Why has the world, more specifically my world in the USA, been constructed to end up like it is now? Wow – now that’s a big question, and I suspect that if you ask 100 different people that question you might end up with 1000’s of different answers. However, it might be quite possible to see some common threads. Because I am the author, I get to speculate what some of those common threads might be. I think people might conclude, among many other things, that we have ended up in this place, rightly or wrongly, good or bad, moral or immoral because of the everlasting struggles between those who are powerful vs. the oppressed, or those who have been gifted abilities vs. those who have not, those who through no effort of their own have inherited or obtained wealth and power vs. those who have not, those who have worked hard and sacrificed (whatever that means) vs. those who have not, and those who by sheer luck have obtained wealth, status, and power vs. those who have not, and finally those who by race, religion, class, gender, and ethnicity have gained advantage over those by place of birth who do not share that advantage.

When I listen to people talk in conversation, or on TV, or social media, or radio there is a constant undercurrent of grievance sameness. I achieved or did not achieve this because……..I got this because I did this and you did not…..I deserve this more than you because……The brouhaha of comparison competition has become like a side load washer agitator, constant movement, some clothes are up and then down, and the effect if you stare long enough, is dizzying. There is a lot of unhappiness and grievance out there. How can this possibly be?

This is the point in the article that I toss in the “kicker”, the thing that is a reality slap to the side of your head. Are you ready?

Drum Role Please….

“It was in the reign of King George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now”

William Makepeace Thackeray

Yeah, that’s right, non (or very little) of this alive crap makes ANY difference. We all end up dead, and a lot sooner than many of us would like. Some have marked graves, and some do not, and even the ones who have marked graves might as well be unmarked because after 75 years anybody they knew are also dead. I am the guy who looks at a black and white photograph from Coney Island from 1927 and thinks “Geez – I wonder how many of the 15,000 smiling people, with bad swim suits, are alive today?”. The answer, in case you are wondering, is very close to zero. They were born, lived, died and you never knew them and everybody they knew is probably dead. You know nothing about their IQ score, work ethic, personality, sense of humor, hobbies, interests, or sexual proclivities. And BTW, just gonna throw it out here, if we could come back in 500 years and ask a citizen about the Beatles, would they even know who you are talking about – Beatles ? Huh?. Ok, well maybe I stretch a little to far, they are, after all the BEATLES. I think you get my point.

If you have gotten this far in the article, you might be asking yourself, what does make a difference ? I, of course, have the answer. MEANING (hence the name of the article). It’s all about the creation of meaning right now, while you are still alive, and can make some difference. It seems reasonable, since we all human, that making positive contributions working with and for others is the vehicle for creating maximum meaning. I have discovered this belatedly in my dotage. After a career in the public service sector, and raising two children with my wife, I find myself searching for something meaningful to do now. It does get a little boring making life altering decisions like – should we turn the a/c down at night by 1 more degree, or would you like to have Thai or Italian for dinner tonight? I find myself asking – is this really it? Is this what I worked my ass off for? Scrimped and saved? I met a philosopher in the community hot tub the other day who quipped ” Yeah-retirement sucks, good thing it doesn’t last very long”.

I got to thinking about this topic while contemplating nonprofit organizations. Yup, I was thinking about nonprofit organizations and why after the creation of the 501c3 tax exemption, and the vast proliferation of community nonprofit and public service organizations, supposedly creating a community fabric of cooperation, inclusion, and enterprise, that the public rose up and burned much of Lake Street in Minneapolis and other places in the Twin Cities to the ground. Now there is a colossal failure! The utter and complete breakdown of social order was stunning. I was born and raised in Minneapolis-St. Paul and lived there for 64 years, worked in the St. Paul Public Schools for 33 years and in the Minneapolis Public Schools for 5 years. I was stunned to see the results of the rage, as I took the “riot” tour driving through parts of the Twin Cities. I saw and listened to a lot of stuff in 64 years, but had never seen anything like that before.

Why? How could this have happened in the Twin Cities? There are many reasons of course, but underlying much of the rhetoric, rage, and blaming I hear a constant low level drone, people do not feel meaning and purpose in their lives. Many people in our country feel the pain of everything that has been taken away from them during the last 40 years – living wage jobs, affordable health care, high quality education for all, college affordability and opportunity, and retirement benefits. Truth be told, if the surface is scratched just a little bit more, many people feel that their lives don’t meaning anything, that they are unimportant, that they can’t make any difference, that everybody else is making their decisions for them, and they are lashing out against a system that so callously took everything away from them including the MEANING of life itself.

