The Opportunity in this Mess: A Wakeup Call for Humanity

As I think about and talk to others about the current crisis, a lot of time is spent on coping, sharing stories of struggle, gallows humor, and anxiety about what is coming.  Sometimes they turn to when and how life will return to normal, and also to all the good and bad ways what we consider “normal” will forever change.  And occasionally, conversation touches on what the opportunities are and what gives us hope.  I have been trying, with some difficulty, to spend more time on this final category in recent days.

My old friend Wendy Leshgold helped me tentatively start down this path when she described how the leader of an environmental organization she is involved with asked her and others what gave them hope now.  She published a short, poignant, and uplifting reflection on LinkedIn about the answer she ultimately came up with.  Wendy focused mainly on how individuals and organizations are responding by changing habits, behaviors and norms in positive ways much faster than is usually possible. 

Let me build on that notion by expanding the lens to our nation and to our global civilization. 

We live at a time when the world faces a series of transnational crises.  These include climate change, our inability to prevent and treat infectious diseases, the depletion of the world’s fisheries, human trafficking, and now COVID-19.  With the exception of the last one on my list, we already know – without exception – how to solve these issues (even though better and cheaper solutions are likely to emerge). 

The failure to solve these problems has most fundamentally been due to gaps in international decision-making and governance.  Nations have been unwilling to cooperate and to dispense with zero-sum thinking (much less give up a little bit of their sovereignty) in order to tackle these crises – since that is what it would take to apply known solutions in the coordinated and urgent manner necessary. 

In fact, our global governance mechanisms are failing humanity to a shocking degree, though over time most of us have become numb to this dispiriting paralysis.  Making matters worse, no leader or leaders have emerged to rally the global community to improve those mechanisms and to infuse some pragmatic solidarity into how nations relate to one another.  As a result, major humanitarian and environmental problems persist unnecessarily. 

At the national level, we are similarly hamstrung.  Clear and in some cases large majorities of Americans favor commonsense gun control, election reform that ensures that many fewer people are fully or partially disenfranchised, and immigration policies that better control our border in a humane way while also creating a path to some kind of legal status for those already here (especially the so-called “Dreamers” who were brought here as children).  And yet, nothing happens.  Our national governance mechanisms are likewise completely unable to meet the critical challenges of the day.    

Perhaps this crisis, like some others in the history of our nation and civilization, will be a historic wakeup call that will force constructive reforms, compromises, and actions to a degree that even six months ago would have been unfathomable. 

Can you imagine a reinvigorated United Nations, G-7, G-20, and U.S. Congress that were able, however imperfectly, to rise to the challenges we face today by applying known solutions with the seriousness and urgency required? 

I can imagine that scenario more easily today than I could one month ago.  This ray of hope comes as a result of the trauma we are all now experiencing and how it shines an undeniable spotlight on the failure of our ability to effectively govern ourselves as a country and as a species. 

Let’s draw strength from that, since actually taking advantage of this opening will require a great deal of wisdom, compromise, listening, boldness, risk-taking, curiosity, and empathy from each of us, and from all of us collectively.        

Normally I would end a post like this with a comprehensive call to action.  In this case, that feels like something to write another day.  But I would recommend reading this terrific article about “the world after coronavirus” by Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the bestselling book Sapiens, and supporting FairVote and ClimateXChange, two leading organizations working on election reform and climate change, respectively.  Please feel free to add to this short list, and share any other reactions to this post.

The author recently published his fifth book, When in Doubt, Ask for More: And 213 Other Life and Career Lessons for Mission-Driven Leaders.

Staying Afloat in This (New) World Without Losing Your Mind

My book Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind was based on the fundamental premise that it was possible to make the world a better place – to be a changemaker – while also thriving personally.  While it did talk about how to deal with crises and setbacks, at its core it was about being pro-active, or being on your front foot.  (My new book, When in Doubt, Ask for More, presents some of the same ideas in a simplified format but is based on the same basic premise.) 

Of course, there are times when the main task at hand is not to change the world but to manage its chaos and prevent things from getting worse, while also minimizing ones experience of personal trauma and pain.  In other words, there are times when a changemaker is on his or her back foot.   It seems to me that we are living through one of those times right now. 

I thought I would take a moment to share ten practices and insights – some gleaned years ago, others only hours old – that I have been applying successfully since our world turned upside down so recently.  Hopefully, they will be helpful to others, whether involved in nonprofits or not.  I’d welcome hearing about your own tips, techniques, and survival strategies. Here are mine:

1.       Use this time to undertake some of the “important but not urgent” tasks that I have been putting off for months if not years.  (I also try to appreciate that unlike me, many others have much less time on their hands than I do because of increased leadership and/or family responsibilities and stresses.)  I don’t prioritize these types of tasks -- such as organizing my computer files or my photos, or auditing my website for dated or wrong information -- based solely on what is most important.  Rather, I emphasize what I will most enjoy doing or most enjoy having accomplished. 

2.       Curate my consumption of news carefully so that I remain a reasonably well-informed citizen without falling into the trap of experiencing unnecessary stress, much less panic.  I read as much of the New York Times and Washington Post as I can in an hour, and then selectively go deeper into those fine papers as well as magazines and online news sources.  I limit myself to around 15 minutes of television news per day.

3.       Attend to my family members who are in crisis now (two in particular) as best I can while grappling with feelings of helplessness due to travel restrictions. Yet, I also take time to remind myself about (and celebrate) all my friends and family members who are not in crisis, but in relatively stable conditions when considering the state of the world today. 

4.       Build up my skills in areas that will help me both now and in the future – such mastering (or at least becoming a fledgling intermediate at) online collaboration tools or learning how to cook new dishes -- and then celebrate whatever progress I make.  

5.       Reach out to friends and family whom I have lost touch with, and be responsive when others do the same to me.  Renewing lapsed relationships can be soulful and fun!

6.       Try creative ways to use technology to do familiar things in new ways.  Examples: having a “virtual happy hour” with a couple we adore and attending a “virtual house concert” organized by struggling musician friends and sending them tips via PayPal while encouraging others to tune in (and often being surprised and delighted by how many people accept those invitations and who they turn out to be).

7.       Selectively go about some of my normal work more or less as if there was no crisis.  In quite a few cases, others whom I must collaborate with are more than happy to take part.  An example: organizing a webinar on planned giving for 11 nonprofits doing humanitarian work in India that was originally scheduled for early April and is (as of now) going forward and a youth essay competition on philanthropy that seems even more relevant now given how many students are home from school. 

8.       Exercise every day, sleep an extra hour each night on average, linger over home-cooked meals with my wife, go for a walk in the park when the weather is decent, and generally slow down the pace of life.

9.       Write down 10 things I am grateful for each and every day – something I had always wanted to do but struggled to make time for more than every third day or so. 

10.   Enjoy some of the few positives of this lifestyle.  For example, that I now spend no time or money on transit to/from work, in-person meetings, or the classrooms I teach in.  And then reflect on what the lessons may be from this temporary disruption for living a more impactful and enjoyable life once things return to normal. 

My Remarks at the Farewell Gala Held for Me by Grameen Foundation

Note: this was originally published on the Grameen Foundation website but the URL seems to be broken so I have decided to publish it on my own blog. The introduction in italics was written by Grameen Foundation’s communications team.

Below is a reconstruction of our Founder Alex Counts’ remarks at our farewell gala for him on November 5, 2015.  The event raised $447,000 to support GF’s mission and poverty-fighting work.  Alex has added a few things inadvertently omitted from his spoken remarks.  The entire after-dinner program, including an opening speech by Grameen Foundation Board Chairman Bob Eichfeld, closing remarks by Vice-Chair Peter Cowhey, and several personal tributes can be viewed online thanks to Joel Nelson, a friend of Alex’s whose wife Donna was among those offering tributes.

* * *

I once asked my father, who is watching this event tonight from heaven, why it was important to send people off in style when they leave an organization or a community after having contributed a lot to it.  He said that you do a good job bidding farewell to someone as much for the people who are staying as for the person who is leaving. 

What I took him to mean was that a proper farewell reinforces the notion that effort and results within the organization are recognized and appreciated, not just in the specific case of the person being honored, but in general.  In other words, it reassures everyone that they are valued. 

In the spirit of that wisdom, I would like to ask all of you to give a hearty round of applause to everyone, whether in this room or beyond, who has worked hard and productively in support of our poverty-fighting mission. 

When I look around tonight, I see so many friends and people whom I deeply respect – probably the most ever gathered in one place.  In that way, it feels something like my wedding.  Except that at my wedding, I got to sit at a table with one lovely lady, my wife Emily, while today I get to sit at a table with not just one but 11 lovely ladies. 

With those nice tributes that we heard just a few minutes ago, it also feels a bit like my funeral.  Except that I am not, well … dead. 

I am humbled that people have come from all over the world to be here at the event tonight, and have made major financial contributions as well.  We have people who have flown in from China, Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia just for this gala.  We have many people who have come from the West Coast, Miami, Key West, and also quite a few from New York City. 

But wherever you have come from, even if it is just down the street, I deeply appreciate your presence and your and support.  I also am grateful to all those who have supported this event but were unable to be here this evening.     

Being the President and CEO of Grameen Foundation is a wonderful, exciting, stimulating calling.  But because of what is at stake, it can also feel like a burden at times, like any important leadership role.  Up until a few months ago, no one had ever experienced the thrills and the burdens of this role.  But since May, David Edelstein has done so.  I want to thank him for doing such a terrific job, for which I give him an A plus since he has accomplished so much. 

I would also like to congratulate Steve Hollingworth on his appointment as my successor as President and CEO, and the fabulous Grameen Foundation Board of Directors and its search committee for finding a candidate of his caliber. 

Now, let me tell you something.  Please listen carefully.  It is simply impossible to pull off a gala of this magnitude in five and a half months in a city you have never held a gala in before.  Unless… 

Unless you have people like Ricki Helfer, Sandy Clark and especially Laura Tarre working on it. 

Please join me in thanking them, and everyone who worked to make this event a success on such a compressed timeframe. 

So let’s go back to our humble beginnings for a moment.  As you all know, we started with $6,000 of seed capital. 

Before I go any further, let me say something important.  If any of you ever get an offer to start an organization with $6,000, please come talk to me first!

