Nonprofit AF

Nonprofits: We must break out of the Scrappiness Cycle

Posted on March 10, 2014April 27, 2017 by Vu

Next week my organization is having its annual dinner, which means that right about now everyone is busy and on edge. Occasionally we share our anxiety-induced nightmares with one another as a form of stress relief:

“There I was, sitting at my table next to the Mayor and Benjamin Franklin. Suddenly James comes on stage, and he was holding a giant raw fish as a prop for one of his jokes. And I thought ‘No! You can’t handle raw fish on stage, since you’ll be shaking hands with everyone! We’ll get blamed for an outbreak of salmonella!’ I tried screaming, but no sound would come out. We were doomed. Doomed…”

The dinner has been consuming all our waking, and apparently non-waking, thoughts. Last month, a donor sent in a gift basket for the staff for the Lunar New Year. It contained high-quality chocolates and cookies and was wrapped up all nicely. We quickly sent a thank-you note. At the next staff meeting I took out the basket and started to open it. A hush fell on the meeting room.

“What are you doing?” someone asked, shocked.

“I’m opening it,” I said, “it’s for us.”

“Wait!” said the group, “it’s too nice! We should use it as a raffle item at the dinner!”

These last few months have made me realize that we nonprofits are constantly in the Scrappiness Cycle. We are always scrimping, trying to find the best deals, trying to get stuff discounted or preferably free. We scour Craigslist looking for usable furniture, and we pounce on businesses that are moving or closing, hoping to score a kick-ass filing cabinet (with a lock!). It has become a mindset that is ingrained in all of us. It is our donors’ money! We must save! We must be responsible!

We totally should. But I think we have gone too far. Scrappiness and frugality are great skills that everyone should have. But like sake bombs, they should be taken in moderation. It would be better for our organizations, our clients, and our own sanity to actually be a little LESS scrappy.

First, there is the time and opportunity Cost: In our quest to save a few bucks, we miss out on more productive opportunities. To save about $2,000 to furnish our previous office with 8 work stations from IKEA, for example, a staff and I rented a Uhaul, drove to a business that was moving, and brought home 8 wooden desks or so. For free! They were heavy and the project took us a whole day to move, several days to assemble, and another day to get rid of the desks once we found something better and equally as scrappy.

This time that we spent moving and assembling furniture could have been spent connecting with donors, writing grants, or otherwise doing something that could have brought our organization money. Worse, while assembling a desk, a piece fell and scraped my shin, leaving a painful bruise that lasted literally months. If I weren’t so nice and hadn’t initiated the project, I could have sued the organization.

Second, scrappiness prevents us from thinking beyond the short-term. When we are scrappy, we tend to skimp on necessary resources like the right people and the right tools, which means we can’t be as effective, which means we have to be even scrappier to survive, perpetuating a vicious cycle that keeps us from moving forward and leads to really crappy office chairs from Craigslist. How many boards are so fixated on how much is spent on office supply or other expenses, instead of focusing on the long-term growth and awesomeness of their organization? I was facilitating a retreat a few weeks ago for the board of another nonprofit. This was clearly a dedicated, passionate working group of people. But they were stuck in the present, and with almost no staff, they were reaching burn-out. Running completely on volunteers is very scrappy, but it is difficult to sustain.

Third, and most importantly, we nonprofits really need to get out of this Martyr Mentality. It seems we nonprofit staff take an unspoken vow of poverty when we enter our profession. It has been beaten into us over hundreds of years, and like smoking or checking emails in bed it is a very difficult habit to break. But we have to. This mentality is ineffective; it drives talented people to burning out and to leaving the field, and it negatively shapes the perceptions of people who are not in the field, preventing good ones from even thinking of entering.

We need to believe that we are not bad people for wanting nice things like a decent work space (See “Nonprofit office space: We deserve better!“). I’m not talking extravagant things; this is not a carte blanche to say that we should skip out on due diligence and go crazy buying caviar and use fancy French terms like “carte blanche.” But buy a metal filing cabinet with locks. Take the team out once a while for lunch. Hire the necessarily staff. On occasion this may seem risky, considering how unstable our funds are and how society expects martyrdom. But society cannot expect us nonprofits to continue to hunker down, be scrappy, avoid risks, and hope to thrive. But it will if we ourselves keep believing and perpetuating this cycle.

The Scrappiness Cycle doesn’t work in the long run. And we and our community deserve better.

