those rationalizations will save you money but they will not enable you to achieve your mission.
The challenge is not only financial. It can be cultural as well. Top talent wants to work with other top talent. So at first there is a Catch-22 that must be overcome, a tipping point that must be reached, until you’ve not just got a few great people but built a culture that reflects so much talent that it shines like a beacon to attract others.
And talent is not easy to manage. Any NBA coach will tell you that a team of superstars is more challenging to coach than a team of average players. It requires more and better management rather than less. Rapid growth can fray the parts of your culture that you cherish the most, and keeping that culture, not for sentimental reasons but because it serves to advance your mission, requires being intentional and explicit in sharing what styles and behaviors are acceptable and what aren’t.
Tomorrow: Lesson #4: Surplus (playing offense) is better than debt (playing defense)
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
Lesson # 3: Talent trumps all else. Invest in talent first. Everything flows from it. Great ideas, great strategy, and great execution will not flow from a less than great team. Such talent is expensive and must be searched for in places that nonprofits do not always search. There are infinite rationalizations for not paying higher salaries, not replacing loyal but low performing team members, not investing in seasoned managers when you need them. Those rationalizations will save you money but they will not enable you to achieve your mission.
The challenge is not only financial. It can be cultural as well. Top talent wants to work with other top talent. So at first there is a Catch-22 that must be overcome, a tipping point that must be reached, until you’ve not just got a few great people but built a culture that reflects so much talent that it shines like a beacon to attract others.
And talent is not easy to manage. Any NBA coach will tell you that a team of superstars is more challenging to coach than a team of average players. It requires more and better management rather than less. Rapid growth can fray the parts of your culture that you cherish the most, and keeping that culture, not for sentimental reasons but because it serves to advance your mission, requires being intentional and explicit in sharing what styles and behaviors are acceptable and what aren’t.
Tomorrow: Lesson #4: Surplus (playing offense) is better than debt (playing defense)
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Share Our Strength's unprecedented growth: secrets of success, lesson #2
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. The specific reasons follow below.
LESSON #2
The most importance audience for your new strategy is sitting next to you. You will likely identify many potential external stakeholders whose support is essential to your success, but those who will be most important are those you sit next to. This is often taken for granted or overlooked but it is absolutely indispensible. Organizations invest great effort in trying to persuade external stakeholders like donors, press, corporate partners, etc. of the merits of their idea, usually more than they invest in persuading their most important constituency: each other!
Don’t expect that this can be accomplished by e-mail. Serious strategies to solve previously unsolved problems are almost by definition likely to be complex. As the physicist Richard Feyman said to reporters who asked him to explain his Nobel Prize for quantum electrodynamics in ways they average person could understand: “If I could explain it to the average person, it probably would not have won a Nobel Prize.”
After all of the hard work that goes into developing a strategy, it is often assumed that everyone understands and agrees with it, or more important, understands it the same way. But that is rarely the case.
Such unity and alignment does not just happen by itself. We invested a tremendous amount of time in ensuring that the same words meant the same things to our executive leadership team and then to other layers of our staff. Did we all mean the same thing when using the words “end”, and “childhood” and “hunger”. It turns out that we didn’t. And how were we going to measure our success? By government statistics, our own field reports, internal or independent evaluators? Turns out we all had different ideas about that too. How would we resource and pay for our efforts?
How can you convince others of the credibility and criticality of your strategy – others who will not spend a fraction of the time on it that you have spent - if you haven’t convinced each other? No one is more invested in your success than the colleagues who sit alongside you.
Tomorrow: Lesson #3: Talent Trumps All Else
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Share Our Strength's Growth: secrets of success, lesson #1
I recently used a Community Wealth Ventures convening of leading nonprofits in Cincinnati, and then a lecture at the Kennedy School in Boston, as an opportunity to discuss Share Our Strength’s unprecedented growth over the past two years. Specifically I sought to tease out and understand the key ingredients of that growth, almost as if presenting a case study. This is a unique moment in our 25 year history. And our recent experience is all but unique across the broader nonprofit sector. That makes it a valuable learning opportunity that could help others, whether within or outside the hunger field.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. Lesson number one follows.
1. Go Big or Go Home. The linchpin of our growth was a commitment to shift away from short-term incremental progress in favor of long-term transformational change. The former is easy and comfortable. It is the norm, the natural order of things. You know how to get there. But so does everyone else. The latter is risky and hard to achieve. But it provides the inspiration that generates motivation, resources and a new sense of what is possible. Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, who designed Washington D.C.’s Union Station once said “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Think big.” Establishing the bold goal of ending childhood hunger – not reducing, reversing, or redressing, but ending it – represented transformational change and more than any other factor has been responsible for our growth.
