8 grammar mistakes even smart and sexy people like you are making

Hi everyone, this post will be my last normal one for a few weeks. I am heading off to Europe this Wednesday for about a month with the German Marshall Memorial Fellowship to learn about how they do stuff over there, stuff like education, immigrant/refugee integration, nonprofit structure, and philanthropy. To prepare, I’ve been brushing up on my European history, focusing on the period from World War II to now, as well as European culture, focusing on wine drinking. I’m going to Brussels, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Belgrade, and Berlin. The program is pretty intense, so it is unlikely I’ll be able to keep my regular posting schedule. I hope to use this blog as a journal to reflect and observe on my trip as time and energy allow, so please excuse in advance the erratic posting schedule and sure-to-be-awful grammar, spelling, and general quality of writing.

***

Awesome horse head pillow that every ED should have

A while ago, I wrote about people’s misuse of the word “literally,” a condition that has reached pandemic level, with even very smart people saying stupid things like, “My board is so great, I’m literally in love with all my board members.” I carry small rocks in my jacket, just so I can throw them at people who use “literally” wrong.

Well, after writing that post, dozens of readers wrote to thank me for raising awareness of the issue, and by “dozens,” I mean two people. So I thought we should shed light on other common grammatical mistakes that occur in our field, where 90% of the work is done by talking and writing.

Now, first of all, a disclaimer: I am not a grammarian, and I don’t claim to have perfect grammar or anything. Anyone who scans NWB posts will see countless mistakes.

Second of all, not all grammar needs to be correct all the time. Sometimes for the sake of flow I make grammatical mistakes on purpose, e.g., “Someone did not pay for their ticket to our fundraising dinner, so I am going to hunt them down and put this horse head in their bed.”

I know that should be “Someone did not pay for his or her ticket, so I am going to hunt him or her down and put this horse head in his or her bed.” But that sounds ridiculous and cumbersome, so for casual conversations, I’ll use the wrong subject/verb agreement on purpose and I don’t mind if others do the same.

This also applies to things like ending a sentence with a preposition, like “That’s what I was thinking of,” because it’s just sounds dumb to say “That is of which I was thinking.”

I’m also not addressing basic laziness in grammar. For example, most people who mistake “your” and “you’re” or “their,” “there,” and “they’re” are just lazy in proofreading, not actually ignorant of the rules. “It’s” and “its” are another example, I think.

What I want to talk about are mistakes that nice, intelligent, well-respected, good-looking, and very hygienic people make all the time without knowing that it literally makes me want to punch them in the neck. Please stop making these mistakes:

The point being is… 

The point being is that we may need to stage an intervention for our board chair’s habit of whittling wooden animals during meetings. Wrong! “The point being is” is redundant and stupid sounding. Drop the “being” or the “is;” they cannot coexist in the same sentence. Just stop it! Stop saying “the point being,” because if I were to get a nickel donated to my organization for every time I hear it used wrong, I could probably stop writing grants. Actually, no, because I’ll probably just get 40 or 50 cents per year, which is not enough to fund our programs…Whatever, the point is that we all need to stop saying, “the point being is that.”

The amount of people…

The amount of people who came to our puppet show fundraiser was disappointing. Wrong! You mean “the number of people.” Amount is used for non-countable stuff, like water, or love, or organic hemp milk. For stuff you can count, like people or bunnies or cartons of organic hemp milk, you use “number.”

Less and fewer…

Same thing, use “less” when you can’t count something and “fewer” when you can. For example this would be wrong: “Maybe we should have had less puppets that looked like local program officers.” You can count individual puppets, so replace “less” with “fewer.”

Who and that…

Our target population is teenagers that have a fear of clowns. Fun fact, the fear of clowns is called “Coulrophobia,” with “coulro” likely coming from the Ancient Greek word κωλοβαθριστής, which means “stilt-walkers,” who are very creepy. Anyway, out of respect to human beings, use “who” when you’re talking about people and “that” when you’re talking about non-people. Animals are negotiable, depending on how much you love them, so “we help dogs that are abandoned” and “we help dogs who are abandoned” are both correct.