So. Back to the gift basket. “Our annual dinner is coming up,” I said, “and this basket would make a nice raffle item, ’tis true…

“But no, it’s for us,” I continued, finding momentum in my speech, “We work hard. We deserve something for ourselves once a while. We’ll find other stuff to raffle off. Plus, it’s not nice to the person who gave this to us if we give it away. We’d be disrespecting their wishes. No, it is our DUTY to eat these treats!”

“Eat these treats! EAT THESE TREATS!” the staff chanted in unison.

All right, they didn’t do that. They still looked at me like I was crazy. But they reluctantly accepted, and I tore open the cellophane…

What the…

Dammit! There was nothing vegan for me!

We wasted a nice pre-wrapped basket for NOTHING!

Help, I suck at time management!

Posted on February 18, 2014February 18, 2014 by Vu

Hi everyone. This is not going to be a high-quality post, because I spent many, many hours this weekend watching House of Cards on Netflix. Darn you, Frank Underwood, you creepy, effective bastard and your ruthlessly efficient wife! Now it is 12:30am and I am only beginning to work on this post, which is really more like a cry for help. I was going to skip writing this week, but I want to set a good example for my son, who is now 10-months-old. “Son,” I told him today while he was snuggled up on my lap, “always be consistent, sometimes even at the cost of quali—what…what is that in your mouth?! Is that a paperclip?! Ack! Where did you get this paperclip?! Spit that out! Spit it out right now! Stop squirming! Open your mouth! No! You can’t eat this paperclip! Stop biting Daddy! OW!”

So let’s talk about time management. We are all incredibly busy people. Helping make the world better takes a lot of time. I am always amazed at the people who can manage their time well. They tend to be morning people, and they wake up at 5am to do some yoga and drink a green smoothie made from wheatgrass and hemp oil or something before heading to the office by 7am and they’re all like “I feel so good because I exercised this morning, and wheatgrass is soooo good for you.” If you are one of these people, I admire and hate you in equal measures.

I am not one of these people. Before the baby came along, I woke up at 9:30am and got to the office at 10am. Then I’d work until whenever, coming home anywhere from 6pm to 10pm. That seems like a solid 8 to 12 hours per day, except those hours are not efficient. Maybe 5 hours was spent doing actual work. The rest would be filled with reading the news, arguing with various people about the Walking Dead or Game of Thrones, and looking at pictures of cute baby animals. Then, at home, feeling awful that I didn’t get much accomplished, I would put in several hours at night—unless TBS has a marathon of The Golden Girls, because, come on, those girls, Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia are hilarious!

Now that the baby is here, time is even scarcer. My emails are going crazy, I have way too many meetings, and I haven’t been sleeping enough. I must get a handle on things. A while ago I wrote about the four different work styles. Some of us are Dragons, some are Unicorns, others are Phoenix, and others are Lion-Turtles. Reading that post again, I realized that they each handle time management differently:

Dragons are probably the best time managers, since they are action-oriented and are hard set on deadlines. They don’t like excuses. If you say you’re going to do something, you better do it, or a Dragon will set your hair on fire. Quality may sometimes be debatable, but stuff will get done.

Phoenixes will commit to just about anything because they get bored easily and need to work on a billion things all at once. But then they get distracted by shiny new projects and drop balls left and right. They are poor time managers but because they’re usually charismatic, the rest of us tend to let it slide.

Lion-Turtles take forever to think about things because they need everything to be absolutely perfect. They are systematic and organized with their time. They, like the Dragons, are deadline-driven and high-quality, but they need plenty of lead time in order to analyze and think about everything.

Unicorns are considerate and want to be helpful, so they’ll often spend time on other people’s projects even at the cost of doing their own work. They put people before time, and they overcommit. So if a coworker is feeling down, they’ll drop their own work to cheer that person up. In other words, they also suck at time management.

Crap, I think I am a Phoenix-Unicorn hybrid, the two worst time-managers among the four styles. Dragons are awesome this area, followed by Lion-Turtles (I think Frank and Claire in House of Cards are these two styles respectively). I had planned to write a post called “10 Time Management Tips for Busy Nonprofit Peeps,” but I don’t think I am qualified to dish advice on something I pretty much suck at.

So, I need your help. What strategies do you use to manage your time? There are tons of time-management tips out there. They all make sense. “Tip 1: Make a To-Do list. Tip 2: Prioritize your list. Tip 3: Do the stuff on your list.” But it’s not that simple! To-do lists work for some people. Plus, we nonprofits are all understaffed, so we default to the Competency Paradox, which states that the more competent you are, the more work you get. Things are getting out of control! It’s 1:45am and the baby wakes up in 5 hours!

