Layoffs at the Sierra Club and Color of Change are bringing the internal challenges of do-good advocacy work in the age of big money fundraising, celebrity branding and millennial miasma to the fore.
I’m very happy to see this kind of reporting/analysis. Since much of the blame for nonprofit turmoil is put on funders, I’m curious if you spoke with any major funders of the Sierra Club or Color of Change? For a long while, Amy Costello offered this kind of accountability journalism of the nonprofit sector at her Tiny Spark podcast, but it seems she stopped in 2021 and I sense she struggled to cultivate an audience. (Plus, there was an internal conflict of interest in relying on foundation funding to hold funders and their grantees accountable to their constituents.)
In my experience, there is great reporting on nonprofit organizational effectiveness, but it’s tucked away in 50-page evaluation reports written in dense, cautious language by the thousands of folks who form part of the American Evaluation Association 3ie and similar networks. Something I’ve considered as a future gig is trying to bridge the gap between impact evaluation and solutions journalism by incentivizing journalists and evaluators to work together. 🤔
Finally, I don’t think that increasing organizational dysfunction is unique to nonprofits or advocacy groups. Most of my friends who work in the private sector (tech, finance, even retail) complain about similar dynamics. Same is true with the public sector. So are there deeper social and technological forces causing these dynamics across the board? While contentious, I think we need to delve into some of the social research on diversity and trust and report on what actually works to increase both. (http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/in-essence/downside-diversity). Also, I think Clay Shirky was prescient when he observed in 2007 that the whole point of firms/organizations is to enable us to accomplish things that we can’t do on our own. But the adoption of networked technologies means that we’re able to accomplish more as connected individuals and we benefit less from working in an organization. (https://www.econtalk.org/shirky-on-coase-collaboration-and-here-comes-everybody/) All of the rules, protocols, meetings, double-standards of institutional life start to feel like it’s not worth it.
Anyway, curious if any of this resonates with you and I hope you keep reporting on the nonprofit effectiveness beat.
I think this line of inquiry is great and needs to go even deeper. My daughter has worker for several similar orgs ranging from SEIU to CASA and others. As she has been involved in this for almost 20 yrs it's been fascinating to see her get relegated by new staff as and Old Timer -- something almost as bad as a Boomer! I also believe these natl SJ orgs are suffering from yet another somewhat nebulous but powerful factor I call The Twilight of the Left. when ur own org is in turmoil, the crisis is amplified and multiplied if your "sister" orgs are also up the creek and the when the general political world is in total chaos.
Many old Boomer years ago an academic economist who moonlighted as a consultant remarked to me that the only difference between for-profit and non-profit outfits is that non-profits distribute their excess revenues in the form of salaries. At the time, I thought that a cynical take. In the meantime, the business sector has caught up in terms of executive compensation and the financial engineering necessary to minimize tax and regulatory burden. As well, intellectual property is a bigger segment of the for-profit sector than it was then.
Non-profits have an advantage in selling IP because they can potentially thrive from selling their product, the feel-good experience, both as a mass market consumer good and as a bespoke vanity trophy. In effect, they thrive by brand name recognition. As an intangible product--good causes--the activity is, at bottom, sales of a commodity. There are several ways to sell a commodity. One is through low margins on huge volumes, such as the successful March of Dimes campaign against polio that funded development of the Salk vaccine. That organization used its success to the related cause of maternal and child health. Another is developing ever better economies of scale to produce at least temporary competitive advantage. A third is monopolizing through legal means including copyright protection, paywalling, aggressive litigation tactics, superior marketing, exploitation of first-mover advantages and network effects, for example or political arbitrage to induce heightened regulatory burden to suppress competition from new entrants. Non-legal methods include various means in violation of antitrust laws. Those laws have diminished vitality in the United States. In the EU, such regulations have some effect, although enforcement of privacy laws may actually play a greater role in restraining monopoly practices. In any event, the conceptual difficulties in defining a market for commercial IP are even mire challenging in the case of hedonistic IP of good causes.
The means just discussed have in common that they are diffuse, and there is little basis on which individual credit may be assigned. Sales organizations are generally organized and operated to reward on the basis of either hierarchy (multi-level marketing model) for discrete transactions in the ordinarily course of business. For one-off deals, it is common to designate a portion of the proceeds as a bonus pool with the largest share going to a designated closer.
Conceptualizing non-profit soliciting funding as advocacy agents for identified ends as sales organizations provides a model that is consistent with the internal dynamics that you describe.
I think this line of inquiry is great and needs to go even deeper. My daughter has worker for several similar orgs ranging from SEIU to CASA and others. As she has been involved in this for almost 0 yrs it's been fascinating to see her get relegated by new staff as and Old Timer -- something almost as bad as a Boomer! I also believe these natl SJ orgs are suffering from yet another somewhat nebulous but powerful factor I call The Twilight of the Left. when ur own org is in turmoil, the crisis is amplified and multiplied if your "sister" orgs are also up the creek and the when the general political world is in total chaos.
