If you live in and work with, an NPO/NGO culture, you understand – in your gut – what it means to live in a Gladiator Culture; where 9 out of 10 equally qualified (but unequally prepared) 
foundation and agency grant applications – are rejected. You know that knot in the pit of your stomach, when receiving a foundation or funding agency grant rejection letter. It comes with the territory, doesn’t it?
Shoveling Seaweed against the Tide …
The continuing, devastating, devolution of federal, state, and local funding, and budget cuts, is driven by a toxic, polarized, ideological, and political environment; where often the underlying motivation seems more directed at demonizing and victimizing the victims, than meeting the needs of those who are the most vulnerable and at risk. This drives both grant-making reductions, and more rigorous evaluative and performance criteria …
Result:
In this culture, we create daily scenarios of seemingly impossible fundraising expectations, with increased tangible and measurable deliverables, in unrealistic timelines, to make-up our widening annual budget gaps – while we are competing with one another in our Gladiator Culture – in a smaller and smaller finite pool of resources. It’s no surprise then, that the average tenure of development directors … is just 18 months.
For NPO’s & NGO’s …
Needs have always exceeded resources. When we are client-centered, we are idealistically and compassionately drawn 24/7 into meeting the needs of those most vulnerable and at risk in our local, regional, country and global communities. As resources evaporate, we often find ourselves personally writing emotional and physical checks that our bodies and our institutions can’t cash. It really is hard to see the light at end of the tunnel … it’s either extinguished – or worse – it’s oscillating! We often feel more like fodder – than facilitators.
Changing the Paradigm
As a result, we have been inexorably drawn into accepting, participating, and perpetuating a Culture of Scarcity, at so many levels in our organizations, that it’s often hard to imagine where, or how, to begin to change the paradigm … and the cycle. The Buddhists have a name for this existential cycle of suffering – they call it Samsara – our wandering together through an endless cycle of self-inflicted, self-perpetuating, attachment to unreality, frustration, and suffering. Stumbling from one crisis to the next. Albert Einstein defined insanity as, “Doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting a different result.” That great American philosopher Yogi Berra called it “Déjà vu all over (and over) … again”.
An Organizational Culture of Scarcity reflects a shared, pervasive, dysfunctional gestalt … an often deeply felt but un-articulated institutional view. It represents our shared, underlying institutional alignment, intentionality, and our motivation – always modeled top-down – and infects every internal stakeholder. It’s really contagious.
Our first customers are always internal. So, how we treat each other as stakeholders – on the inside – is often an excellent predictor of how we will treat others, and how we will both perceive, and be perceived, outside the institution (i.e. clients, donors, foundations, and other organizations in the community).
For example, if we have a bunker mentality (you know the drill) data silos with departmental “us against them” mindsets. Consequently, collaboration, innovation, creativity, cooperation, partnerships, transparency, shared learning, and trust … are often not in the institutional spell checker.
An NPO Culture of Scarcity is a shared belief system, it is an Edifice Complex; a bulwark against the onslaught of all of the stuff we are assaulted by internally and externally. To stay employed you have to drink the Kool-Aid. We’re more concerned about our individual, departmental, and institutional survival – than serving our shared vision, mission, and values – through shared learning and collaborative partnerships together in the community.
If we were a for-profit corporation, we would say we were intensely product-centered – talking AT people – where marketing, social media, finance, management, development, operations and admin, are engaged in a ritualized daily battle of mortal combat, competing for internal and external resources. (it’s not very safe … is it?) Versus being customer and donor centered – listening to, learning from, and engaging and talking WITH people.
Does this all sound familiar? … it’s all the same riff isn’t it?
Can you see how an Organizational Culture of Scarcity morphs into self-perpetuating, self-fulfilling, reactive, crisis managed, cycles; motivated by shared intentionality and self-preservation behavior?
“We met the enemy – and they is us!” Pogo (the cartoon character) said. Not your co-workers, not the board, not management, not the volunteers, not the clients, not the foundations, not other agencies in the community, not your lapsed subscribers or donors – they’re not the enemy – we are. These are all just excuses for isolating each other, and everybody we perceive as a threat. And when we do, what do we get back (fill in the blank) Yup, you got it, Samsara, Insanity, Déjà vu all over and over again with high staff turnover and lapsed donors (think lapsed engagement).
So …what do we want for outcomes … and how do we get there?
First we have to own our own stuff – if we want to change our outcomes in here AND out there, we have to change our attitude & behavior – and, before we do that, we have make some hard decisions.
The Queen of De’Nial is a bad source of good data. When we drink the Culture of Scarcity Kool-Aid, we have to own that we agree to participate in a culture that consumes people, good will, trust, donors, and social capital. Click To Tweet
A culture of scarcity begins with a shared institutional belief that there isn’t enough emotional support, care, concern, kindness, compassion, and generosity, to go around, so we will extract it from each other … top down. Is that what really what we want for outcomes … for ourselves, for our board, for our volunteers, for our clients, for our community partners, and for our donors?
Hint: It’s never about the money or the technology … it’s about investing in relationships and our shared intentionality, our shared motivation, and the quality of our engagement … that drives outcomes.
Do we choose to invest in a culture of generosity and gratitude? Do we choose to build a sustainable, responsive listening and learning culture … that’s safe (inside and out)? Then we need to be about investing in building shared awareness, shared understanding, shared agreement, shared buy-in, and personal ownership, that nourishes each person’s unique contribution to the enterprise – in here … and out there (it’s really positively contagious)
#occupythemind
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