Nauseated vs. nauseous…

This grant application is making me nauseous. Wrong! It’s making you nauseated. Nauseous means something can cause other people to be nauseated. Toxic wastes are nauseous, along with rotting fish, ammonia, molds, and poorly planned special events. They make you nauseated. So just think, when you say something makes you “nauseous,” you’re saying that something makes you smell like rotting fish.

Redundant acronyms…

One time, we were involved with the Refugee Impact Grant (RIG), which everyone called the RIG grant, which irritated many people, and by many people, I mean mainly me. The G in RIG already stands for “Grant,” so RIG grant is redundant. Other redundant acronyms are “PIN number” (PIN stands for Personal Identification Number) and HIV virus (the V stands for virus). Also, ATM machine, SAT test, and LCD display.

I wish it was…

This is a tricky one, since it involves the subjunctive, a form of grammar to express stuff like hopes and wishes. It is so complicated that only four people in the US can use it perfectly: “It is important that everyone donate;” “I wish she were a board member.” So I can understand why most people get it wrong. No one will look down on you if you do not master this, but you get this right, you can earn some grammar brownie points that can be used for other stuff you get wrong. Just remember that it’s “I wish it were Friday” and not “I wish it was Friday,” and “I wish Bill Gates were my BFF” and not “I wish Bill Gates was my BFF.”

Between you and I…

The number one most annoying grammatical mistake, after “literally,” is the wrong usage of “you and I” or “he and I” or “they and I” or whatever. Seriously, I will throw live scorpions at the next person who says something like “Here’s a photo of my board chair and I playing dueling harps at our last retreat” or “Next Tuesday works for Bob and I to meet with you to discuss starting an emu farm as an earned-income strategy.” I don’t know where I will get live scorpions, but I will.

This mistake is a result of the aspersion we are taught to cast on people who say things like “Me and Josh are going to get a drink after our 10am staff meeting.” Only ignorant degenerates stay stuff like that! Do you want to be an ignorant degenerate?! Huh?! Do you want to marry your sister and make moonshine out of possum milk or whatever moonshine is made of?! Of course you don’t! So you learned to always say things all proper, like “Josh and I are going to get a drink after our 10am staff meeting.” Now you’re hyper-vigilant and you think that you can NEVER ever say “me and Josh” ever again.

And this is why we have so many great people, who are smart, whom I look up to, who get this wrong, confusing subjects (I, he, she) and objects (me, him, her). Here’s an easy way to remember: Take out the other person, and see what sounds better: “Here’s a photograph of me” sounds better than “here’s a photograph of I,” so “Here’s a photograph of me and Bill Gates” and not “here’s a photograph of Bill Gates and I.”

Next Tuesday works for Bob; next Tuesday works for me; next Tuesday works for Bob and me to discuss starting an emu farm as an earned-income strategy. Please pay attention to this, even if you forget everything else I just wrote about. Because if you say stuff like “Between you and I, nonprofit work is fun,” you might as well break out those vittles and start milking them possums.

***

Related post: This Literally Makes My Head Explode

An Executive Director’s Self-Evaluation

Hi everyone. For the first time in my eight years with the organization, my board has decided to conduct a performance review. These are two words that send chills up and down every Executive Director’s spine, on par with “budget deficit” and “annual event.” The board had a clandestine meeting three weeks ago to talk about my performance as an ED. Soon they will meet with me to deliver feedback.

I’m nervous. I just know they’re going to say something like, “Vu, you’ve developed a reputation as a drunkard and a loudmouth. That’s affecting VFA’s image. We need you to stop mixing drinks at work. Also, funders are saying you’ve been dressing up as Oliver Twist during site visits and literally begging for money.”

As part of the ED review, the board asked me to fill out a self-evaluation. This is a very important part of this process. Never do a performance evaluation without asking the evaluee to self-evaluate. Mainly because it’s very hard to remember all the stuff they did. More importantly, though, the distance between one’s perception of oneself and others’ perception of one may be significant, and highlighting and discussing any significant differences in perception is helpful to fostering personal and professional growth and/or bitterness.