When we started, we had little in the way of cash, experience, expertise, or contacts.  I had never before managed anyone nor raised any money to speak of.  But in the true spirit of microfinance, we made the most of what we had, got the maximum impact from a small amount of money, and focused more on our strengths then our weaknesses. 

What were those strengths?

First, we knew we had a major asset in being part of Grameen, one of the most respected brands in the international development sector.  Beyond that, we had virtually unlimited access to Professor Muhammad Yunus during that crucial start up period.  So we made the most of these.

Second, because we were so inexperienced, and because we knew it, we were hungry to learn, to find mentors like Jim Sams, and to apply what we learned from people like him.  A beginner’s mind is a learning mind, a curious mind.  And this spirit was embraced by our early staff, two of whom – Geoff Davis and Jacki Lippman – are with us here tonight. 

Third, we were highly motivated to succeed because we knew how powerful Grameen’s ideas and approaches to poverty reduction had been in Bangladesh, and had a vision of being the leading force for having those breakthroughs applied widely on a global basis.  We had seen that Bangladesh, once called “the world’s basket case” by the U.S. Secretary of State, was well on its way to turning itself around, woman by woman.  We envisioned this happening globally. 

We understood that the stakes were high and the opportunity was huge.  We were humbled that Professor Yunus had entrusted us with such a broad mandate, and we wanted to make him proud of us.

And finally, since we did not initially have a lot of contacts, we knew we had to boldly ask the people who we did know for a lot.  Boldness gets people’s attention, as it signals conviction, urgency and ambition.  And many people, including virtually everyone in this room, responded brilliantly to our bold requests.  Some of you responded immediately, while others of you took a little while to make Grameen Foundation a central part of your life. 

But all of you, and many others, did respond in meaningful ways.  Some contributed their money, others contributed their time, their wisdom, their expertise, their reputations, and their influence.  That we asked so much from them, from you, and that you responded so generously, spoke volumes about you, and also about us and our potential. 

In those early weeks I was able to get a meeting with David Ford, the head of the Chase Manhattan Foundation at the time.  He sized us up as a fledgling start-up that might not make it, but he decided to take chance on us, and on me.  In our short meeting, he told me that he would send $10,000 right away, which we received the following week.  That money helped us get through the first summer -- $6,000 runs out pretty fast, it turns out – but his willingness to take a risk on us so quickly was an even bigger morale booster than bank account booster. 

Perhaps we all can take a lesson from this and be willing to take more risks on fledgling organizations, ideas and people if they show promise and passion, even if they don’t have their acts totally together yet. 

It is so appropriate that JPMorganChase, which Chase Manhattan Bank joined some years back, went on to become such a strong partner of ours and is represented here tonight as a financial sponsor.  Certainly they are not alone, as companies like MasterCard and The Capital Group have been great allies along the way.  But if the earliest supporters had not come through, there might have been no Grameen Foundation for the next generation of allies to work with.

When I think of the forces that shaped Grameen Foundation, or at least my experience of the organization, I think first of two essential groups: the wise men and the dynamic women.  We have had a handful of men who always had just the perfect word of encouragement or advice, while remaining mostly in the background.   I think of people like John Anderson, Norm Tonina, Bob Eichfeld, Wayne Silby and Peter Cowhey. 

We also have attracted a group of women who just knew how to get things done.  They were talented and passionate and knew when they should just go ahead without asking for permission, and just be ready to ask for forgiveness later if things didn’t work out.  I am thinking of Jennifer Meehan, Susan Davis, Camilla Nestor, Lucy Billingsley, Gigi Gatti, Yolanda Walker, Shannon Maynard and many more.  What powerhouses they were, and are!

In terms of my day to day work, I had the most contact with my executive assistants, Dustin Buehler, Rob Sassor, Tania Ashraf, Sameer Sheikh and Ven Suresh.  All but one is participating in this event tonight.  Let me give you a sense of how dedicated these people were, and are. 

When I announced that I was stepping down as CEO, Ven Suresh began to look for a job and, naturally, found one quickly.  Yet, he agreed to continue to staff me up until my last day in early January as a volunteer, moonlighting with us after hours even as he worked a demanding job during the day.  Thank you Ven, and thanks to the rest of you also.  You served me exceptionally well.

I also had significant day to day contact with our extraordinary Board Chairs: Reed Oppenheimer, the late, great Jim Sams, Susan Davis, Paul Maritz and Bob Eichfeld.  All but one is represented here tonight in some way.  The exception is Reed Oppenheimer, who is being honored in Dallas at a gala tonight in part for his role in starting Grameen Foundation. 

I certainly could not have made it without the constant support of my family, especially from Emily, my wife of more than 21 years. 

Let me take a page from Bob Ottenhoff’s farewell remarks and offer three pieces of advice to the organization tonight. 

First, don’t ever hesitate to be different, to contradict the conventional wisdom, to stand alone, to resist a new fad, even if others cannot or will not, even if this makes us unpopular for a time.  We should always speak out strongly for those things we believe are right, and humbly but clearly against those things we believe are wrong.  We should never be contrarian just for the sake of it or to draw attention to ourselves, but we should also never shirk from speaking up when our principles and values call us to do so.

Second, while we should always work to make Grameen Foundation the best poverty-fighting it can be, we should never forget that we are part of a family, or really several families, of organizations.  Nor should we ever neglect those relationships or fail to leverage them for advancement of our mission. 

For example, we are part of a dynamic group of Grameen and Yunus branded organizations, represented here tonight by Grameen America.  I am also pleased that the founders of two organizations that helped pave the way for Grameen America to succeed, Project Enterprise and the PLAN Fund, are also here tonight.  Welcome, Nick and Debra Schatzki and Gwen Moore and thanks for being here. 

We are also part of the family known as the Microfinance CEO Working Group, and we have given birth to joint ventures, such as Grameen-Jameel (whose Chairman, my friend Zaher Al Munajjed, is here tonight) and Grameen Capital India.  We have incubated dynamic institutions such as Mifos®, Taroworks™, and RUMA.    At the highest level, we are part of a global movement to end poverty which is composed of thousands of organizations around the world. 

Ending poverty is a team sport, and we should never forget the many teams that we are a part of, and who our teammates are, and who can be our teammates in the future. 

Third, don’t hesitate to channel the strategy and wisdom of the early Grameen Foundation of being bold in asking for those in a position to help us for all that we want and all that we need.  Please don’t concern yourselves with offending people by asking for too much, which almost never happens if you do it in the right spirit.

If you ask people for a lot, perhaps more than you think they can give, basically two things can happen.

They may surprise you by doing exactly what you have asked, if not more.

Or, they may not agree with what we have asked, but they will have gained respect for the conviction and commitment that prompted us to be bold and aggressive.  They may even be flattered as well. 

There is much left to do in the work of eliminating global poverty.  But let us not forget that there has been some remarkable recent progress in reducing poverty.  In one generation, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has come down from 35% to 14%.  This unheralded progress has not only been due to economic growth in India and China.  It has also resulted from a decentralized and intentional campaign involving thousands of organizations and millions of people.

Don’t doubt for a minute that Grameen Foundation has played a role in this progress.  The document on your table that catalogues our most significant successes is an effort to point out our fingerprints on this achievement and momentum.  Other organizations have made their own impact, such as Accion, BRAC, Calvert Foundation, CARE, and Fonkoze that are represented here tonight. 

When the history of the end of poverty is written, this decentralized movement will not be understood as one that experienced steady progress on a straight line.  No, there were special moments, events, ideas, products and organizations that lead quantum leap advances. 

I was struck, in 2007, when Grameen Foundation and many other initiatives and organizations, such as the Deutsche Bank Microcredit Development Fund, which is represented here tonight, were celebrating their 10 year anniversaries within a few months of each other. 

But it was no coincidence.  The Microcredit Summit was one of those magical moments that lead to a huge leap forward, and activated millions of people in the process.  I am thrilled that the founder of the Summit, Sam Daley-Harris, and the Microcredit Summit Campaign’s current director, Larry Reed, are with us here tonight. 

I believe that tonight will also be looked back on as a magic moment and a quantum leap.  Grameen Foundation has just announced a goal of positively impacting 25 million poor families with its innovative products and services, as a down payment on our contribution to the global movement to end poverty.  You were here at the birth of our new bold ambitions which were forged in the crucible of enduring values inherited from Professor Yunus and his team. 

It would be remiss to not thank the most generous supporters of tonight’s gala: Ricki and Michael Helfer, Paul Hilal and Josefin Persson, and Gene and Carol Ludwig.  Thanks to you, and to everyone who supported this gala financially. 

Let me close with a story. 

All of the artistic genes in my generation went to my younger brother Michael, who is here tonight with his equally gifted wife Sharon.  But not being able to produce art does not mean that you can’t enjoy it, support it, or advance it.  Quite the contrary, in fact.

About ten years ago I met Danny and Tim Carter, brilliant musicians who became close friends of mine and Emily’s.  I came to love their music and do everything I can to help them get the attention their talent deserved.  I appointed myself President of their fan club, because, well, it’s nice to be the President!

And my love of their music led me to be a lover of all live music, especially when played in intimate venues.  I got familiar with the Washington, DC music scene and came to love the Stacy Brooks Band.  I would go to hear them play every chance I got, and still do.

On one cold fall night about four years ago, I went to hear Stacy play.  I had sprained my ankle the night before, thanks in part to my dear friend Joan Robbins who is here tonight, so I hobbled in.  For not the first time nor the last, I noticed that I was the only white person in the audience.  I looked out of place, even though I didn’t feel out of place.

But do you know what Stacy did?  During the very song she was playing when I walked into the venue, she stepped off the stage during an instrumental, walked over to me, and hugged me.  This simple act by the lead performer whom everyone was watching sent a powerful message: you belong here.  It made me feel special, and included. 

And ever since then I have been thinking about what a great human tradition hugging is.  It costs nothing and takes very little time.  Yet it is a powerful way to express love, affection, solidarity, encouragement, inclusion, and, perhaps most fundamentally, our common humanity. 

