What a semester it's been! Over the past three months, my class has explored the possibilities of how steemit can support non-profit ventures. We attempted to award grants fueled by cryptocurrency, wrote about every possible topic relating to 1918 we could think of, and grappled with the ethics of raising money via steemit.
Now, we're approaching our last meeting, our grant experiment ended up not working, and we have around 3000 SBD (around $9,900) to give away. This week, we're considering how much impact that money could have by exploring what we could do with varying amounts of money, from $10,000 to $10,000,000.
Unsurprisingly, I'm going to talk about an issue that has emerged from many of my recent posts: staffing.
A screenshot of a classic @dril tweet
What's the problem?
In our readings for this course, most of the cases where a non-profit has gotten into trouble or a project has failed had one thing in common: poor leadership. Many non-profit leaders, such as presidents and boards of trustees, have put themselves in a position similar to @dril: their institutional mission, priorities, and budgets do match up and lead to failure.
A major cause of this is the focus on growth culture within the non-profit world. Organizational leaders become focused on doing bigger and better, and eventually on maintaining a good reputation and a facade of functional normalcy. A near-universal divide between upper-level staff/boards and lower-level staff leads to the upper-level staff deciding how to make the institution, and by extension themselves, look good while routine operations and projects that fulfill the institutional mission deteriorate. Additionally, the vast majority of non-profit boards and leaders are made of privileged (white, upper class, educated, etc) people who prioritize maintaining their privilege above all else.
@dril's "problem"
How can we solve the issue?
The non-profit sector is a conservative field (one of many reasons why this steemit experiment did not work). The problems plaguing non-profit organizations are largely caused by the capitalist system in which they exist, and the unwillingness of cultural leaders of sacrificing their privilege to work within that system. Cultural leaders are not interested in change, and so change can only happen if the cultural leaders themselves change.
Various grant amounts can make different levels of impact. Smaller grants, as I've previously discussed, could be used to fund paid internships to get a wider range of students (namely those who cannot afford unpaid internships) in the field on the ground floor. Larger grants can be used to make boards more inclusive with no financial burden, to form consulting panels that could make stern recommendations to struggling non-profits, or even to help non-profits downsize if needed.
The largest obstacle in this situation is removing the board members and presidents who are currently in power but probably should not be. Forcing someone to step down is a messy and sudden process that can also leave an organization shaken and its staff overwhelmed. Instead, could a grant be used to facilitate a change in leadership and even a "retirement bonus"?
@dril does not want to step down, either
But what can we really do?
The kinds of changes within the cultural sector that my classmates and I have advocated for are some huge, tough changes. It's going to be pretty hard, if not impossible, to overhaul the entire non-profit world for an improved model that values financial efficiency, diversity and inclusion, institutional missions, and true partnerships between organizations and communities, over growth and reputation. As we're mostly young and at the beginnings of our careers, what kinds of say can we have?
We can loudly voice our opinions and make our stances known within the organizations we're trying to change. This can include spreading our ideas that follow best practices, seek out and lift community voices that would otherwise be ignored, or condemn poor decisions that leadership has made. I believe that changes can best be made from the inside, and this class has helped me to become more attune to opportunities to express my own opinions within the organization where I work, whether that's recommending partnerships with community organizations or fighting on behalf of the ethical treatment of contractors. I may not have $10,000,000 but I do have my voice.
a variation on @dril's timeless announcement
This is great, @charliehersh! Yea, this class opened my eyes to the fact that most board members have NO idea what they're doing. Building new wings for the sake of expanding, while collections deteriorate and educational programs dwindle.
Though, while I want to be an instrument of change, the ever present issue of job security looms over our ability to speak up in this conservative, capitalist environment, and I'm wondering how to address that factor while maintaining our integrity and commitment to community collaboration and all the other awesome things you mention.
Any thoughts, other near graduates?
I mean this is probably entirely unlikely but I'd love to see the system of the cultural sector (at least in Philadelphia, if not ubiquitously) overhauled completely. I mentioned before (and this is by no means a fully fleshed out idea) having the money within the culture sector centralized with a kind of cultural congress comprised of one or two representatives from each organization that works together to allocate the money equitably. This is, of course, just a fun little theoretical exercise for me because, as @charliehersh and you point out, this field is a conservative one and proposing something like this could very well be deemed nothing short of heresy.
A long-overdue call for (call it what it is:) Board Reform
But what would that look like, exactly? And who would initiate it?
This is something I've been trying to figure out in real time and I think that reputation has a lot to do with it. Keeping one's head down at first and earning a reputation for being honest, hard-working, and reliable, and once that's established, being able to use that reputation for speaking out when necessary. (Though at the same time, that reputation is pretty contingent on privilege and social status, so it's likely easier/quicker for me to reach that point than others who aren't passing for white men...) Also, choosing which hills you're willing to die on and occasionally giving up on one issue so you have more room to fight on another issue.
It's something I'm certainly still figuring out (especially with more divisive issues that my colleagues may disagree with me on, like anything related to Israel), but for smaller things, like being really annoying about subtitles in exhibitions or pointing out the new "Contemporary Issues Forum" question erases Jews of color... rolls eyes
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