The evaluation form is three pages long, and at the end, it asks for a summary of three key strengths and three key areas of improvement. I am listing them here, with the hope that it will inspire EDs and staff of other organizations to self-reflect. Only when we stop to take a break and reflect on our strengths and weaknesses will we improve and/or grow resentful:

My strengths this past year:

Strength 1: Empowering staff to make decisions and take ownership. This involves coaching skills, such as asking strategic questions to encourage staff to self-problem-solve instead of solving problems for them. For example:

Staff: One of the tutors in our program is constantly late and has a bad attitude. What should I do?

Me: Well, what do you think you should do?

Staff: I was thinking of having a one-on-one with her to get her perspective. What do you think?

Me: I could tell you, but first, what do you think I should think?

Strength 2: Fostering a culture of strong teamwork. This involves encouraging staff to collaborate on projects, support one another, and mutually resolve problem:

Staff 1: Vu, tell Staff 2 she needs to be in VFA’s monthly video update

Me: Please be in the video update, Staff 2.

Staff 2: I don’t want to be videotaped!

Me: She doesn’t want to be videotaped.

Staff 1: Vuuuuuuu!!

Me: You two figure it out! This custom-framed unicorn poster is not going to Velcro-tape itself up on the office wall!

Strength 3: Conserving VFA resources in order to focus the team on our mission and not get distracted.

Potential partner: Hello Mr. Le, we are conducting a community-wide research effort to improve community safety, and we need to start by gathering input from communities of color. Can VFA help us by organizing—

Me: A focus group of some of our clients?

Potential partner: Yes, exactly!

Me: How much are you providing in funding?

Potential partner: Fun…ding…?

Me: (Click)

My areas for improvement:

Area 1: Not letting personal pet peeves, such as when people use “literally” wrong, negatively affect the organization:

Potential donor: Hi, I visited your amazing after-school program, and I want to make a donation to VFA.

Me: Aw, thank you! That’s so thoughtful.

Potential donor: My pleasure. You guys are literally building bridges between different cultures

Me: We don’t want your money.

Area 2: Being more open and receptive to constructive feedback:

Colleague: My table overall had a good time at your dinner, but there were just way too many speeches. They dragged the evening down and sapped the energy out of the room:

Me: Your FACE sapped the energy out of the room.

Colleague: Also, you may want to spend more funds on the audio-visual stuff, since the sound was rough and muffled.

Me: Your FACE is rough and muffled.

Colleague: And you should put up more signs so guests know where to go. There weren’t enough signs.

Me: Your FACE is not enough signs.

Area 3: Improving on time management, keeping better track of outcomes, setting and meeting goals more often, being more effective at fundraising, spending more time cultivating donors, providing more professional development for staff, better engagement of the board, less watching of Portlandia during work hours, improving the financial management system and delivering reports on time for board meetings, increasing frequency of communication with the community, and coming to work with hangovers less often.

Well, there you go, that’s the most honest self-assessment I’ve done in a long time. I hope the board is satisfied. I’ll work on those and whatever other reasonable things they bring up, but I have my principles and there are certain things I am not going to compromise on. For instance, I am not going stop our “casual weekdays” dress code, and I’m not going to disband the Nonprofit Fight Club that I started with some other EDs.

Nonprofit Cocktail Recipes

A while ago I wrote about self-care, and how we should all try to find time to do the things that make us happy. For me, one of those things is mixing drinks. It makes me happy to discover or invent new cocktails. Here are several that are inspired by people and concepts in nonprofit work. I also asked friends on NWB’s Facebook page to send in their own recipes, and those are listed at the end. Please submit your own inspired creations in the comment section.

The Executive Director

1 oz vodka

2 oz grapefruit juice

2 oz passionfruit juice

1 more oz vodka

Another oz vodka

Put ice into glass or mug. Pour everything else in and stir. Garnish with more vodka. Drink at either 9am or 9pm at the office. Strong, and slightly bitter.

 

The Retreat

1½ oz coffee liqueur

1½ oz brandy

1 oz nighttime cold and flu medicine

2 Tylenol Extra Strength tablet

Pour coffee liqueur, brandy, and cold and flu medicine into glass without ice. Drop in Tylenol tablets. Drink the cocktail slowly while discreetly playing games on your smartphone.