Circling the wagons back to nonprofits. I had a lot of experience “partnering” with nonprofit organizations during my public school life. The reason I single them out in this article is because I know a little about the way they operate, I know the vast unrealized potential they hold, and they make a good metaphor for how most of our institutions (public/private, educational, religious, and nonprofit) are really missing the mark when it comes to helping people create meaning and purpose.

A friend, and CEO of a large well known local nonprofit, once told me over lunch out that 80% or more of his time was spent raising money. After lunch out, we then went back to his new, spacious, well appointed office in a brand new multi-million dollar building where he was interrupted twice by phone calls from his administrative assistant. There was an entire second floor of staff members in this organization. I was recalling this lunch with another friend sometime later, and he told me the following story about the real world life of nonprofit agencies.

CEO’s of nonprofits spend the majority of their work time raising money. The money comes from grass root donations (heard of United Way), trusts and wills of the recently deceased, wealthy individual donors, corporations and private businesses, grants from governmental, research or other institutions, and other nonprofits. I do not know the breakdown of who gives what but I can say with certainty that raising money is job #1 in virtually all nonprofits. When asked why it has to be that way, any acolyte of the organization would tell you that it’s survival and the nonprofit must survive (implied – in it’s current form) in order to continue making a tremendous contribution to the community. It can also be said that the competition for the money is cut throat, all nonprofits are competing for the same funding streams. The pressure is intense from nonprofit Board members and some community members to expand the revenue dollars every year.

When not beating the bushes for money, administrative staff at nonprofits and the CEO go to a lot of meetings. There are regular training meetings, staff meetings, partnership meetings, community meetings, occasional nonprofit round table meetings with other CEO’s, as well as internal communications, and continual updates of the strategic goals and mission (raising money) of the nonprofit. Oh, and BTW, CEO’s and top level staff at mid to large size nonprofits are paid well, very well. The top level CEO has usually been in the biz for a while, went to a well known college and has fine honed the craft of networking, the lifeblood of the current job, and a necessary skill to move laterally or upward to the next job.

What happens with all that money ? The very well compensated CEO and admin staff take a chunk, then more is siphoned off either paying off the mortgage, paying maintenance, utilities or all three. Money is used to pay for staffing and programming. Various websites indicate that any nonprofit using 65% or more for direct programming is doing a good job. In fact, a nonprofit that spends 25% or less on “overhead’ (i.e. – all operating expenses) is considered to be A+ organization. But wait just one moment- let’s look at this. A nonprofit with a 1 million dollar annual budget = 250K goes for operating expenses, or a 10 million dollar annual budget = 2.5 million dollars annual operating expense, and a large 100 million dollar annual budget = 25 million dollars each year on operating expenses. Each of these nonprofits is considered A+. The programming for any nonprofit is linked to the mission and it’s delivered by staff on the payroll at the nonprofit or brought in by paid mercenaries (consultants, teachers, speakers, trainers, etc.). Are you starting to get the picture here? A rather substantial chunk of nonprofit money is used as a jobs program for the “already haves”. Then the “already haves” turn around and spend the rest of the money – again another jobs program – on programming using “already haves” as the deliverers of the service. BOOM!

I think there is a problem, a big problem, with this entire model. I ran a nonprofit-like entity within the public schools and we were limited to 10% overhead and it was enough. Just think, in a small nonprofit (1 million dollar annual budget) you could leverage an additional 150K (250K-100K) for programming each year. It may not sound like a lot until you add up multiple non profits year after year. The money is huge! Next, why are we having outsiders (nonprofit staff and board) dictating what the mission is, how the money is spent, and who delivers the programming? If the goal is to really create meaning and purpose, why aren’t the recipients the ones making the decisions? What would that look like at ground level?