In the end, isn’t this what Grameen Foundation does?  Yes, we provide financial services like loans, savings accounts and insurance policies, and also valuable information.   But these things are not transformative, in and of themselves.  Many organizations provide similar things.  But when Grameen Foundation provides them, directly or through partners, they are products and services with a very specific intention – an intention to include, to empower, to support, to encourage, to affirm, and to transform. 

In other words, these products are provided with the intention to help people run more successful micro-businesses, have more productive farms, take charge of their health, seize an opportunity or recover from a setback, or manage risk.  We measure very carefully how successfully these intentions are realized and how much lives are improved, and always try to do better in every new cycle. 

So, as we go forth from this place on this historic night, let us commit to giving many more hugs, both literal and figurative.

Give Grameen Foundation a hug tonight.  I think you know how to do that!

Give Stacy Brooks and the other musicians a hug by coming out on the dance floor.  You won’t be able to embarrass yourself more than I do! 

And while you are at it, support live music everywhere. 

Give a hug to a loved one, or even to a relative stranger.  Hug someone who seems out of place or vulnerable.  And remember, please remember, that we are all vulnerable, just in different ways and to different degrees.

You see, a hug has much in common with supporting Grameen Foundation.  In both cases, the person who initiates it gets back at least as much as they give. 

And the net result is that our world is left with more hope, more solidarity, more inclusiveness, more empathy, and more progress to a day with zero poverty. 

Thank you, and good night.

Resources Galore, and One Underused Technique to Use in a Crisis

I have seen some excellent resources for nonprofits in the age of covid-19, including this one (a collection of helpful articles and blog posts) by the Chronicle of Philanthropy and a powerful, raw and practical video recorded yesterday by Abra Annes of Generosity Auctions about what to do if you have a spring fund-raising event that has been postponed/cancelled or is threatened (and also generally about what to do to bring in revenue now). 

I also published three excerpts on crisis management from my new book, When in Doubt, Ask for More: and 213 Other Life and Career Lessons for Mission-Driven Leaders.  However, those techniques are more geared to dealing with self-inflicted wounds or organization-specific setbacks, rather than acts of God. 

When surveying the resources out there for nonprofit leaders, one approach that has worked well for me seems missing.  As simple as it sounds, during this crisis I encourage leaders to set aside time to meet one-on-one with their most trusted and dedicated colleagues, donors, board members, and allies.  Use the time not just to commiserate and check in on them, but also (this is important!) ask their advice about the path ahead for your organization, share with them how you plan to approach the next 3-6 months, outline some decisions you believe may need to be made in order to get their reactions.  Solicit creative ideas, and let them critique yours. 

It is best to conduct these sessions in person, in a location comfortable and convenient for the person you are meeting with, and in an unrushed manner.  This may not always be possible, especially given recent mandates and recommendations from government authorities – though it is still the ideal.  Talking by phone or better yet, video conferencing, is still a good option.  Forget about email – as Abra noted in her video, everyone stopped reading covid-19 related emails days ago and are unlikely to start again anytime soon.

Good luck.  And as my mentor Professor Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate from Bangladesh, told me in my 20s when I was observing him deal with multiple crises with surprising equanimity, “A captain can’t show their skills on calm waters.”  First and foremost, keep your ships afloat – pushing yourself outside your comfort zone if necessary (which could end up being a blessing) – and then focusing on advancing your mission in the near term (as much as possible) and, once this terrible and terrifying situation passes, far into the future. 

Cornonavirus Special: Three Tips on Crisis Management for Nonprofit Leaders

These are challenging times for nonprofit leaders around the country and around the world.  There have been many reminders of this, not least the Washington Post article, “Facing Coronavirus uncertainties, Washington area nonprofits face difficult decisions.”  In that piece, my friend Leigh Tivol, the executive director of the Potter’s House, is quoted as saying, “When I took this gig as executive director, I imagined a lot of things I might be challenged to deal with, but I have to say a global pandemic was not on my mind… I would be lying if I said I didn’t lie awake worrying about this right now.” (You can help by supporting the organization’s Workers’ Fund, as I have.)  Clearly she speaks for many nonprofit leaders.

Anyway, I thought it would be a good time to share three of the 214 lessons in my new book, WHEN IN DOUBT, ASK FOR MORE, as a free public resource for changemakers committed to weathering the storm.  (I have since added some additional content related to managing the current crisis here and here.)

Crisis Management: First Steps

When a crisis strikes your organization, first take a deep breath. Remember that you probably don’t know all the relevant facts about the cause of the problem and the best ways to resolve it—which means you don’t want to take any major, irrevocable steps in the short term. But you do want to start acting quickly. This will give you and your team a sense of agency and progress. So identify several small but impactful actions you can take in response to the crisis, including sharing basic information with staff, supporters, and stakeholders, and organizing a crisis team to analyze and tackle the problem in more depth. Above all, during the early days of the crisis, make an effort to project what I call grounded optimism to the people you lead. In other words, acknowledge the seriousness of what has happened while exuding confidence that your group can and will recover.

Deep Breath, Taking a

The first rule of crisis management is to avoid overreacting. Take a deep breath, and realize that, when something goes wrong, it is rarely as bad as you first imagine it to be. If you learn to pause and reflect before acting in moments of crisis, frustration, and even despair, you’ll discover that many problems, even ones that initially look insoluble, resolve themselves if you give them time to work themselves out. Occasionally, they turn out to be blessings in disguise. And even when end up being as serious as you initially feared, taking time to assess them may allow for valuable ideas and allies to emerge unexpectedly.

Nurturing Board Members: The 2x Rule

Spend double (or even triple) the amount of time with your board members than you want to or think you should. Every board meeting, committee meeting, and one-on-one meeting should be well planned, productive, efficient, and as enjoyable as possible. They should also give members a sense of connection to the mission and the feeling of satisfaction that comes from having accomplished something meaningful. Finally, they should be followed up diligently by you and your team to reinforce that the board members’ role and input are valued. And during times of organizational growth or crisis, spend even more time with your board members. All of the same rules apply to former board members who demonstrate that they want to remain involved.

First (Non-Video) Excerpt from My New Book: Return Calls Quickly

The countdown to the release of my new book When in Doubt, Ask for More: And 213 Other Life and Career Lessons for Mission-Driven Leaders (Rivertowns Books, 2020) continues.  As it does, I am releasing excerpts by video and now in print.  The excerpt below is one of the 214 lessons or “hacks” that I learned as a nonprofit leader, but that I wish I had learned earlier.  I have seen some leaders apply this lesson diligently and without fail, whereas others use it sporadically if ever.  In the latter case, they put off making those uncomfortable calls and in so doing, regularly alienate allies. 

Call Back Quickly—Especially When You Don’t Want To

Be quick about returning calls from your top contacts—board members, major donors, and other influential stakeholders. Remember that most wealthy, powerful people expect to have their calls returned promptly; even people of more modest means who are heavily invested in your organization probably have the same expectation. Call back quickly even when you feel reluctant to do so. In fact, it’s especially important to return calls promptly when you are nervous that the conversation might be difficult to navigate. Since most people put those calls off, you distinguish yourself positively by doing the opposite—and because you avoid letting days pass while your anxiety festers, you help to ensure that the call will probably go better than you fear.

Presenting Excerpts of my New Book Through Very Short Videos

My new book, When in Doubt, Ask for More: And 213 Other Life and Career Lessons for the Mission-Driven Leader, is just weeks away from being released.  It lists, in alphabetical order, the 214 most important lessons I have learned that can help a new generation of changemakers and nonprofit leaders. 

As was the case with my last book, Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind, I don’t have a lot of money for marketing.  Last time, I tried a bunch of low-cost, “guerrilla marketing” ideas and wrote a post to this blog about the ones that seemed to work.  This time, I am trying some new things. 

One new experiment was inspired by my brother Michael Counts, who is a super-talented visual artist and entrepreneur (and also co-founder of A-Plan Coaching).  It was to record very short videos about some of my favorite lessons in the book.  Yesterday, I recorded and uploaded the first one concerning the lesson from which the book draws its title.  The video was far from perfect – as one friend took pains to explain to me! – but this is marketing without money and experts to throw at things.  It is 90 seconds long. 

Today, I recorded a second video about another of my favorite lessons: “Criticism: Invite It with Humor.”  I am going to promote this new video – which I think is an modest improvement on the first in terms of production quality – next week, but I thought I would make it available to readers of this blog starting today.  Enjoy!

Managing and Transcending Our Areas of Professional and Personal Dysfunction

Since Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind came out last April, I have given something like three dozen talks about it.  One of the interesting things that happens when you give talks about your writing is that you see how people respond.  It also forces you to think through your points on a deeper level and make new connections between one’s own ideas.  Now I am having to revamp my talk to encompass my new book due out next month: When in Doubt, Ask for More: and 213 Other Life and Career Lessons for the Mission-Driven Leader.

One of the things that I did not try to do in either book was to cite research that backed up the cases for my various success strategies.  That would have been a different book – more empirical, less personal, and either much longer or composed of many fewer success strategies, mindsets, and techniques.  I chose to stick to telling my story about what worked for me, and how I learned and applied those lessons.

On occasion since publishing Changing the World, I have stumbled across objective evidence backing up some of my success strategies.  I found some in an unlikely place: a book about trauma (and recovering from trauma) titled The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.  I read this book (written by a physician named Bessel Van Der Kolk) as part of my ongoing training as a CASA volunteer in Prince George’s County, Maryland – a very satisfying and demanding engagement where I advocate for abused and neglected children in the foster care system.  (Interestingly, Van Der Kolk’s book came out in 2014 and yet, for some wonderful reason, it is a New York Times best-seller now* – something I randomly found out as I absent-mindedly flipped through the NY Times Book Review recently.)

Before I return to the research cited in his book, recall (if you have read my book) that one of the things I advocate related to self-care is engaging in regular physical exercise.  As I have spoken about my devotion to aerobic exercise six day per week (no matter what!) during my author talks, I have taken the case for it further than I did in the book itself. 

I typically explain that like most if not all professionals, I have a fatal flaw that has tripped me up for years: anxiety.  But rather than paralyzing me, as it does for some people, anxiety has the effect of markedly reducing my ability to make good decisions – often to the detriment of the teams and organizations I have been part of or have led. 