The LOI

1/6 oz dry gin

1/6 oz Kirsch

1/6 oz orange Curaçao

1/6 oz dry vermouth

1/6 oz sweet vermouth

Strip of lemon peel.

Mix all ingredients together with ice and strain into a shot glass. Garnish with lemon peel strip. Give it to someone. If they like it, make them another, but instead of using 1/6 oz for each ingredient, use 1 full oz, but change orange Curaçao to blue Curaçao and Kirsch into blackberry brandy.

 

The Strategic Plan

½ oz blue Curaçao

1 tsp raspberry syrup

¼ oz maraschino liqueur

¼ oz yellow Chartreuse

¼ oz Cointreau

Chill everything for several hours, including a shot glass. Slowly and carefully pour the liqueurs in the order listed over the back of a teaspoon into shotglass. Do not stir. When done correctly, you will have a colorful, multi-layered drink that is not only delicious, but beautiful to look at. Do not drink it. Show it to everyone, then put it in the fridge and then throw it out after a year or two. 

The Annual Event

1 piece edible gold leaf

2 oz Cinzano extra dry vermouth

½ oz framboise

½ oz black Sambuca

½ oz pureed sardines

rose petal, lime wedge, lemon peel twist, raspberry, pineapple piece, candied hibiscus, black truffle shaving, cape gooseberry

Put gold leaf into glass. Shake Cinzano, framboise, and Sambuca with ice and pour into glass. Float pureed sardines on top. Garnish with rose petal, lime wedge, lemon peel twist, raspberry, pineapple piece, hibiscus, truffle shaving, and cape gooseberry. Drink up, rest for three months, then start gathering ingredients to make another one.

The Earnest Volunteer
Contributed by Krystyna Williamson

1/2 ounce dark rum
Jamaican ginger ale
1/2 tsp lime juice
mint leaves
1 1/2 ounce simple syrup

Muddle the mint in the syrup, add the rest and stir gently. Comes in on fire, heads off in three directions, and never really gets the job done. 

The Corporate Foundation Administrator:

Contributed by J. Eric Smith

2 parts Jagermeister
1 part Mayonnaise
1 part Worcestershire Sauce
1 part Cottage Cheese

Mix ingredients, shake vigorously, and drink very, very, VERY slowly, smiling all the while. If you gag or frown, you do not get the grant. Ever.

The College Intern

Contributed by Claire Petersky

1 1/2 oz vodka
3/4 oz peach schnapps
1/2 oz creme de cassis
2 oz orange juice
2 oz cranberry juice
1/4 cup white sugar
Orange slice and maraschino cherry for garnish

Very sweet, has some power – but you don’t want more than two of them.

The Development Director: 

Contributed by Sharonne Navas

1 ½ oz Bailey’s Irish Cream
1 ½ oz Butterscotch Schnapps
¾ oz Goldschlager
1 tbsp 151 Rum
1 dash Cinnamon

Mix all ingredients with ice in a shaker and pour into glass. If your Development Director has gotten the organization to fundraising goal by mid-year, you can light this drink on fire. If the Director hasn’t, you can light him/her on fire.* Win-Win!!

The [Certain Grantor]’s Website

Contributed by Claire Petersky

5 cherries

Angostura bitters

Lemonhart 151 rum

3 oz gin

1 bar spoon rosewater

½ oz lime juice

Place cherries in your mixing glass, add sugar. Place equal portions of Angostura bitters and Lemonhart 151 rum into an oil mister/sprayer. Mist the Angostura mixture through a flame. Flame until sugar caramelizes. Fill with ice and add gin, rosewater, and lime juice. Then, because the cocktail has timed out, throw the entire concoction down the disposal. Take a bottle of sriracha and splash a drop in your eye. Beat head against your kitchen countertop. Repeat from the beginning, at least three times.

***

(*Note, Nonprofit with Balls does not condone the setting of anyone on fire, even Development Directors who haven’t met outcomes).

The Wall of Philanthropy, Wildlings, and White Walkers

Last week I wrote about the Sustainability Question and how it is symptomatic of an ineffective funding system where funders and nonprofits are not equal partners but more like frenemies. This apparently resonated with many readers, at least 138, since that’s how many people shared it on Facebook, and only 26 of those were from me mandating staff to do it. “Yeah, Vu, high-five!” said a colleague at a meeting, and we high-fived, which was tricky, since I was holding my 5-month-old baby Viet. We are doing a nanny-share with another Executive Director, but even with the split costs, we could only afford it four days a week, so on Fridays, we two EDs tote our babies around.