Nonprofit X is assigned a 10 square block community and given the generic goal of improving peoples lives, tasking more community involvement, more community action, more skill building, and more relationship building to accomplish the goal. X floods the zone with staff members interviewing, asking questions, dispersing surveys, running focus groups and having information seminars all located and operated in the community (resident housing, churches, schools, business). After information is gathered, selected community members are trained in data analysis and charged with summarizing the collected data to come up with a plan for the 10 square block area. The community members are paid for doing all this work. Training is provided by X staff members (including the CEO) and corporate, community, or outside expert volunteers to help. X staff is spending 75% time in the community, housed at a local church, or whoever has adequate facilities to house them for the least amount of money. The plan is disseminated at several large community gatherings run by the community members tasked with the data analysis.

Let’s just randomly identify some areas of focus that a community task force might come up with.

1. Crime
2. Education
3. Housing
4. Jobs
5. Health Care
6. Child Care

Now let me apply some principles to one area, education, and then with some imagination you can generalize the principles to the other areas listed.

The CEO meets with the School District Supt. and the Principals in the 10 square block area and asks a lot of questions:

1. Do you suppose that some of your teachers might be interested in teaching current struggling students after school, on weekends, during school breaks, or during the summer?
2. Is it possible for us (Nonprofit X) along with the School District (ALC), and any other local agency or business to help by making direct contributions to the payroll fund to make sure these teachers are well compensated for this effort? Could our business manager meet your business manager to make those arrangements?
3. Do you think you may have leadership staff in your school that might be willing to train community persons in 1X1 tutoring methods for students? Yes- of course they will be paid, maybe we can work out a similar partnership agreement as we have with the teachers. Oh – the community tutors – yes they will be well compensated for attending the trainings and for delivering the instruction to students in locations that are very conveniently located to students. Oh, BTW, yes there will be paid followup meetings between tutors and the teachers for student updates, and to make sure that we are all aligned and heading in the same educational direction. Tell you what (School District) why don’t you handle the curriculum and instructional part and we (Nonprofit X) will handle the community part.
4. I have an idea -Eureka! I bet we could talk with several local Universities and they probably have PhD students who may be interested in researching the effectiveness of this program as part of their requirements for graduation.
5. Hey – maybe we should get the Public Libraries in on this discussion. I am sure they could offer support, books, and other materials and even space for 1×1 tutorials.
6. I am sure we could entice parents to come in several times for a celebration. Geez- I know how to do that- Let’s have 3 celebration events during the year, with food, and dessert, awards for students, onsite event daycare, and free transportation to/from the event. We (Nonprofit X) will take care of all the logistics and cover costs. You know – I wonder if we could also sneak in 15-20 minutes of focused parent training at the event – hmmm.
7. Could we get on the agenda at local churches, or a booth at community events, create social media for community residents to access, etc.? Well, we are gonna have to pay a community member to create, grow, and maintain these options.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. Non of these ideas are new, and I am sure that elements of these ideas have been tried with varying success in communities across the country and world. But many lack the commitment to follow through with the intensity, focus, and money required to sustain the effort. Nonprofits need to think and operate differently in a sustained way to make a deep effect. Here are the rules I would implement to begin that transformation:

1. NO MORE than 10% administrative overhead. Dump or rent out the fancy building, the mortgage, the maintenance costs and get a good laptop and work in your car, in the community you serve, spend your coffee and lunch money in the community you serve, and if you need some office space work out a low cost or free arrangement in a local church, business, or out of somebody’s house. That goes for the CEO also.
2. ZERO programming delivered directly to community members by nonprofit staff, outside consultants, or speakers. ALL programming delivered to community members by paid community members.
3. STAFF is used to train, coach, and mentor community members to do jobs and then DELEGATE all responsibility to paid community members.
4. FOCUS the mission in a discrete geographical boundary. Forget about the broad demographic impact across an entire city, county, or region- it’s like advertising a swimming pool that is 1/2 inch deep and 1 mile wide. It doesn’t work.
5. SERVANT LEADERSHIP to be practiced from the top and all the way down! Regularly check and keep track at meetings with the community or other partners that you and your staff are asking questions 80% of the time and passing on information and making declarative statements no more than 20% of the time.
6. SPEND MOST/ALL MONEY on paid community members. Provide them the jobs!
7. SPEND 90% of your physical work time IN the community – working, eating, talking, meeting, canvassing, observing, asking questions, and developing relationships with the people who live and work in the community. Make it a point of pride to know as many names as possible along with names and ages of children, pets, relatives, hobbies, interests, problems and issues.
8. LEVERAGE the power, expertise, and intelligence of every institution, person, leader that you can find.

Good luck!