I’m very happy to see this kind of reporting/analysis. Since much of the blame for nonprofit turmoil is put on funders, I’m curious if you spoke with any major funders of the Sierra Club or Color of Change? For a long while, Amy Costello offered this kind of accountability journalism of the nonprofit sector at her Tiny Spark podcast, but it seems she stopped in 2021 and I sense she struggled to cultivate an audience. (Plus, there was an internal conflict of interest in relying on foundation funding to hold funders and their grantees accountable to their constituents.)
In my experience, there is great reporting on nonprofit organizational effectiveness, but it’s tucked away in 50-page evaluation reports written in dense, cautious language by the thousands of folks who form part of the American Evaluation Association 3ie and similar networks. Something I’ve considered as a future gig is trying to bridge the gap between impact evaluation and solutions journalism by incentivizing journalists and evaluators to work together. 🤔
Finally, I don’t think that increasing organizational dysfunction is unique to nonprofits or advocacy groups. Most of my friends who work in the private sector (tech, finance, even retail) complain about similar dynamics. Same is true with the public sector. So are there deeper social and technological forces causing these dynamics across the board? While contentious, I think we need to delve into some of the social research on diversity and trust and report on what actually works to increase both. (http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/in-essence/downside-diversity). Also, I think Clay Shirky was prescient when he observed in 2007 that the whole point of firms/organizations is to enable us to accomplish things that we can’t do on our own. But the adoption of networked technologies means that we’re able to accomplish more as connected individuals and we benefit less from working in an organization. (https://www.econtalk.org/shirky-on-coase-collaboration-and-here-comes-everybody/) All of the rules, protocols, meetings, double-standards of institutional life start to feel like it’s not worth it.
Anyway, curious if any of this resonates with you and I hope you keep reporting on the nonprofit effectiveness beat.
These days I'm avoiding this turmoil - I am no longer volunteering on nonprofit boards.
I think this line of inquiry is great and needs to go even deeper. My daughter has worker for several similar orgs ranging from SEIU to CASA and others. As she has been involved in this for almost 20 yrs it's been fascinating to see her get relegated by new staff as and Old Timer -- something almost as bad as a Boomer! I also believe these natl SJ orgs are suffering from yet another somewhat nebulous but powerful factor I call The Twilight of the Left. when ur own org is in turmoil, the crisis is amplified and multiplied if your "sister" orgs are also up the creek and the when the general political world is in total chaos.
Thank you for writing this !
Many old Boomer years ago an academic economist who moonlighted as a consultant remarked to me that the only difference between for-profit and non-profit outfits is that non-profits distribute their excess revenues in the form of salaries. At the time, I thought that a cynical take. In the meantime, the business sector has caught up in terms of executive compensation and the financial engineering necessary to minimize tax and regulatory burden. As well, intellectual property is a bigger segment of the for-profit sector than it was then.
Non-profits have an advantage in selling IP because they can potentially thrive from selling their product, the feel-good experience, both as a mass market consumer good and as a bespoke vanity trophy. In effect, they thrive by brand name recognition. As an intangible product--good causes--the activity is, at bottom, sales of a commodity. There are several ways to sell a commodity. One is through low margins on huge volumes, such as the successful March of Dimes campaign against polio that funded development of the Salk vaccine. That organization used its success to the related cause of maternal and child health. Another is developing ever better economies of scale to produce at least temporary competitive advantage. A third is monopolizing through legal means including copyright protection, paywalling, aggressive litigation tactics, superior marketing, exploitation of first-mover advantages and network effects, for example or political arbitrage to induce heightened regulatory burden to suppress competition from new entrants. Non-legal methods include various means in violation of antitrust laws. Those laws have diminished vitality in the United States. In the EU, such regulations have some effect, although enforcement of privacy laws may actually play a greater role in restraining monopoly practices. In any event, the conceptual difficulties in defining a market for commercial IP are even mire challenging in the case of hedonistic IP of good causes.
The means just discussed have in common that they are diffuse, and there is little basis on which individual credit may be assigned. Sales organizations are generally organized and operated to reward on the basis of either hierarchy (multi-level marketing model) for discrete transactions in the ordinarily course of business. For one-off deals, it is common to designate a portion of the proceeds as a bonus pool with the largest share going to a designated closer.
Conceptualizing non-profit soliciting funding as advocacy agents for identified ends as sales organizations provides a model that is consistent with the internal dynamics that you describe.
I think this line of inquiry is great and needs to go even deeper. My daughter has worker for several similar orgs ranging from SEIU to CASA and others. As she has been involved in this for almost 0 yrs it's been fascinating to see her get relegated by new staff as and Old Timer -- something almost as bad as a Boomer! I also believe these natl SJ orgs are suffering from yet another somewhat nebulous but powerful factor I call The Twilight of the Left. when ur own org is in turmoil, the crisis is amplified and multiplied if your "sister" orgs are also up the creek and the when the general political world is in total chaos.