I then say that I learned at some point that exercise was the best way I have found to reduce (though usually not eliminate completely) my anxiety.  So, about 15 years ago I began exercising almost every day, and still do as I write this.  (In fact, the next thing I am going to do after finishing this blog post is to go to the gym.)  I sometimes mention that I told my staff at Grameen Foundation that when they booked my accommodations while travelling it could be a cheap hotel in a sketchy part of town, but it must have a fitness center open 24 hours.

I conclude this part of my talk by saying that while I certainly encourage people to exercise, the bigger point is to find your fatal flaw (it might be very different from mine), find some practice that at least partially insulates you from it or helps you manage it, and then apply that practice with all the discipline and focus you can muster – even if it takes more of your precious time and money than you are initially comfortable devoting to it.      

Getting back to Van Der Kolk’s book, one of the central themes is his clinical experiences and research about how trauma (and presumably less powerful things, like anxiety) registers itself in one’s brain and body and how trauma and anxiety can be released.  His research supports the idea that physical exertion can be a powerful force for healing.  In one case, he recommended that a woman who experienced trauma and who was not responding to other types of therapy take up kick-boxing.  She had significant improvement in her condition within a few months. 

His research also talks about the power of other nontraditional therapies, such as having people impacted by trauma participate in community theater.  (Interestingly, I recently met a friend of my brother’s who started an exciting nonprofit focused on using this insight to help reintegrate ex-offenders into society after being released from prison.  Contact the dynamic social entrepreneur Kevin Bott to learn more.)

Two of his other healing strategies are communal music/singing and dance.  The author talks about how humans are essentially social beings and how trauma interrupts or disturbs their abilities to relate to others.  Singing and dancing with other people helps reestablish what he calls “communal rhythms.” There is some research to back up his claims (though he wishes there was more research into these non-pharmaceutical approaches to treating trauma and related mental illnesses).

In my book, I talk about how I became an avid fan (and, let’s be honest, a groupie) of a bluegrass group known as the Carter Brothers Band (and today touring as the Tim Carter Band).  I discussed that part of my life with regard to another life lesson: the value of always engaging with something that you are a novice or beginner at.  But when reading Van Der Kolk’s book, I realized that singing along to the Carter Brothers music and (even more) dancing to it was a joyful way of further reducing my stress. Further, it helped me understand how my stress tended to separate me from others and from my best self and how dancing with others powerfully served to reestablish healthy connections. 

I recall many times during the years 2012-2015 at Grameen Foundation when I would go down to Key West, Florida for a week and dance for three hours per night to the Carter Brothers blues/bluegrass fusion music with my wife Emily and with friends such as Joan Robbins, Gail Hardy, Diane Jackman, Candace Estep, Alicia Renner, Sally Galbraith, Peg Walton, Donna Nelson, and Christine West.  After doing that, I was able to return to my work refreshed, renewed, and reconnected – and ready to face some of the daunting challenges of that era of my career.

I believe that we all have dysfunctional habits and tendencies that weigh us down as professionals and as human beings.  Some have their roots in traumas we experienced earlier in our lives.  The good news I have discovered through my writing, speaking, reading, and living is that there are fairly simple ways of managing some of those areas of dysfunction and to a certain extent, even transcending them.        

*As of February 23, 2020, it was #3 on the Times nonfiction paperback best-seller list, and had been on that list for 69 weeks.

More Hard Questions about RCTs -- from Another Social Movement

I thought I had written for the last time in a while on the topic of research, microfinance, and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) when I commented on the recent Nobel Prize in Economics announcement and used that as an opportunity to pull together my previous writings and some other resources on this issue.  But sometimes things work out in unexpected and surprising ways.

A critique of RCTs that has gnawed at me over the years, and that I have never raised publicly, is one that some public health professionals first brought to my attention.  RCTs were widely used to test new pharmaceuticals long before they were extensively used to evaluate things like microfinance and microcredit.  It seems to me that the methodology works best when the input being tested and the environment it is being introduced into are homogenous – especially if one wants to draw generalized lessons about how effective it is.  Putting 30 milligrams of some compound into a human body seems like a good example of a test that plays to the methodology’s strengths. 

But microcredit (and other microfinance products) are much more heterogeneous than medication.  They vary in terms of loan size, repayment periods and flexibility, complementary services, the customer service orientation of the loan officer, group liability and support, and much more.   Microcredit provided by organizations with different cultures, policies and practices differs a lot, as even a casual observer can discern.  I have even seen that inside a single organization, microcredit can look quite different from one branch to another, or even one loan officer to another (despite all the efforts to standardize products). 

So, to go into a small number of second- and third-rate microfinance organizations, measure one or two indicators of impact of their version of microcredit over a short period of time, and then to make generalized claims about how well this social innovation works (or, worse, how it compares unfavorably to some mythic standard of transforming people and communities in a matter of months) has always seemed highly questionable to me.  (And it is one of the reasons that I always encouraged people to view those results alongside many others distilled by alternative research methodologies, all with their own pros and cons, such as in this meta-analysis written by Professor Kathleen Odell.)

It turns out that microfinance is not the only social movement that has dealt with RCTs and how their conclusions have been overhyped and overgeneralized, leading on occasion to perverse outcomes. 

A bit of background is in order.  As I explain in my book Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind, for the last 10+ years I have consciously tried to do at least one thing in a fairly serious way that I am a novice or beginner at.  One of those has been volunteering for the Court Appointed Special Advocate program in Prince George’s County as a way to serve children in the foster care system.  (The CASA program has chapters nationwide and I highly recommend getting involved.) 

As a part of going beyond novice status in this volunteer role, I asked experts in this field to suggest books to read.  One was Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Herman (which the New York Times called “One of the most important psychiatric works to be published since Freud” and which I found accessible to a curious layperson not well versed in psychology).

As I was finishing the 2015 Afterword by the author, I unexpectedly came upon a critique of RCTs.  First, she expressed dismay about the extent to which RCTs had treated psychotherapy as a standard product that could be evaluated like medication.  The first mention (on page 266) went straight to this point: “The scientific ‘gold standard’ of clinical research is the random controlled trials (RCT) in which an identical dose of a particular treatment is compared with a placebo or with another treatment for the same condition.  The RCT design works quite well for drug studies, but it is a poor fit for psychotherapy research because psychotherapy is not a pill.” [Emphasis added.]

She continues: “The RCT design …  requires highly standardized outcome measures.  This leads to a narrow focus on symptom reduction.”  The author then explains how something called cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) was tested extensively since it lent itself so well to the RCT methodology.  For a time CBT was overhyped as the most “evidence-based” treatment for victims of trauma as a result of RCTs measuring success in its reduction of a single symptom.  Yet many psychologists, including the author, rebelled against this vastly oversimplified conclusion and its dangerous public health implications.

She returns to RCTs and their limitations one more time on page 273, and calls for a change in the research agenda that had a familiar ring to me.  “As I and many others have argued,” she wrote, “psychotherapy is more craft than science, but it can certainly be studied scientifically.  New and different scientific approaches are needed, however.  By now it is well established that one of the most important ‘active ingredients’ in psychotherapy is the therapeutic alliance. 

“Therefore, rather than seeking to eliminate the individuality of the therapist and patient, as is done in a randomized controlled trial, a good starting point might be to study the common attributes of gifted therapists of different technical schools, the master craftsmen and women of our profession.”

This final recommendation certainly echoes my own calls for using research more to improve microcredit and microfinance than to “prove” whether or not they work, especially since it is obvious that convenient and affordable financial services are helpful to all people, especially the poor – a point made convincingly in David Roodman’s book Due Diligence, and elsewhere. 

It also recalls my bewilderment, expressed periodically in writing, about the randomistas never studying microcredit in Bangladesh, where many of the master craftsmen and women of the microfinance field have operated for decades.  If the researchers’ goal had been to improve practice and outcomes for the poor, I would have thought that Bangladesh would have been the first place they would have gone to conduct their research.      

Complementary Perspectives on Leadership and Social Change

Some months ago, I mentioned that I took a certain satisfaction in remaining on good terms with a buddy of mine who most decidedly did not share my generally liberal political beliefs. To my surprise, two old friends pounced on me, one considerably more ferociously than the other, about how and why I could maintain such relationships – and why on earth I would brag about doing so. I was bewildered by their response and asked myself this question: How can we advance our vision of a better society if we don’t even associate with people who appear, on the surface, to have a different vision?

I was reminded of this incident when reading Carly Fiorina’s impressive and compelling book, Find Your Way, which came out around the same that I published Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind. She and I come from different generations, have contrasting political beliefs, and spent our careers in different industries. Her book seems more self-help oriented, whereas mine is basically a how-to guide.

And yet, her approach to self-development and having a positive impact on others overlaps significantly with and complements mine. I suppose we live in a world of strange potential bedfellows, especially if we take time to look around us with an open mind.

Fiorina sees leadership as problem solving and something unrelated to title, position, or prestige. Such notions echo the attitude of my mentor, Grameen Bank founder and Nobel laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus. He had no plan to start a bank for Bangladesh’s poor women but became intrigued by a problem he heard about while touring the villages near his classroom: industrious women found themselves trapped in poverty because they were exploited by traders and loansharks due to lack of access to affordable loans from conventional sources.

With no credentials in banking, he began experimenting with ways to get those women the loans they desperately needed. As a result of his controversial problem-solving effort, a social movement was born, one that Fiorina was involved in through chairing the board of Opportunity International, a respected microfinance nonprofit.

One of the other themes of Fiorina’s leadership philosophy is the importance of humility. In my book, I tapped into that wisdom by sharing the insight that being a novice at something important to me has always been a critical part of remaining curious and in learning mode – not just in that domain, but throughout my life. The reason: being a beginner at anything – think of learning a language – is a great way to keep yourself humble. Making embarrassing mistakes is one’s stock in trade as a novice; in fact, it is how one learns.

Another critical leadership tool she describes is empathy. As I looked into my career, one of the ways I learned to deal with people that I was in conflict with was to pause the antagonism long enough to pivot and do my best to see our relationship from their perspective and figure out how their attitude could be grounded in a principle I would admire. The title of that section: “Empathy as a Tool for Controlling Anger.” On one occasion, during tense negotiations with a partner who brought gun-toting musclemen to a meeting in a remote area of Indonesia, that skill may have saved my life.

