Author: whatifconcepts

Empowering those that inspire so they can excel at the work that matters.

Fees for Nonprofits?

The Wall Street Journal published an article about the growing trend taking place in city and states to assess or recommend fees for service on nonprofit organizations. Many of these organizations were the same ones that local and state governments were awarding grants to just a few years ago. A number of these nonprofits provide essential services that would otherwise cost the states money or resources to attend to.  What is the right balance?  Should nonprofits pay a fee for service or is there a metric whereby we can measure the essential services these enterprises provide?  As a donor of your time, talent, treasurer, or touch, how would you most like to see your investment utilized?

What does fear keep you from doing?




Would you be willing to learn a foreign language, take-up swimming, learn ballroom dancing in public venues when you are starting from square one?  Tim Ferriss discusses how to become accomplished and feel like the Incredible Hulk.


What is fear keeping you from experiencing or achieving?  In Tim’s terms, “what is the worst that can happen?”  It may show you what you should do.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

As we enter the final days of shipping and celebrating material goods for the holiday season, one gift concept continues to standout as memorable.  Consider what experience you can create for another person.  If you put your best concierge hat on for a moment, what personalized adventure would you design?  Often the point of amplification during the experience is not to make it solely one way but rather has an intended impact on the others around us.  When it comes to developing a meaningful relationship, the social sector is uniquely positioned to meet this requirement.  Celebrate with a personalized touch and be a force for good.

Giving it Away

What would your enterprise look like if you gave away your knowledge for free?  Would you lose your competitive advantage?  Would it attract those who believe what you believe?

I often find a whole new group of clients when I offer a free presentation on new trends and innovative approach.  It costs me very little to share the best ideas in the sector and ultimately it allow those who share my purpose to intersect with my vision.  If I charged them they would evaluate the seminar as a transaction but when I invest in them by exchanging information for free it becomes and experience.  I develop a relationship and it creates a different type of interaction.

Just Visiting or Going for the Summit?

For some people, reaching Basecamp at Everest is the goal.  They plan, set an itinerary, and pack accordingly.  It requires a specific type of trip and guide.  For another individual, the goal is to summit Everest.  Such an expedition requires a different set of equipment, planning, and support.  You rarely hear somebody talk about their journey to Camp II as the goal of their Everest expedition.  If you invest in the dream of climbing the peak then you are committed to travel as far up the mountain as your conditioning and the weather will allow. 

Strategic planning goals are the same.  It is scary to announce to the world that you are attempting to summit Everest or any mountain of note.  There is a simple black or white result to announce to your constituents at some point- we made it, we did not make it.  But there is something equally noble to present the dream and make you best attempt.  An organization that believes it can only reach Camp II and states such is most likely to regulate its efforts and resources over the duration of the strategic plan to reach Camp II.  A cause that aims for the summit may just catch a great weather window and find itself on the South Summit, looking at the true summit and knowing they have progressed much further than they ever imagined and Camp II is invisible in the clouds below.  Neither enterprise may actually reach the summit but one journey is remarkable and the other a bit pedestrian in the scale of the mountain.

Strategic goals should be remarkable.  They should inspire others and attract those who believe what you believe.  Reaching for extraordinary is remarkable in itself.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.“

 

Foreground

I have come to appreciate the importance of including a foreground in order to put the main subject into perspective.  What may appear to be a small and easily climbable mountain summit becomes awe-inspiring when you take into the plains and the foothills that serve as the platform upon which a high Himalayian peak stands.  The Teton range from the vantage point of an airplane’s window does not strike one as completely awesome.  Standing across the valley near Kelly, Wyoming and taking in the vista provides an entirely new perspective.

Sometimes we are so close to the very peak we are trying to ascend that we can only speak from our perspective of being somewhere on the mountain’s face.  When we communicate only from where we reside at the moment we miss the opportunity to set the scene for those who wish to join us.  Sharing your organization’s history, successes and challenges, growth and mergers paints a picture of what you have achieved to arrive at your current location.  It provides a foreground and ultimately a context for your work.

Happy climbing today!