Let me know what works for you, and what style you are. You can type it in the comment section. Or if you’re free this week, I’d be glad to get coffee or a drink to talk about it for several hours.

8 Recipes from the Nonprofit Cookbook

Posted on February 10, 2014February 10, 2014 by Vu

Every once a while I get a chance to infiltrate the campus of a major corporation like Microsoft. Usually it’s to beg someone to join our board or to be a sponsor of our annual event (ideally, both). These places are very different from nonprofits, but luckily, I’ve learned to blend in by using the lingo. Walking up to the reception desk, for example, I’ll pretend to say something on the phone like, “Yes, I know you’re cranking against deliverables–we all are–but the adminisphere needs the CRM to be in beta drop and repro by next week or we are all SOL, so tell your PM to get the chips and salsa buttoned down!” Except for my aura of stress and exhaustion, no one suspects that I am from the nonprofit world.

Until I enter the cafeteria. Did you know many big companies have cafeterias? Last month, I visited he one at Microsoft, and it is amazing! They have these cool stations, with different types of hot food. They even have vegetarian/vegan food. All for very reasonable prices. I get so excited seeing all this convenient and affordable food, freshly prepared every day, and it shows. I ran around, expressing delight at everything, embarrassing the host. “Dude, calm down,” he whispered, “It’s like you’ve never seen food before.” The forks and spoons are all compostable, made from potatoes. “This is totally awesome,” I said, chewing on a piece of Panko-crusted tofu, “This tofu tastes like childhood. And this fork is delicious!” Ah, to have hot food prepared for you every day, to eat with edible utensils!

“So,” I said, calming down, “would you consider joining our board?”

It’s disappointing to come back down to earth, where we have no company-sponsored cafeteria, where last week one of the staff interrupted me to ask whether there was any food left over from the meeting the previous night. Let’s face it, we nonprofit folks have different eating habits than the corporate types. First, because we don’t have the same financial resources. Second, we usually also don’t have a lot of time, since we’re always helping people and stuff.

However, that shouldn’t mean that we can’t eat delicious, nutritious, and affordable meals. Also, we don’t like to waste food, and there is always a ton of food left over from various meetings. That’s why, prompted by Director Jen of Virginia, I’ve been thinking of writing a cookbook for nonprofit professionals. I’m working on it between episodes of the Walking Dead, but I wanted to give you a sample of what will be in the book. Here are a few recipes. I also asked friends of NWB’s Facebook page for suggestions.

The ED Ramen Bowl: Prepare one package of ramen. Add some frozen vegetables. Microwave for 5 minutes. Eat while reading financial statements or having a meeting with a staff. One hour later, eat a Cliff Bar while running to a meeting. Serves 1.

Fundraiser Wine Sangria: After every annual event, you will inevitably be left with several bottles of wine that have been partially finished. Don’t dump those down the drain! Combine and pour about 2 bottles’ worth into a punch bowl, add 2 sliced lemons, 2 sliced oranges, 2 shots of brandy or vodka, and 4 cups of leftover club soda or ginger ale or whatever, stir, and chill for a refreshing drink at the debriefing session. Serves 8, or serves 4 twice.

I-Forgot-My-Lunch Pasta: Having dried pasta and jarred spaghetti sauce in the office is a major time and money saver. For a quick meal, add dry pasta to a large microwave-safe glass bowl. Add water to one or two inches above pasta. Microwave for 15 minutes. Go answer some emails. Check for doneness and microwave 3 more minutes as necessary. Carefully drain pasta and return to bowl. Add pasta sauce to your liking, and stir. The hot bowl will heat up the pasta sauce. Serves 1 to 5. If you want more nutrition, add frozen or fresh vegetables and microwave an additional 3 minutes.

Hummus Platter Pizza: Hummus has gotten very popular, and that’s why 95% of nonprofit group meetings will feature this item, along with baby carrots, sugar snap peas, broccoli florets, and pita wedges. You will always have more hummus than people will eat, so why not make a delicious “pizza” after the meeting? Take leftover pita wedges, spread hummus on top, slice and add leftover baby carrots, snap peas, and broccoli, cover with shredded cheese cubes leftover from another meeting, and bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Serves 1 to 5.

Morning-After Breakfast Melt (Contributed by J Eric Smith): “Put the leftovers from last night’s meeting/event snack platters in a bowl. Pretty consistently, the things that no one ever eats off the platter are the pepper jack cheese, the weird salami looking stuff with more white fat than red meat in it, the cauliflower florets, and those strange, flat, brown things in the snack mix that taste like Worcestershire sauce. Heat in microwave until the cheese melts. Eat at desk, with aspirin garnish.” Serves 1 to 8.