This was a complete departure from the way we’d done business for two decades. It required a different strategy as well as different staff, skills and experience than we possessed at the time. We already had a highly skilled staff but they weren’t necessarily skilled in some of the new directions in which we were moving. We had been a grant maker to other organizations, an intermediary, whose dollars were doing good things, but not necessarily moving the needle in a measurable way, or getting to the root causes of why children were hungry. We had priorities; we had well defined buckets of activities, but not a vision for ending hunger or a plan for achieving it.
Our strategy was premised on the fact that kids in America are not hungry because of lack of food or because of lack of food and nutrition programs, but because they lack access to those programs. Programs like school breakfast and summer feeding and food stamps, whose funds have been already authorized and appropriated with bipartisan support. So our strategy was to coordinate and resource the community organizing needed at the local level to knock down whatever barriers were preventing kids from enrolling in these programs. It meant leveraging OPM (other people’s money, mostly federal funds) and so naturally it yielded a great return on investment.
Devising a more compelling strategy is the nonprofit equivalent of product development. As any successful business leader will tell you, getting the product right is first among equals. Les Wexner, the founder of The Limited (Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works) says: “Until you get the product right, nothing else matters. Once you get the product right, everything else matters.” In the nonprofit world your product is your strategy or “theory of change: or more simply, the outcomes you promise to deliver. Until you get it right, nothing else matters.
Tomorrow: Lesson # 2: The Most Important Audience for Your Strategy is Sitting Next to You.
At Share Our Strength our revenues hovered around $13 million annually in the years between 2004-2008. We were a classic case of the nonprofit whose growth had reached a plateau. We were stuck. Then we sharpened our strategy and made investments in capacity – including a few we could not afford. Our revenues grew to about $19 million in 2009, $26 million in 2010 and they will be $34 million this year. We added 30 staff to a base of 65 in 2010 and we are hiring for 20 more now. Though improbable it was not accidental or coincidental. Lesson number one follows.
1. Go Big or Go Home. The linchpin of our growth was a commitment to shift away from short-term incremental progress in favor of long-term transformational change. The former is easy and comfortable. It is the norm, the natural order of things. You know how to get there. But so does everyone else. The latter is risky and hard to achieve. But it provides the inspiration that generates motivation, resources and a new sense of what is possible. Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, who designed Washington D.C.’s Union Station once said “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Think big.” Establishing the bold goal of ending childhood hunger – not reducing, reversing, or redressing, but ending it – represented transformational change and more than any other factor has been responsible for our growth.
This was a complete departure from the way we’d done business for two decades. It required a different strategy as well as different staff, skills and experience than we possessed at the time. We already had a highly skilled staff but they weren’t necessarily skilled in some of the new directions in which we were moving. We had been a grant maker to other organizations, an intermediary, whose dollars were doing good things, but not necessarily moving the needle in a measurable way, or getting to the root causes of why children were hungry. We had priorities; we had well defined buckets of activities, but not a vision for ending hunger or a plan for achieving it.
Our strategy was premised on the fact that kids in America are not hungry because of lack of food or because of lack of food and nutrition programs, but because they lack access to those programs. Programs like school breakfast and summer feeding and food stamps, whose funds have been already authorized and appropriated with bipartisan support. So our strategy was to coordinate and resource the community organizing needed at the local level to knock down whatever barriers were preventing kids from enrolling in these programs. It meant leveraging OPM (other people’s money, mostly federal funds) and so naturally it yielded a great return on investment.
Devising a more compelling strategy is the nonprofit equivalent of product development. As any successful business leader will tell you, getting the product right is first among equals. Les Wexner, the founder of The Limited (Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works) says: “Until you get the product right, nothing else matters. Once you get the product right, everything else matters.” In the nonprofit world your product is your strategy or “theory of change: or more simply, the outcomes you promise to deliver. Until you get it right, nothing else matters.
Tomorrow: Lesson # 2: The Most Important Audience for Your Strategy is Sitting Next to You.
Washington's Best Kept Billion Dollar Secret
Last week No Kid Hungry National Spokesperson Jeff Bridges e-mailed to ask why our website didn’t highlight the fact that of all the money that is spent on hunger in the U.S. there is still at least a billion dollars that is available for public food and nutrition programs, but going untapped at a time when more Americans, and especially children, are struggling with hunger than at any other period on record. Bridges rightfully believes it is one of the most compelling aspects of our strategy and his question underscores one of the great anomalies of the economic and political climate in which we find ourselves.
Of the 20 million school children in America who get a free or reduced price school lunch, only 9.5 million get a free school breakfast even though all 20 million qualify, and only close to 3 million get the meals they are eligible for in the summer when the schools are closed. The irony is that while most governors are forced by economic realities to keep cutting social services, the federal government has committed to expand this critical social service without states having to spend their own scarce dollars. Increasing school breakfast from the 47% participation rate it is at now to 60% would drive more than $610 million to the states. And that is money that buys milk from local dairy farmers, bread from local bakers, having the same impact as stimulus dollars.