The post sparked some great conversations, especially around the challenges of communication between funders and nonprofits. “I call it the Wall of Philanthrophy,” said one of my ED friends. She painted the image of a physical wall between funders and nonprofits. “There is a tiny window in the wall, and every once a while it opens just a little bit, and maybe there is an exchange of ideas, but then it quickly closes, and it’s solid wall again.”

This reminds me of the Wall in the Game of Thrones. It is 700 feet tall, 300-mile-long wall made of solid ice to keep out the Wildlings, people who are regarded as primitive, cruel savages who have poor hygiene. The Wildlings live North of the Wall, a barren, desolate, cutthroat, and eternally wintery landscape that has very few good restaurants. Every once a while they try to cross the Wall and get South into the warm Seven Kingdoms, which are more civilized and you can go to the bathroom for more than two minutes without fear of frostbites and gangrene. While a Wildling or two sneak past the Wall here and there, in a thousand years not a single assault on the guarded Wall has succeeded.

Another unhygienic wildling asking for general operating

I don’t think I’m the only one who feels like nonprofit organizations and staff are like the Wildlings trying constantly to make it past the Wall. “Sound the alarms! There is a group of Wildlings at the base of the Wall, and they are chanting ‘General Operating Funds! General Operating Funds!’ Quick, prepare the hot oil!”

This Philanthropic Wall manifests itself in many ways:

• After the site visit, we hardly see funders at programs and special events
• Nonprofits are rarely invited to conferences and other important gatherings of funders
• It takes anywhere from a week to nine years to get a hold of some funders, often when we are trying to get support for time-critical projects
• Funders almost always refuse to join committees for projects initiated by nonprofits
• Not a single funder accepted my invitation to 80’s-themed trivioke night, a combination of trivia and karaoke.

I don’t think I will be able to scale this wall in my lifetime, which is why I’ve been training my son Viet when I have him on Fridays, hoping that one day he will follow his father’s footsteps into nonprofit and continue the work. Instead of children’s stories, I’ve been reading strategic plans and annual reports to him. “One day, son, all funding will be general operating. I probably won’t be around to see that. Learn and grow strong and help to make that happen.”

Every once a while, though, there is a glimmer of hope. An Executive Director friend of mine said she was invited to a conference of funders to present her organization’s work. “Really?!” I said, nearly choking on a pluot, “you’re attending a conference of funders? No way!”

“Yeah,” she said, “but they made it amply clear that I am not to approach any of them to solicit funds. Actually, it was hinted that I shouldn’t talk much at all. In fact, I have to wear this scarlet N on my nametag to mark me as a Nonprofit.”

We nonprofits can understand why people feel that the distance between funders and nonprofits is necessary. After all, there are so many nonprofits, and funders should be fair and should not be playing favorites. However, the quest for objectivity and impartiality has led to an unhealthy adversarial system that has been harmful to the field. How can conferences to talk about funding structure and collective impact and other important stuff be effective when the people doing the direct service work and thus have first-hand knowledge of client and community needs are only marginally part of the conversation?

Plus, when there are insurmountable barriers to communication with funders, it just means that the nonprofits with the strongest relationships and connections make it through, finding support for their own projects. So many great ideas never get off the ground because many nonprofits leaders do not have the behind-the-scene connections with funders, and on the other hand, so many crappy ideas do get funded because someone knows someone who knows someone.

Funders have more power, and thus must take a larger share of the responsibility for perpetuating an ineffective system where we nonprofits spend much of our time trying to figure out how to survive instead of innovate. We have been at the base of the Wall chanting things like “general operating funds!” and “overhead is necessary” and “standardize your budget forms!” for a long time now, with little result.

But we nonprofits are not off the hook either. Like the Wildling tribes, we are constantly in competition for survival, which tends to happen when resources are scarce. We have to work together and support one another while simultaneously delivering common messages and proposed solutions. We can’t just keep grumbling at the base of the wall. We must unite.