The Team-Building Stone Soup: Food being left in the fridge for too long can cause consternation among staff. So every month, make a delicious “minestrone” soup. Add one carton of vegetable stock and one jar of tomato-based pasta sauce to a large pot. Season with salt, pepper, and a tablespoon or dried Italian seasoning (rub between your fingertips as you add for extra flavor). Add a splash of red wine left over from an event and half a cup of small dried pasta. Then have each staff look through the fridge and see what they can contribute to the soup: cheese, tuna salads, that weird kombucha tea with its “mother” floating inside, other soups. Simmer till the pasta is cooked. Not only is this a great way to clean out the fridge, it’s also a wonderful team-building activity. Serves the entire team.

Pastry bread pudding: Breakfast pastries are like government grants. At first they seem like a good idea, but you quickly get sick from how heavy they are. And yet, which nonprofit has not had a box of assorted pastries left over after an early-morning meeting? Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut 8 pastries into small pieces, shove into a baking pan, and drizzle 3 tablespoons melted butter over pieces. In a mixing bowl, whisk 4 eggs, 2 cups milk, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ cup sugar, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Pour over pastries and make sure everything is covered in liquid. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Serves 3 to 8.

The Development Director Omelette (Contributed by Rachel Schachter): “Take a dozen eggs out of the fridge. Give your ED a list of donors to call. Wait one week. Throw one egg at him for every donor not called. Go to store. Buy more eggs, repeat as necessary.” (Note from NWB: This is actually not a recipe and is very wasteful of eggs, which should be saved for the real recipes, like the bread pudding above).

I’ll be developing more recipes for the cookbook. Please send in your nonprofit recipes and any suggestions you may have. Remember: Just because we’re in nonprofit, and cranking against deliverables, doesn’t mean we can’t eat well.

Ooh, my ramen is ready!

10 things to do for the Lunar New Year to bring luck to your nonprofit

Posted on January 21, 2014January 21, 2016 by Vu

Note: This post was written in 2014. For this year, the Lunar New Year starts on Thursday, 2/8/16, ushering in the Year of the Fire Monkey. Everything else still applies though.

Lunar New Year is coming up, and those of you who still keep referring to it as “Chinese New Year,” you lose three cultural competency points. That’s like saying “American Christmas” or “Mexican Fourth of July,” all right? We all know that Christmas and Fourth of July are celebrated everywhere.

In Vietnamese culture, we call the Lunar New Year “Tet,” and it is the biggest and best and most festive period in the year ever. The weeks leading up to it are magical, as if everyone in the country just got a general operating grant. People are all busy preparing by decorating with plum and apricot blossoms and making traditional foods like sticky rice cakes and candied coconut, and there is a wonderful energy in the air and the kids are excited and the adults are happy and a few uncles get drunk and fall of their motorcycles while carrying plum or apricot branches home while teenagers point and laugh. Sigh…I miss my childhood…

But Tet is also symbolic, representing a new beginning and a clean slate. So while everyone is high on life during this time, there is a serious side as well. In order to have a great new beginning, people spend considerable time and effort to take care of all the unfinished crap. This goes for individuals, families, and businesses. And of course, this goes for us in the nonprofit field.

So, to start the Year of the Horse off right, we have to take care of stuff that is symbolically weighing us down. I’ve listed some things below. You don’t have to do all of them, but the more you can take care of, the more luck and good fortune you (and your organization) will have in the New Year. Whatever you do, do it BEFORE midnight on 1/31 (Friday morning):