There are other areas of congruence. She extols the importance of joining forces with others to accomplish one’s goals. Grameen Foundation, while under my leadership for its first 18 years, embarked on many innovative and risky partnerships and engaged volunteers in creative and unconventional ways, especially for an organization of our size.

Certainly, not all of our insights are consistent. She argues for avoiding the trap of “failing to launch” a problem-solving effort. While I have always had a bias for action, I learned from a mentor that there are times when kicking a thorny issue down the road is the best approach.

I am particularly pleased that Fiorina has decided to train much of her talent these days on helping nonprofits and their leaders unlock their full potential to combat vexing societal problems.

Capacity-building of social sector organizations is sadly out of favor in today’s philanthropic landscape. Her Unlocking Potential Foundation and its talented staff team (led by Casey Enders) represent a welcome antidote to the highly transactional, project-oriented, fad-driven “quick fix philanthropy” that increasingly dominates today. Institution-building for long-term impact requires, first and foremost, investment in leaders.

I hope these two books and our related efforts to lift up a new generation of visionary and pragmatic leaders of social change catch on. Given what’s at stake, there is little time to lose.

Advice for Young People Interested in a Career of Public Service

College students and recent graduates often ask me for advice, especially around getting their first job focused on public service and doing good.  For years I struggled with how to answer them. 

About six years ago, in an attempt to provide a strong response to these kinds of questions, I produced a resource about helping people break into international humanitarian work, though many of the lessons pertain to getting a job in any type of nonprofit or socially motivated organization. 

I would like to publish a version of this roundtable interview transcript with people who broke into local (rather than international) nonprofits in creative ways. I would welcome the support of anyone who feels moved to assist in such a project. Please email me at alexcounts09@gmail.com if you would like to help me pull this together.

My book Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind is oriented towards those who already have a toehold in the nonprofit sector, and are preparing themselves for a future leadership role – or are trying to stay afloat and even thrive in their first leadership role.

I found this column by Nick Kristof in today’s New York Times about four keys to career success to be insightful.  The last three pieces of advice echo themes in my book and my other writings. The first one – taking a course in economics or statistics (both of which I did as an undergraduate) – also rings true to me as solid advice.

Supporting the next generation of changemakers is one of those “important but not urgent” tasks that my generation needs to focus on more – especially as we contemplate the dangers of climate change, ethno-nationalism, racism, mass incarceration, the scapegoating of immigrants and minorities, and the persistence of extreme poverty around the world.

Addressing My Biggest Weakness as a Professional (and Possibly Yours)

One of my favorite questions to ask in interviews is, “In the organizations you have worked for, what have your detractors said about you?”  This comes courtesy of Norm Tonina, the terrific head of human resources for Grameen Foundation during my finals years as CEO there.  The responses I have gotten to this question are often quite revealing and enlightening.

If anyone answers that they don’t have any detractors, they are either kidding themselves, not being honest, lacking in self-awareness, or perhaps have been missing in action on all the important issues their organization has had to confront (though even that can prompt people to become detractors). 

In my experience, most detractors in one’s organization or field – and I have had quite a few – are people of goodwill who share your objectives but disagree with your methods, tactics or strategies about how to reach those objectives. 

It is also good to realize that being a leader means making tough and often unpopular decisions, which almost by definition creates detractors.  You can learn from them if you try. 

One point my detractors and I could agree on is this: When I become anxious, my ability to make good decisions gets significantly worse.  Most people’s decision-making skills erode when they are anxious.  Mine plummet.  (On the other hand, some people become paralyzed by anxiety, which thankfully almost never happens to me.)

One of the parts of my leadership journey has been to find ways to deal with anxiety.  The partial solution that I have found most effective and used most often is daily aerobic exercise.  It was such an important insight that I applied so diligently during the last 15 years of my career that I wrote about it at some length in Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind. 

Over time, I became willing to mangle my schedule, cheat a good night’s sleep, and even show up to a moderately important meeting a little underprepared in order to ensure that I worked out for 45-60 minutes at least six days each week.

The other day I was reading an article in the New York Times that described research linking even light exercise to decreased incidence of depression (and presumably anxiety as well).  Regular moderate and vigorous exercise was even more helpful prevention.  Yes, indeed!

One of the things I have come to believe is that most people know what trips them up most as a professional, and most of them know at least one thing that helps them overcome or manage that fatal flaw.  (And if they don’t, an hour-long brainstorming session with people close to them who are willing to be candid can probably help them zero in on both.) 

The trick is to have the discipline and/or support systems to apply those solutions – partial though they may be – to manage your biggest weakness or liability so that your strengths can shine even more. In my case, it meant developing a new habit, one that, at this point, I couldn’t break even if I tried.

The Power of Incremental Strategies for Societal Change

Today I read the lead article in the Washington Post’s Outlook section which had this provocative and attention-getting headline: “Barack Obama, Conservative.”  Tell that to my friends and family who consider themselves conservative!   But the article’s core point is that President Obama has tended towards being an incrementalist, rather than a revolutionary. 

And as I think about social change and my ideas about it, I have evolved to be more of an incrementalist with each passing decade.  In fact, I was once moved to write this tribute to incremental change based on how I saw Asbury Park, New Jersey gradually transform itself from an eyesore into a thriving city over a decade and a half.

When I think of mentors of mine like Professor Muhammad Yunus and Sam Daley-Harris, they are neither incrementalists/pragmatists nor revolutionaries but rather flexible social entrepreneurs who employed a wide variety of strategies and ideas that could be categorized in either camp.  (I mention them since I repeatedly talk about their influence on me in my book, Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind.)

Certainly quantum leaps in positive social change should be aspired to, promoted, and harnessed when possible.  But in my mind, most durable improvements to society are the result of pursuing known strategies aggressively and by striving to do them at least a little better each passing year.

Underscoring this point, an editorial in today’s Post explores what it took to achieve a breakthrough in treating cystic fibrosis.  It begins thus: “Anyone who thinks the cure for a disease is all about ‘blockbuster’ drugs and scientific ‘breakthroughs’ should consider the long journey that resulted in the recent announcement of major progress against cystic fibrosis.”

Basically, there was a breakthrough in understanding this disease in 1989 but it turned out much harder than initially thought to turn that insight into better treatment options.  While some lost hope, a hardy group of researchers, nonprofits, philanthropists, and civil servants at NIH slogged ahead for three decades and finally got the job done. 

The editorial concludes with an apt reflection on the “three yards and a cloud of dust” types of efforts often required to bring positive societal change: “The achievement is the result of persistence by patient advocates and scientists, who never threw in the towel, even when the goal seemed impossible. A lot of bake sales went into supporting the quest, and that kind of support is priceless.”   

Essential Nonprofit Leadership Attributes: Learning to Be Curious and to Trust

Elsewhere on this website I mention that my favorite centrist columnist is David Brooks of the New York Times.  (I also name my favorite liberal and conservative writers.)  Brooks’ column on Friday was mainly about how to turn the tables on President Trump on the issue of immigration.  But in making that argument he touches on a larger point: how essential it is to make people feel secure enough in their own society that they can react to strangers who come from a different culture with curiosity rather than with anxiety.  It is another of his terrific columns and I recommend reading it.

His points echo a few I have made in my books and other writings on nonprofit leadership. For example, as I detailed in Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind, as Grameen Foundation’s CEO I gradually became secure enough in my relationship to our board chairs to invest heavily in and trust Grameen Foundation’s governing body.  For example, I became comfortable divulging sensitive information, including what actually kept me up at night, even when I had not figured out how I wanted to proceed.  I also became willing to ask trustees to take on important assignments that, earlier in my career, I would have reserved for myself or for someone I directly supervised.  In other words, I was able to take what felt like big risks in my interactions with the board.   

That feeling of security also enabled us to encourage dissent on the board and to have free-wheeling discussions of important strategic and tactical issues where the outcome was not predetermined.  I learned to generally treat views other than my own with curiosity, rather than becoming worried that I was going to be outnumbered or outargued – and as a result be forced to do something other than what I thought was right. 

Clearly the board chair/CEO relationship is critical here; in fact, I am having an article on my views about that partnership published by the Chronicle of Philanthropy later this month.  When writing it, I drew especially on my experiences with Susan Davis, Bob Eichfeld, and Paul Maritz. 

Second, when I write about dealing with tough negotiations and with crises, which are inevitable during the practice of nonprofit leadership, I explain how I learned to remain curious and pragmatic rather than being overcome or paralyzed by fear.  One benefit of curiosity in such situations is that it can allow you to see, for example, that in a negotiation your leverage over the other party may be much more – or much less – than you initially imagine.  (Such an insight can help you adjust your negotiating position and end up with a much more favorable outcome.) Take another example: During a situation that you originally perceive as a crisis, remaining alert can help you see that it might be a blessing in disguise, or something that will largely solve itself if you leave it alone for a time. 

I have personally experienced what it is like to lead an organization when you feel insecure in your relationship with the governing body or some other stakeholder group.  Anxiety and hostility surface again and again, which prevents you from doing your best work.  I have also observed this dynamic in others.  Brooks argues that we need to create this sense of security for people in our society so that they can be more welcoming to and eager to learn from people who are different from them.  In the same way, when a leader feels secure in his or her role, trusting others and keeping calm in a crisis begin to come naturally and helps them to blossom in their essential role. 

My Take on the Selection of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics Winners

Some people have asked me if I was disappointed in the selection of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics, since I have been critical at times of some of the champions of randomized control trials (RCTs) as a way of measuring the impact of development programs.  Not at all!  I congratulate Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer.  David Roodman predicted to me long ago that Duflo would one day win the prize, and he was correct!  This recognition is well-deserved.

My arguments with the recipients and others who collaborate with them, in particular with Professor Dean Karlan, are, however, quite real and part of the public record.  (By the way, I applaud how gracious the prize recipients were in noting that they were part of a much larger community of researchers who deserved recognition.) 

In short, I have had issues not so much with the techniques used by these researchers, but rather how they have at times over-emphasized what they characterized as the unexpectedly muted positive impact of microcredit (perhaps in order to catch the attention of the media and policy-makers) and also how they have, in my view (and also that of another Nobel laureate in economics mentioned below), over-hyped RCT’s advantages over other research methodologies. 