We must ALL unite. In the Game of Thrones the Wall wasn’t originally built to keep out Wildlings. They were just unlucky enough to be caught on that side when the Wall was built thousands of years ago to defend against the White Walkers, who are kind of like scary-as-hell evil ice mummies who could turn dead people and animals into evil ice zombies and the army of mummies/zombies went and killed everyone, Wildlings and civilized people alike, until they were driven back to their cold, wintery home and the Wall was built to keep them there. Winter is coming, it lasts whole generations, and the White Walkers are stirring once again.

The point is, there are greater threats out there—poverty, racism, violence, loneliness, war, inequity, oppression, homophobia, injustice, unaffordable childcare, hunger, illness, death, etc., the White Walkers of our nonfictional world—and we should be working together to defeat those things, not focusing so much of our time building and maintaining walls around ourselves and each other. Funders and nonprofits must communicate better and work in partnership more effectively.

How about we start by carpooling to the next trivioke night?

***

Related Posts:

Collective Impact: Resistance is Futile

Site Visits: Uncomfortable, Yet Terrifying

The Most Crotch-Kickingly Craptastic Grant Application Notice Ever

Nonprofit Funding: Ordering a Cake and Restricting it Too

The Sustainability Question, Why it is So Annoying

This morning, I woke up early and realized I was face-to-face with my son, Viet, who has been sleeping in the same bed with his mom and me. Looking at our sweet little baby, who was still sleeping peacefully, one tiny hand under his soft and rosy cheek, I was filled with warm fatherly thoughts. Namely: “When is this kid going to get a job and help pay for his keep?” I was tempted to wake him up and say, “You do realize that childcare for you each month is literally more than our mortgage, right? You better enjoy this while you can, little dude, because when you turn 18, you’re on your own.”

And that makes me think about the issue of sustainability of nonprofit programs. In every grant application, there is the “Sustainability Question,” which is basically, “How will you sustain this program or project when funding from the So-and-So Foundation runs out?” This seems absolutely reasonable at first glance, but honestly, it’s one of the most annoying questions we face. Most of us nonprofit professionals absolutely hate this question, and each time we see it, we have to leave our desk, go on a walk, maybe do some yoga or watch “The Daily Show,” then come back to our desk, take a deep breath, and write something  like:

“We will continue to develop our staff and board’s ability to fundraise and diversify our revenues, including building relationship with other funders, as well as cultivating support from corporate sponsors and individual donors. Our special events continue to increase in revenues, and the board is leading the effort to explore earned income through program fees and the door-to-door sales of inspiring macaroni artwork made by the children in our extended-learning program.”

All of that is basically a euphemism for “We will leave you alone and bother other people.”

“Just once,” said my ED friend, Director Maureen, “here’s what I’d like to put in response to that question:”

• Program staff and the board will triple the amount of time they spend praying for money
• Program participants will be asked to pray for money to provide for their services as well
• 10% of general operating funds will be utilized to purchase Power Ball lottery tickets
• Fund development staff will regularly consult a reputable psychic to help track which direction foundations are trending to support

Why is this question so aggravating? Why does every time I answer it, I feel like crap? I sent out an email to my ED friends in the field, asking for their thoughts, and the responses were passionate and insightful. While the issue is complex and requires a lot more time to explore, I’ll try my best to summarize my colleagues’ thoughts. Overall, the Sustainability Question is annoying and frustrating because:

Sustainability is in large part determined by funders, not nonprofits. As much as we love individual donors, many of us still rely on grants, and grants are usually small and one-year in duration. We get a bunch of one-year grants that are Frankensteined together to support programs, each one with their own set of demands and restrictions, (which I explored here in “Nonprofit Funding: Ordering a Cake and Restricting it Too.”). As one ED puts it, “Why is fidelity to the mission so highly valued and expected of nonprofit leaders and staff but funders expect to ‘sleep around?‘ One year and you’re out. [They] don’t even come back and ask.” This lumbering, unwieldy, tenuous system is the antithesis of sustainability, so to be asked how we will maintain and grow our programs within it is kind of like setting a fire and asking how we will be putting it out.