Clean your desk—Cleaning is a huge part of Tet preparation, and families will spend days cleaning their houses till everything is spotless. You probably have all sorts of crap on your desk and in your drawers, random receipts, what the hell is that, some sort of Powerpoint slide printout from six years ago on the 40 Developmental Assets or something? Store or get rid of it all!
Clean your car—If you’re like me, you have tons of junk you collect from various meetings, all accumulating in the backseat of your car. Then there are probably half-drunk bottles of water that you take from those same meetings. And energy bar wrappers and other snack wrappers. If your car looks like a hoarder’s car, now is the time to clean it.
Decorate your office: Traditionally, people decorate with flowers and things that are red and gold/yellow, which are lucky colors. You don’tneed to go overboard with the decorating. Look at your office plants. If they are dead, get rid of them. Buy a yellow potted flower like mums or a lucky bamboo. Both symbolize renewal and good fortune. Most Vietnamese homes will also have a tray with a whole bunch of different fruit (at least five types) to symbolize bountifulness, so think about doing that. Even if it doesn’t bring good luck, we nonprofit staff can all use more fiber.
Pay off your debts—This is a huge part of preparing for Tet. You do not want to start the year owing money to people. It is very bad luck. So, if there are any outstanding bills, pay them now. If you personally owe a coworker even five bucks because he spotted you some cash for coffee or whatever, pay him. If your staff have any reimbursement requests in, cut them their checks.
Collect on debts—Collecting on debts can be unpleasant, so it is best to do it before the New Year starts. Plus, people are more anxious to pay off their debts during this time, so it is easier to do. If you have invoiced for reimbursement-based grants or whatever and it’s taking a long time, start being more assertive. Call up government funders and say, “If you don’t send reimbursement checks before 2/8, you’re being culturally insensitive.” This also goes for overdue pledged donations.
Apologize to people—You want to start Tet off with a clean slate, so make a list of all the people you’ve slighted, for example people you’ve accidentally stood up this year, staff who spent their own money to buy supplies whom you didn’t reimburse for several months, hipsters you made fun of during a keynote speech, interns whom you ordered to get you a vegan soy caramel Macchiato at Starbucks while forgetting that it’s their birthday, etc. Call or email them to apologize.
Forgive people—You don’t want to start the new year with bitterness in your heart. So, whatever hatred or disdain you have for people who have wronged you, such as your boss or coworker or board member, now is the time to take care of it and/or let all that go. Forgive as much as you can, and act on it with conviction by treating everyone nicely. Even the hipsters with their skinny jeans and weather-inappropriate scarves. If you find it hard to let go of these negative feelings, just remember that there will be plenty more bitterness and grudges for you to develop and harbor in the coming year.
Get a haircut: If you don’t really need a haircut, then don’t worry too much about this. If you are thinking of getting one, do it now before the new year starts. Getting your hair cut before Tet symbolizes shedding off of bad luck or whatever negative energies attached themselves to you this year. During the first three days of Tet, your hair now symbolizes good luck, so you can’t get a haircut during these three days.
Thank people: During Tet, families take time to visit the graves of ancestors, where they clean the tombstones and light incense to remember where they came from, and to ask the ancestors for a multi-year general operating grant. It is a time for reflection and appreciation, so call or send a note to thank your key funders, donors, volunteers, board members, and other awesome people. Especially thank any people who were historically critical to the organization, such as founders.
Request Monday, 2/8 off. I’m very serious. Very few people work during the first day of Tet. This is the happiest day of the year and everyone spends it with family and friends. If you have to work, try to do only tasks that you enjoy. The belief is that whatever you do and feel on the first day of Tet is what you’ll experience the rest of the year. So if you are stressed and overworked or resisting the urge to strangle that one annoying committee member who always speaks out of turn while saying stupid irrelevant things, that’s your fate for a whole year.

On the first day of Tet [2/8/2016], you and your house and organization are infused with a dose of good luck, provided you followed some of theabove steps. Don’t do anything that would symbolize getting rid of this good luck. For example, don’t get a haircut, don’t take out the trash, don’t do laundry. If you are staying home, you can probably skip showering as well. And for the love of general operating grants, try to brush aside stressful things and remain happy.

Good luck, and may the Year of the Fire Monkey bring you good health, peace of mind, stability, and a general operating grant or two.

(Note: By reading this blog post all the way through, you have earned 10 Cultural Competency Points and are on your way to becoming a Cultural Competency Unicorn. See list of CC points as well as titles you can earn.)

Uh, technical difficulties today. But here’s another nonprofit joke.

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Vu

Hi everyone. Our computer got infected with a virus, so I couldn’t work on my blog post today. I am on a tablet, typing approximately one word per minute. This paragraph has taken one hour so far. I’ll put up the post later. Meanwhile…

An Executive Director, a Director of Operations, a Development Director, a Chief Finance Officer, and a Communications Director were on a boat when it sank. They barely made it to a deserted island.

The DO said, “I’ll start building us some shelter.”

The DD said, “I’ll go gather us some food.”

The CFO said, “I’ll stay here and inventory our supplies.”

The Communications Director said, “And I’ll practice building signal fires.”

Everyone turned to the ED.

“You guys go ahead. I have sooooooo many emails I need to catch up on.”

***

Ahahaha. I hope you enjoyed that joke. It took me two hours to type. And now I’m way behind on my emails.