In addition, I have taken issue with the fact that they have implied that the microcredit programs they have studied have been representative of microcredit programs generally – which would suggest that their findings could easily be generalized.  Clearly, the discipline of random assignment that is so important to the RCT methodology itself has not been applied to which microcredit programs were studied using this technique – a fact that one might not gather from reading the press releases and statements by some researchers.  Most important, to my knowledge no microcredit provider in Bangladesh has ever been studied using the RCT methodology despite it being the most vibrant market in the world.    

The most extensive treatments of my quibbles and my more serious disagreements with the so-called randomistas can be found in chapter 7 of Tim Ogden’s impressive book Experimental Conversations: Perspectives on Randomized Trials in Development Economics and in my own book Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind (pp. 172-180).

I have also addressed these issues when the Center for Financial Inclusion published my review of Dean Karlan’s book (with Jacob Appel) More Than Good Intentions and how it covers microcredit in a highly distorted way.  (I wrote a supplemental review of the book’s treatment of other development interventions, which I found much more compelling.) 

In addition, Grameen Foundation published a speech I gave at a World Bank conference where six RCT studies of microcredit programs were presented, in which I criticized how those studies were being characterized. 

I summarized a compelling critique of RCTs and their champions by a previous winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Professor Angus Deaton.  (The full critique appears in the same book by Tim Ogden cited above.) Here is another thoughtful reflection on the limitations of RCTs published in the aftermath of the Nobel Prize announcement, and Vikram Akula weighs in powerfully here.

And at one point I published a response to Karlan’s attempt to needle me on social media.

Finally, I summarized an excellent paper by Tim Ogden about the accomplishments of microcredit and microfinance – accomplishments that have been partially obscured by how many people have digested and tried to make sense of the RCT studies – and the exciting roles that subsidy and grant-making can still have in building on those accomplishments.

Indeed, my dissatisfaction with how many policy-makers and donors came to view the research on microfinance prompted me to commission (but in no way to control) three meta-studies of the research literature, the most recent one being this excellent paper by Professor Kathleen Odell of Dominican University. 

One of my central problems with philanthropy in America is that it is much too fad-driven, especially compared to our peers in Europe.  Fads come and go without much regard to the true strengths and limitations of the social innovations that appear on the philanthropic community’s radar screen.  This goes for social science research too. 

In my view, RCTs are one of many ways of gaining insights into the effectiveness of development programs and many other endeavors to improve the human condition.  They are also imperfect.  They can be done meticulously as well as carelessly; they typically cost a lot of money to do well; thoughtfully interpreting their results is much more art than science, and sometimes researchers, policy-makers, and the media have failed miserably at this important task.  I wonder if RCTs will become just another fad, over-hyped for a time and then largely forgotten for a generation. 

Regardless, I congratulate Duflo, Banerjee and Kremer for their achievements and their hard work, despite the problems I have had at times with how some people have used their innovations and findings to shape policy, practice, and public perceptions of microfinance. 

Indian-American Philanthropy: Hitting the Big Time

I wrote this article on a tight deadline for inclusion in a special publication, titled Woven, that was handed out to every family that attended the historic event in Houston featuring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 22, 2019.  More than 50,000 people, mostly Indian-Americans in the greater Houston area, took part.  The article (which I have enhanced in one minor way from what was originally published) chronicles the past, present and future of Indian-American philanthropy, with an emphasis on leading givers in the Houston area.  It seeks to complement other writings I have done on the subject, including this one published by Indiaspora about how to grow the culture of philanthropy within the community.  I did not mention the India Philanthropy Alliance since it was not yet publicly announced. 

The destruction, death, and suffering caused by the January 2001 Gujarat earthquake catalyzed an outpouring of generosity around the world.  Among the responses was a campaign by Indian American business leaders to raise millions of dollars over a few weeks, mostly by convening hastily organized fund-raising galas. 

After sending $4.5 million to India for relief and rehabilitation, those same business leaders laid the foundation for an organization to channel Indian diaspora wealth and talent towards humanitarian needs in India: the American India Foundation (AIF).  Their secondary objective was to create a more robust culture of philanthropy among Indian Americans.  In the words of AIF co-founder Pradeep Kashyap, “We wanted to convince the community that an Indian American business leader wasn’t a true success until they began to thoughtfully and effectively give away some of what they had earned.”  By any measure, this vision is well on its way to becoming reality. 

Some might argue that it was inevitable that an enterprising ethnic minority that was growing in numbers and that recently became the highest-earning ethnic group in the country would come to energetically embrace philanthropy.  However, pioneering leadership doubtless played a major role.  Regardless, the breadth of Indian American philanthropy is impressive, as are some noteworthy trends.

Donating Time, Expertise and Money

It is important to recognize that philanthropy doesn’t simply mean writing a check.  According to a recent survey by Dalberg and Indiaspora (founded by the iconic entrepreneur and philanthropist M.R. Rangaswami), Indian Americans volunteer their time at double the national average in the U.S. today.  While some volunteers stuff envelopes and the like, many leverage their expertise in information technology, the law, medicine, finance, and management consulting to collectively provide the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars in pro bono services to mission-driven nonprofits around the country.        

The amount of money donated is also significant, and growing.  Indian Americans give an estimated $1 billion per year to causes as diverse as the arts, higher education, combating homelessness in their communities, and of course, advancing the humanitarian agenda in India.  There are active efforts to grow this amount to $3 billion or more.  Related activities include profiling those who have already experienced the joy of giving, better engaging second and third-generation Indian Americans in philanthropy, supporting the essential ecosystem-building work of organizations such as Dasra, and launching an annual week of giving next month called ChaloGive. 

Support for Education … and Much More

The diversity of those in the diaspora who have emerged as philanthropic role models is remarkable.  For example, Nidhika and Pershant Mehta contributed $500,000 to establish an “Arts of India” gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.  Their goal was to share the India experience of arts and culture with their own children, other second-generation Indian Americans, and the community at large.  Since then, their philanthropy has focused on women and children’s causes, with impact on both the greater Houston area and on India. 

Sanjay Shah’s Vistex Foundation has, since it was established in 2012, tackled inner-city poverty by supporting organizations in the Chicago area that provide health care and education services to those in need. 

Given the high value that Indian Americans place on education, it should not be surprising that giving to universities is a major focus.  For example, Durga and Sushila Agrawal made a major donation to the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering and have a building that now carries their name as a result of their generosity.  The gift is allowing the college to enhance classrooms and recruit world-class faculty. 

“My message to the students is to always be optimistic; one can achieve any goal with hard work, persistence and determination,” Agrawal said when the gift was announced. “As alumni, we must keep the torch of knowledge, excellence and innovation growing and glowing.”  Theirs is not an isolated example; according to a 2018 survey by Indiaspora of gifts amounting to $1 million or more, since 2000 the community has donated $1.2 billion to higher education in the U.S., including more than $700 million during the period 2013-2017 alone. 

Naturally, a major focus of some philanthropists is helping those people who have not yet benefited from the rapid economic growth India has experienced over the past quarter century.    For example, Vijay and Marie Goradia have been Houston-based benefactors of numerous charitable organizations, but none more than Pratham and its local arm, Pratham USA.  Due in part to the Goradia’s early leadership and generosity, Pratham has developed a world-class program to ensure quality education for poor Indians that reaches millions of children each year.  Their daughter Sapphira, who heads the family’s foundation, has taken a keen interest in the impact investing movement while demonstrating that second generation Indian Americans have the capacity to bring sophistication and energy to the community’s public service efforts.

Prabhu and Poonam Goel have been steadfast supporters and true champions of Foundation for Excellence’s work to provide scholarships to low-income Indians.

One of the most prolific philanthropists is Manu Shah, the founder of MSI, a leading distributor of flooring, wall and countertop surfaces based in Orange County, California.  To Manu and his wife Rika, giving back has become the focus on their lives in recent years.  This pure vegetarian, non-violent and compassionate couple has worked hard to achieve the success they have today and sworn to give the world all they can in return.  Manu is known to say, “God has given us so much just for one reason – to donate, to help others and to never stop doing so.”

Manoj Bharghava, who made a fortune selling his ubiquitous 5-Hour Energy drink, has donated tens of millions, much of it to accelerate sustainable development in India, especially in the areas of affordable health care and income generation.  He has done so through the Billions in Change initiative, the Hans Foundation, and the Hans Foundation Hospitals.  Bharat Desai and Neerja Sethi parlayed their success in technology start-ups to play outsized roles in supporting a portfolio of professionally-run nonprofits. 

No conversation about diaspora philanthropy would be complete without mention of the Wadhwani brothers.  Romesh has donated millions to help employ the disabled in India (among many giving areas) through his Wadhwani Foundation, while Sunil has launched a network of hundreds of high-performing health clinics using a far-sighted public-private-partnership model. 

Many Indian Americans have started their own nonprofits and social enterprises.  For example, Nalini Saligram founded Arogya World and has worked full time as its unsalaried CEO.  Her team has already reached four million Indians with the essential information needed to prevent diabetes and other lifestyle diseases.  She and her husband Ravi, the incoming CEO of Newell Brands, have donated and raised millions to support the organization’s public health mission.  

Closer to home, Murali Vullaganti has established a Silicon Valley-based public benefit corporation called PeopleShores that is committed to training and employing hundreds (and in time thousands) of low-income and at-risk Americans in good-paying information technology jobs.     

From Celebratory Galas to Brainstorming How to Grow Indian-American Philanthropy

Many donations from the community are pledge and captured in colorful, celebratory, and poignant gala dinners held around the county on an almost nightly basis by organizations such as Ekal Vidyalaya, Akanksha Fund, Magic Bus USA, and CRY America.

Clearly there is no shortage of Indian-American philanthropy role models.  But the community is hardly complacent in terms of growing a culture of philanthropy.  For example, a series of workshops held over the last two years by Indiaspora, Dasra, and Georgetown University’s India Initiative has focused on growing the amount donated and also improving the impact of each dollar contributed. 