Most secrets require a conspiracy to keep them, and this best kept billion dollar secret is no exception. It is not a conspiracy of silence so much as a conspiracy of indifference, special interest, and neglect. The most common response of state and local elected officials upon learning of the availability of this money is one of shock and surprise. The main reason for their lack of awareness is that hungry children don’t belong to advocacy organizations that advance their cause and they don’t hire lobbyists to represent them in the corridors of state capitols. It’s not that governors don’t want to help hungry kids, it’s just that there are so many other special interests in front of them, that they rarely see the most vulnerable and most voiceless at the back of the line. That is finally beginning to change thanks to Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley championing this and the impressive results that are inspiring other governors of both parties to follow suit.
Of the 20 million school children in America who get a free or reduced price school lunch, only 9.5 million get a free school breakfast even though all 20 million qualify, and only close to 3 million get the meals they are eligible for in the summer when the schools are closed. The irony is that while most governors are forced by economic realities to keep cutting social services, the federal government has committed to expand this critical social service without states having to spend their own scarce dollars. Increasing school breakfast from the 47% participation rate it is at now to 60% would drive more than $610 million to the states. And that is money that buys milk from local dairy farmers, bread from local bakers, having the same impact as stimulus dollars.
Most secrets require a conspiracy to keep them, and this best kept billion dollar secret is no exception. It is not a conspiracy of silence so much as a conspiracy of indifference, special interest, and neglect. The most common response of state and local elected officials upon learning of the availability of this money is one of shock and surprise. The main reason for their lack of awareness is that hungry children don’t belong to advocacy organizations that advance their cause and they don’t hire lobbyists to represent them in the corridors of state capitols. It’s not that governors don’t want to help hungry kids, it’s just that there are so many other special interests in front of them, that they rarely see the most vulnerable and most voiceless at the back of the line. That is finally beginning to change thanks to Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley championing this and the impressive results that are inspiring other governors of both parties to follow suit.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Yesterday's Extraordinary Opportunity with the Nation's Governors
For the second year in a row the Democratic Governor’s Association invited Share Our Strength to update them on the progress of our strategy to end childhood hunger. So yesterday morning at the J.W. Marriott, Josh Wachs and Melissa Roy and I spent about 20 minutes with the Democratic Governors before they went into their private session.
Governor O’Malley introduced me to describe our strategy, and Arkansas Governor Beebe followed my remarks with comments about the progress of No Kid Hungry in Arkansas. West Virginia’s newly elected Governor Tomblin asked to be recognized and shared some ideas about school based efforts in his state. Governor Nixon of Missouri who was inspired by our team over the weekend signaled his support, and the chief of staff for a southern governor followed Josh and Melissa and me out into the hall after and said they want to help.
As you may have seen from the substantial Washington Post coverage of the governors meeting, they have been embroiled in controversial issues ranging from potential Medicaid cuts to education reform and cyber-security. The fact that they would put childhood hunger on their agenda and invite us to lead off their private session is an extraordinary testament to the credibility of Share Our Strength and our strategy – a credibility that has been built by every action of every member of our team these past few years.
Thanks to our many Share Our Strength supporters for helping us make and seize this opportunity to advance No Kid Hungry on the national policy agenda – and especially where it matters most: in the states where kids live and where these critical food and nutrition services are delivered. And special thanks to Governor Martin O'Malley for his continued leadership and commitment to our nation's children.
Billy
Governor O’Malley introduced me to describe our strategy, and Arkansas Governor Beebe followed my remarks with comments about the progress of No Kid Hungry in Arkansas. West Virginia’s newly elected Governor Tomblin asked to be recognized and shared some ideas about school based efforts in his state. Governor Nixon of Missouri who was inspired by our team over the weekend signaled his support, and the chief of staff for a southern governor followed Josh and Melissa and me out into the hall after and said they want to help.
As you may have seen from the substantial Washington Post coverage of the governors meeting, they have been embroiled in controversial issues ranging from potential Medicaid cuts to education reform and cyber-security. The fact that they would put childhood hunger on their agenda and invite us to lead off their private session is an extraordinary testament to the credibility of Share Our Strength and our strategy – a credibility that has been built by every action of every member of our team these past few years.
Thanks to our many Share Our Strength supporters for helping us make and seize this opportunity to advance No Kid Hungry on the national policy agenda – and especially where it matters most: in the states where kids live and where these critical food and nutrition services are delivered. And special thanks to Governor Martin O'Malley for his continued leadership and commitment to our nation's children.
Billy
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