Sustainability depends on the whole organization being strong, yet funders do not like providing general operating funds. Really great programs do not magically appear out of thin air. It takes real people, people who need, like, an office to work at and healthcare for their stress and carpal tunnel and stuff. These things are critical, and yet we have to constantly fight for them. “We will cultivate relationships with individual donors and corporate sponsors, etc.” sounds great, but that requires development staff, which is fundraising, and no one likes to fund “fundraising” and “admin” expenses, because those things are so frivolous and useless.

The nonprofit model is unique in that success at carrying out our missions leads to increasing costs, not revenues. The more successful programs are, the more clients they will serve, the more staff and other expenses will increase, without a proportionate increase in support. An example is VFA’s Saturday English School (SES) program, which provides English and Math support to recent-arrival immigrant and refugee students every Saturday for three hours. Five years ago, we had 30 students show up each session. Because of how awesome the program is, we now have over 150 students each session. This is a five-fold increase in number of students served. The expenses tripled, since more students means more snacks, more teaching staff, more curriculum material, etc. But funders are not going to triple the amount they provide; if we’re lucky, they’ll renew at the same level, and we’ll have to go search for other, newer funders to provide support. This is the Program Growth Paradox, where the more a program is successful and expands, the less sustainable it is.

Other reasons cited by my ED colleagues include “we know very, very well that not every program that literally changes people’s lives for the better can become self-sustaining” (but should be funded anyway, see “Nonprofit’s Ultimate Outcome: Bringing Unicorns Back to Our World“), “I have no clue where my future funds will come from so everything I say sounds like BS” and “after five or more friggin pages of explaining just HOW MUCH you need the bucks, you are now invited to totally reverse yourself” and “I will think about this and get back to you after I have several drinks to calm down.”

Credit: James Hong, VFA’s Director of Operations

The most serious challenge with the Sustainability Question, however, is that it symptomatic of a divisive and patronizing system that perpetuates the unhealthy dichotomy of nonprofits as supplicants continually begging for spare change, and funders as benefactors. “How will YOU sustain this program? How will YOU sustain it after OUR funding that WE (might) give YOU runs out?” We now feel like the underemployed college-grad living in our parents’ basement, freeloading off of their good will, until they call us in for a serious talk about our future and demand to know what our plans are to find a job and inform us that it’s for our own good that in six months they will kick us out. We feel like Oliver Twist, who has to beg for another bowl of gruel from the…uh…that one guy, who serves…gruel…

OK, I haven’t read Oliver Twist.

The Sustainability Question is aggravating because the responsibility is overtly placed on nonprofits’ shoulders to fix problems in the world that we didn’t cause in the first place. Once the question is asked, “It immediately becomes somebody else’s problem,” writes one of my ED friends.  It feels like funders are at the end of their ropes trying to “help” us nonprofits and if we fail to sustain our work, it is all our fault. This is not working for our field.

Every once in a while I meet a program officer who used to be a nonprofit staff. “Ah,” they sometimes reminisce, “I miss being on that side of the table.” And I would say, “Tell me what it’s like on your side of the table?” And we would talk, and I would learn that being on the other side of the table has its challenges, and that it’s not all completely awesome, with ergonomic chairs and dental AND vision insurance and with each person getting access to the company unicorn to ride to important meetings.

But that makes me think, Why the heck are we on opposite sides of the table in the first place? Aren’t we all trying to solve the same problems? Why is the relationship between funders and nonprofits so adversarial? It is ineffective. We should be on the same team, where the quarterback supports the…uh, linebacker so that he can make a, um, rim shot at the…fourth inning…

All right, I don’t know anything about sports. Point is, nonprofits and funders must be equal partners, with different but symbiotic roles, and sustainability of the work must be shouldered by both parties. We nonprofits think all the time about sustainability, even without being prompted, and we will continue to build strong programs and diversify our funding. Funders, as equal partners, should provide multi-year funds, general operating funds, capacity building assistance, and help connect us to other funders and partners. And come visit the programs once a while! We must work together to figure out how to sustain and advance the work. We have to, because the needs of and challenges facing our communities are only going to increase.

***

More on funder-fundee relationships: The Wall of Philanthropy, Wildlings, and White Walkers