As mentioned earlier, ChaloGive, a week of giving to be launched this year on October 2, will focus on encouraging more online giving by the broad spectrum of Indian Americans, not just those in the community that have accumulated significant wealth through business and investing.  Furthermore, delegations of second and third generation Americans of Indian heritage have taken part in trips to India that include social impact exposure and training.  The Houston-based Ek Disha Foundation transformed itself into a local chapter of AIF in 2017, admirably reversing the troubling trends of fragmentation and unnecessary duplication of effort in American philanthropy. 

Finally, leading philanthropic organizations have professionalized their operations in the U.S. and India, begun working more closely together, taken advantage of the Indian government’s new law requiring most companies to increase their corporate social responsibilities activities, and are beginning to have a dialogue with various ministries about how they could tweak policies in order to unleash even more philanthropic resources and talent (especially from the diaspora) on addressing urgent humanitarian, environmental, and cultural needs and opportunities.    

Over the last thirty years, the Indian American community in Houston and in cities across the United States have emerged as major players in business, medicine, technology, higher education, and most recently, in politics – with influence and impact beyond what would expect give its size.  Now it is time to add philanthropy to that list, and watch how the next generation carries this important tradition forward and in so doing, advances the public good through meaningful engagement in solving some of society’s most complex problems. 

The author, a former Fulbright Scholar in Bangladesh, is a writer, consultant to nonprofit organizations, and professor of public policy at the University of Maryland.  He founded Grameen Foundation and was its CEO for 18 years, and more recently was the President and CEO of the American India Foundation.  His latest book, Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind: Leadership Lessons from Three Decades of Social Entrepreneurship (Rivertowns Books), opened as a #1 new release best seller on Amazon in April and was chosen as an “editor’s pick” by the Chronicle of Philanthropy in August 2019. 

Summer Reading (and Book Reviewing)

One of the things I have liked to do in recent years is to review books related to social change that I liked and/or that I thought were important.  For example, I reviewed Rupert Scofield’s The Social Entrepreneur’s Handbook and Jacqueline Novogratz’s The Blue Sweater and you can find my analysis here.  Similarly, I commented on Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel’s book More than Good Intentions and published my views of it here.  And I wrote a comprehensive review of David Roodman’s book Due Diligence which the author praised as “thorough and thoughtful” despite not being uniformly positive; you can find it here.

I have also enjoyed it when people have reviewed my books, such as this lovely review of Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind.  (Like most authors, I appreciate it when people take the time to write short reviews of my books on Amazon – just yesterday another one appeared.)

Earlier this week, I had a review of the much talked about critique of philanthropy Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World published.  I have been encouraged by the response it has gotten, including this tweet by the founder of BRAC USA.  You can find the review here. 

And speaking of Susan Davis, the founder of BRAC USA, no post like this would be complete without a mention that her book (with David Bornstein) Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know is one of my favorites of all time.

I encourage people to dive into any and all of these books and reviews during final summer reading pushes.

How I Found My Terrific Publisher ... and the Pros and Cons of Self-Publishing

Since my book Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind came out, a number of people – most of them authors or aspiring authors – have asked me about my marketing budget and strategy and about how I found and chose my publisher.  I have answered the question on marketing in this blog post and I thought I should publish something now on how I came to work with my publisher.

The simple answer is that my publisher is Rivertowns Books, though one might also say it is Kindle Direct Publishing, an arm of Amazon.  In order to understand a more nuanced and complete response, a little background about the publishing industry (or at least my experience of it) and how it has evolved since the 1990s is in order.

I got my first book contract from Times Books, then a division of Random House, in 1993 with the help of my terrific agent at the time, Joel Fishman.  Random House outbid three other publishers for the right to publish Give Us Credit (later republished by John Wiley & Sons as Small Loans, Big Dreams).  I received a $20,000 advance (equal to about $34,000 today), of which Joel got 15% and I received the remainder in three installments. 

Back then, it seemed that publishers were often willing to take a chance on first-time authors with writing ability and a decent idea.  I loved getting the advance (as it helped underwrite my simple lifestyle in Bangladesh for two years), outstanding editorial support (mostly from a man named Ian Jackman), and other quality and value-added services such as marketing, cover design, legal review, and so forth.  (Though as I mentioned in passing in another blog post, the marketing effort was effectively suspended within a few weeks of publication since my book was not selling fast enough.) 

What I didn’t like so much about going with a traditional publisher was the long time it took to turn a completed manuscript into a published book, and the fact that over time they let it go out of print without ever coming out with a paperback version that would be more likely to be assigned as a secondary text in college courses. 

Now, fast forward to the present day.  Traditional publishers (and even literary agents) appear much less willing to take chances – by which I mean putting time and effort into books by authors who are not yet proven money-makers for them.  They tend to demand ironclad promises to have other organizations promote the book and for authors to commit to buying a certain number of their own books at a discounted rate (but high enough that the publisher makes money on those sales).  The bottom line is that authors that can finagle a contract with a traditional publisher get less and have to promise more, compared to twenty years ago – unless they already have a track record of selling lots of books.

The other major development is that it is much easier for authors to self-publish today.  I discovered this when I was getting at best lukewarm responses (sometimes after waiting for up to three months) from traditional publishers and as a result, began looking for alternatives.  In the past, self-publishing was the domain of rich people who could pay whatever it took to get their manuscript turned into a book, which they might use as promotional tool professionally or as a way of writing up their life story for their extended family and future generations. 

Through Kindle Direct Publishing and similar avenues, self-publishing is now within the reach of many more people.  It is cheaper and faster than it used to be, and has several noteworthy advantages over going with a traditional publisher.  These include that your books are faster to market, lower cost to consumers, never go out of print, and are available in paperback from day one. Furthermore, corrections can be made to the manuscript anytime and all future copies sold will reflect those enhancements. And not least, there are higher royalties to the author.    

Last fall, I was studying how I could take advantage of the self-publishing option.  I learned that once you master the process, you can turn a Word document into a book available on Amazon (both as e-book and as a print on demand paperback) within a matter of hours.  I was gearing up to learn how to do that (in part by buying and starting to read this book).  But I had concerns, too.  At the time I had 800 pages of material that I was struggling to edit into book of reasonable length and quality.  I also didn’t have a lot of spare time to learn how to interface with Kindle Direct Publishing, and to also figure out how to get a good cover design and in general, how to ensure that my book not appear or be perceived as amateurish. 

Around this time, I reconnected with Karl Weber, a literary heavyweight who had collaborated brilliantly with my mentor Professor Muhammad Yunus on this last three books (the most recent being this one).  I had a friend who was looking for a “ghostwriter” and asked Karl if he would have an exploratory conversation with him.  During the conversation, Karl asked me about the status of my book, which I had told him about a few years earlier when I was just embarking on it.  I was impressed and flattered that he had remembered it, and told him where it stood and that I was seriously looking at self-publishing. 

Over the course of that and a few more conversations, he proposed a hybrid solution that would involve a partnership with him as part of a new line of his literary business.  Basically, after reviewing my manuscript, he proposed that in exchange for a fee, he would publish my book on the KDP platform. 

This would entail him providing significant editorial support and also leveraging his knowledge of how to work with Amazon, cover design artists, bulk order firms, and other distribution channels (Barnes and Noble, wholesalers that serve independent bookstores, etc.).  While his price tag for all this gave me momentary pause, I was thrilled to have this option and in short order we had signed a simple agreement that involved no lawyers or other formalities.

Essentially, Karl agreed to become my editor and publisher.  I was the second author he worked with in this way, and by the time my book came to market, he had named this line of publishing his “Rivertowns Books” imprint.  Overall, I have been thrilled with his support.  He has earned every penny I have paid him, and then some. 

He has been a model professional, and on the few occasions he made mistakes or realized that he still had kinks to work out in his model (e.g., he has since decided that he should hire someone else to proofread the book to ensure that few if any typos litter the published work), we worked through them in a transparent and collaborative way.  Along the way, he provided many affirmations, pieces of advice, mild and constructive criticisms, and valuable insights about publishing and life in general.  As much as possible, he made a demanding process stimulating and fun.

Over time, other literary types of his caliber will offer similar services, and a few are already.  They represent a fertile middle ground between self-publishing on your own and going with a full-service publisher.  Karl can provide more, fewer or different services than I received, based on the needs of the author (though he of course reserves the right to not take on a client). 

The only two caveats I can see are these: First, I would have been reluctant to have someone I didn’t already know well to rework my manuscript, which was what was required.  Since I had seen Karl’s work with Professor Yunus, I had little doubt that he could do a great job.  (And he did.)  Second, the fees I had to pay him will mean it will take much longer to get to break even on the entire project.  These are things other authors should consider being going down this road with a collaborator like Karl. 

Overall, I am very satisfied with the final result and have already recommended a few aspiring authors to contact Karl and explore this option.    

Eight Reasons Why I Don’t Believe in Minimum Giving Levels for Nonprofit Board Members

I sometimes say that my beliefs about nonprofit governance span the gamut from very traditional to highly non-traditional.  (There are also quite a few issues that I do not have strong opinions on.)  For example, one of the “out of the mainstream” views I hold is that term limits for board members often do more harm than good.  I have come to believe that they are at best a crude and slightly effective way of dealing with the issue of “dead wood” on nonprofit boards – and issue than I think can be dealt with much more effectively in other ways.  However, as far as I can tell, most people who have given thought to issues of nonprofit governance believe the opposite.  (I explain my rationale and alternative approaches in chapter 12 of my book, Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind).

Another of my nontraditional views is that setting minimum annual donation levels for board members is usually counterproductive.  The argument for this policy, as far as I can tell, rests of the idea that it helps ensure that there are no “free loaders” who don’t contribute financially (because, for example, they volunteer a lot of their time or serve as a spokesperson for the organization in the community and believe that is a sufficient “contribution”).  Moreover, such a policy avoids the pitfall of some board members giving a token amount, and it makes it unnecessary, or less necessary, for the CEO or Board Chair to personally solicit each board member every year (thus freeing up some of their time and making what for many is an awkward conversation feel superfluous).

For most boards, I strongly prefer the following approach: making it an explicit part of the board member job description (also known as director responsibilities) that each individual on the board is expected to make a “stretch financial donation in accordance with their means” on an annual basis. 

Below I will give my top reasons for preferring this to having minimum giving levels.  But the common thread to a number of those arguments relates to this dynamic: many donors and board members feel that professional staff, especially in medium to large sized organizations, undervalue their ability to contribute to the mission in ways other than making monetary donations. 

Over the years, dozens if not hundreds of board members have complained to me that the organizations they govern “leave value on the table” by relegating them to doing two things: (1) attending meetings (during which there is often scant room for authentic discussion and debate about the organization’s future and during which few real decisions are actually made) and (2) making financial contributions. 

In short, they feel as if they are treated like a human “ATM” rather than as a fully committed resource with significant monetary and nonmonetary value to bring to the organization.  As a result, I go to great lengths to engage board members in as many ways as possible so as a curate a meaningful experience – which also, by the way, helps ensure that they give as much money as they possibly can, for as long as they can.  (I describe one great example of this approach working well in chapter 13.) 

With that general notion as an essential piece of background to my philosophy, here are my top reasons why I prefer my approach to the one advocated by most nonprofit governance experts.

1.       By setting a minimum quantitative threshold for financial stewardship, but not for other elements of board service (e.g., meeting attendance and preparation, committee participation, being an ambassador for the organization in one’s circles of influence), the organization is implicitly saying that donating is significantly more important than other aspects of board service.  (Setting quantitative goals for these other areas is one way to address this, but in practice I think it would be unworkable.)

2.       People of limited financial means who have many other things to offer will be unable to meet the minimum donation threshold (unless it is so small as to be meaningless).  The result will be either that they won’t join or that they will be granted an “exception” from the policy (which is likely to become highly problematic for reasons that I may explore in detail in a future blog post and which I touch on briefly as part of point #4 below).

3.       For one’s wealthy board members, the minimum donation amount is likely to be far below their capability.  If that is the case, they may pre-emptively give that minimum amount as a way to forestall any other discussion of their donations in a given year, or in general. 

4.       Bringing a policy like this in effect years after a board is formed will lead to the temptation to “grandfather” older board members in – meaning that they do not have to meet the new minimum donation threshold.  This can, however, be highly problematic for many of the reasons that the “exception” mentioned in #2 above can be – in that it creates two categories of board members with different rules applying. 

5.       These policies create an excuse for CEOs, Executive Directors, Board Chairs and Development (Fund-Raising) Committee Chairs to avoid open and action-oriented discussions with board members about their financial stewardship of the organization – including around what would constitute a “stretch donation” for them each year. 

6.       Minumum giving level policies do not take into account that fact that some board members have significant changes in their income and ability to give during the course of their board service – which might make the minimum giving level too high some years and far below their capacity at other times. 

7.       Most organizations that have minimum donation levels do not have a clear policy or approach for what to do when a director fails to meet the minimum giving level, and as a result do nothing in such cases.  This considerably weakens the ability of the policy to achieve its objectives.

8.       Minumum giving levels as well as give/get policies (see below) that are meaningful help ensure that most if not all board members come from a similar socio-economic strata of society, which often leads to collective blind spots and poor decision-making. 

A common alternative to setting minimum levels for board giving is to say that each board member is responsible for “giving or getting” (meaning, contributing or raising from others) a certain amount of money.  But I find this also to be problematic.  First, board members who lack their own financial resources often similarly lack easy access to people from whom they can raise significant funds.  Even more important, it creates incentives for board members to “appear” to be raising money by exaggerating their relationship with a prospective donor or by insisting that they be involved in cultivating or soliciting a someone in cases where it may not make sense.  Ultimately, attributing donations to individual board members can be divisive and/or a waste of time, especially when fund-raising is best thought of as a team sport.   

In my mind, it is far better to have an explicit expectation of a “stretch financial gift” each year (based on each director’s means during that year) and to have leaders of the organization speak to each director annually about what that would look like so they make the largest possible gift in the most satisfying way for both the board member and also the organization.  It takes time, but it will usually result in more money for the organization and a more unified board, all other things being equal. 

In reality, nearly half of the 1.5 million non-profits in the United States (according to a 2007 survey by the terrific organization Board Source that is summarized here) do not require either a minimum donation or any donation at all.  However, I suspect that the estimated 28% that do have minimum giving requirements constitute some of the largest and most influential nonprofits, and I believe that many of them would be better served by the policy that I advocate. 

Additional Success Strategies Related to Health, Financial Security & Crisis Management

As I have mentioned previously, at one point while working on Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind, I started writing down distinct lessons I had learned that ultimately totaled around 400.  To make them less unwieldy, I grouped them in more than a dozen categories.  Earlier I have posted some of my favorite lessons in areas such as fund-raising, nonprofit management, building a great governing body, effective public speaking, being a contributing member of society (outside of work), travelling smart, and facilitating meetings.  These are areas where I have experience and arguably, some hard-won wisdom to share.  While some of these lessons appear in the book – and a few are spun out with illustrative stories – many of them were “left on the cutting room floor” so to speak. In all cases, these were mindsets and techniques that I used consistently for years, rather than simply things I had read about or observed others practice.  

There were some additional lists on topics that I arguably don’t have any special professional expertise or training in, but that nonetheless felt meaningful for me and potentially useful to others.  I have extracted sixteen of my top lessons that were originally grouped into one of the following categories: getting and staying healthy, financial well-being, and managing setback/crises.

 1.      Spend money liberally and without guilt on a few things that bring you joy, and be frugal in all other areas of your life.  Periodically reevaluate whether the things you have been splurging on still bring you joy.  If they don’t, scale back or discontinue spending freely in those areas, and splurge on other things that bring you more pleasure and satisfaction. 

 2.      Start saving for retirement early.  Max out your contributions to your 401K/403B retirement plans, IRAs, and other tax-free or tax-deferred vehicles.  If you can’t do that, put away as much as you can.  Make it an automatic deduction from your salary if possible, so you don’t have to think about it each month.

 3.      Exercise aerobically as many times per week as you can.  Try to build up to working out six times per week for 45-90 minutes each time.  Invest in a well-designed, comfortable and hardy stationary bike or treadmill for your home if that will help you maintain this during times when the weather makes it challenging to exercise outdoors.  Once you have made exercise more convenient and habitual, you will probably experience stress relief and many other health benefits.  Combine your formal exercise with as much walking, stair climbing, and other light activity as possible. 

 4.      Add at least one new healthy habit per year, or break one unhealthy habit.

 5.      Spend as much time as possible around people who admire you, whom you learn from, and/or who make you laugh.  Give yourself time to recover if you must spend time with people who are on the other end of the spectrum (i.e., they drain your energy, stress you out, or are otherwise unpleasant to be around).

 6.      Identify a primary care physician and stick with him or her unless you move or are dissatisfied.  Have your doctor give you a full physical as often as he or she recommends.  The same goes for seeing your dentist for regular cleanings.  Push yourself to practice as much of what they recommend as possible, without falling into the trap of excessive self-reproach.

 7.      Don’t forget that the human body is a peculiar thing.  Sometimes it aches or feels strange or does not respond as you are accustomed.  Don’t panic, as it will probably right itself fairly quickly.  Worrying only prolongs the episode.  Obviously, if discomfort persists, see a trained health care professional.

 8.      Even if you aren’t a confident in the kitchen, learn to cook at least a few things that are reasonably healthy.  Make big batches on the weekend that you can eat throughout the week.  Realize that each time you make a dish, shopping for the ingredients, doing the prep work, and cooking it becomes easier, especially as you discover patterns and short-cuts.  You don’t have to be a master chef to have 4-5 dishes you know how to make easily and that you and the people you live with enjoy.  You’ll save money and be healthier, and cooking may become something of a meditation for you, a way of shifting from the pressures of the workday (or even weekend day) to a more relaxing evening with loved ones or alone. 

 9.      Despite what some people may tell you, there is no “right” way to vacation, though not taking vacations at all makes no sense, especially for those who have demanding jobs.  Find your favorite way or ways to vacation to replenish yourself, and then apply what you learn.  What works as a vacation in one phase of your life may not work as well in other eras.

 10.  When you learn about what appears to be a setback, even one that feels significant, take a deep breath and recall some example of things in the past that initially appeared to be setbacks but that either (a) turned out to have been blessings, (b) were much less problematic than you initially imagined, and/or (c) turned out to be profound learning experiences.   Then consider the possibility that this could be another one of them before getting too stressed out or responding prematurely and potentially unwisely.

 11.  Before delving into self-pity when faced with a crisis or setback, think about others who are impacted by it, or who may feel responsible for causing it.  Then think about what you can say to them, do for them, or signal to them that will make them feel better, and ultimately more motivated to help address the situation.  They will likely remember you turning your thoughts to them in that charged moment when others were thinking only or mainly about themselves. 

 12.  Develop list of things you do or people you can be with that help replenish or support you after a setback, and then do things on (or spend time with those people on) that list when you experience one.  Figure out what you did to cause the setback and let me people know that you recognize that you played a role, even if others were more responsible for it than you.

 13.  In a crisis, begin by taking at least one immediate step to improve or resolve the situation.  This will give you a sense of agency and progress, even if what you are doing is not necessarily the most strategic or impactful thing that needs to be done to set things right.  (Your reason for avoiding those more essential actions may be that you have not figured them out yet, or that doing them will be too draining or taxing for you at that early stage.)  Give yourself time to discern what the most strategic things are and prepare to undertake them, even while you are making modest but tangible progress by doing whatever you decide to start with. 

 14.  In stressful situations or crises, take deep breaths and do your best to remain calm.  Observe your environment and quickly assess your options, rather than panicking.  Resist the temptation to over-react by taking some dramatic, high risk action to resolve the situation in one fell swoop, or go to the other extreme by under-reacting, becoming passive (or even paralyzed). 

 15.  When you find yourself in a crisis, quickly develop hypotheses about how you can survive it and then test those hypotheses however you can.  Try to avoid doing that in ways that commit you to any particular course of action or that unnecessarily alarm people or build up their hopes unrealistically.

16. Congratulate yourself for any progress you make in resolving a setback or crisis, even if in small ways. Resist the temptation to rebuke yourself if you do something that temporarily makes it worse. Surround yourself with people who can practice these disciplines with you. When you have made progress in resolving the crisis, let people know – don’t assume that they recognize that the situation has improved.