I’ve become a single-issue voter

I have become a single-issue voter.

I will never vote for someone who does not support common-sense solutions to our uniquely American epidemic of gun violence. I will actively support, with all time and resources at my disposal, any candidate with a commitment to preventing gun violence. And given the choice between candidates without a strong commitment to stopping gun violence either way, I will either choose not to vote, or vote for the person I think more likely to support common-sense solutions to gun violence in the future.

I am surprised that I am making this declaration. I never thought I’d become a single-issue voter, much less on this issue. But I fear for the safety of the people I care most about, and I don’t see anything else I can do.

Of course, like most Americans born after the 1970s, gun violence has been a constant in my life, albeit more like a constant background noise. One of my most vivid memories is from elementary school on the day after the Columbine shooting. I had heard about it on the radio that morning, but, to be honest, it didn’t affect me that much. I didn’t understand it. It seemed far away—like a movie. In class that day, our principal stopped by to talk with my teacher. While they were discussing something, I talked with my friends; we were teasing each other. My friend, Christina, was lightly teasing me about something (I don’t remember what), and I said to her: “Shut up, Christina, nobody likes you.” At the moment I said that, the principal walked right by my desk. He stopped, looked at me, and told me to get up and go with him into the hallway. He said: “Do you know what happened in Colorado?” I said yes. He said it was people like me saying things like what I had said that caused that sort of thing. I will never forget that.

Since then, mass shootings and other forms of gun violence have come and gone: Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Charleston, Orlando, Las Vegas, and now Parkland. These were once just names of places—places that I may or may not have ever heard of before, but now they will always be associated with the most extreme form of violence and murder that continues to be a decidedly American problem.

Since Columbine, this problem continued to gnaw at me, in the background. I began to research it, learn more about why we as a country could not seem to solve it. I had been told we were a great country—the greatest in the world. That we put a man on the moon, and we could do anything. Yet we were letting children die in the places they should be the safest: schools, malls, churches.

I learned about the history of the Second Amendment. I learned about how public health epidemics spread. I learned about how other countries had dealt with gun violence. I learned about how racism and fear of militarized civil rights groups—most notably the Black Panthers—created the first wave of gun safety laws in this country. I learned about how the NRA and other conservative organizations re-defined the Second Amendment and created a “gun culture” that placed certain rights for some over the rights of others, to the benefit of gun manufactures and arms dealers. And I learned about how politicians, of both parties, didn’t have the courage to do what was right and create laws that had been proven, repeatedly, to save lives.

During this journey, I discovered something surprising about myself: I wasn’t anti-gun. Growing up in a liberal enclave in Minneapolis, I just assumed that guns were bad and we shouldn’t have any. When I dug into the issue, I realized that, in fact, the vast majority of gun owners are responsible and use their guns for legal and safe purposes—hunting, target shooting, and yes, self-defense. I learned that the current interpretation of the Second Amendment, regardless of what you think of it, guarantees the right to own a firearm for self-protection. I also realized I didn’t have a problem with someone concealing and carrying a weapon in public, given that person was law-abiding and had the proper training and credentials. (This right to conceal and carry isn’t guaranteed by the current interpretation of the constitution.) As long as these gun owners were responsible stewards of their weapon, and they use it for legal purposes, why should the government tell them what to do with it?

Much of this discovery happened through my involvement with a local chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America—a group that advocates for common sense gun laws, but is also pro-Second Amendment. The group maintains that there are solutions that both protect the rights of gun owners, but also protect all Americans from gun violence. These solutions are universally popular: Full background checks on gun sales; barring those with histories of domestic abuse from owning guns; barring those with severe mental health problems from owning guns; safely storing guns out of the reach of children, etc. These policies and others like them have been shown to save lives.

Yet, these policies are not the laws of the land. And this is the central problem of the “gun debate”, and why I have become a single issue voter: We are not willing to pass laws that save lives, and instead, over the last few decades, this country has passed law after law that makes it easier for dangerous people to purchase a weapon. Only nine states require background checks on all gun purchases. There are 12 states that do not require a permit for concealing and carrying a loaded gun in public. This means that a person in America with a history of domestic violence or other violent behavior can buy a gun, load it, conceal it, and walk out in public, all without encountering any resistance from law enforcement officers who have sworn to protect the American public against acts of violence.

So this is why I am a single-issue voter, and why there need to be more single-issue voters like me. Our elected leaders are actively ignoring policies that save lives. At best, this ignorance is a misguided attempt to protect people—some politicians, however misguided, probably do actually believe that more guns save lives. (The notion that a bad guy with a gun can only be stopped by a “good gun with a gun” was disproven most recently in Parkland, where an armed police officer didn’t stop the murderer. And, as the founder of Moms Demand Action Shannon Watts says, if more guns increased safety, the US would be the safest place on Earth. It is not.)

At worst, the refusal to enact common sense laws is a privileging of the desire of a certain group of people to immediately own any gun they want, for any reason, over the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the tens of thousands of people who die because of guns, every year.

But regardless of why our leaders do not feel the need to enact common sense gun laws, the reality remains the same: People are dying while nothing gets done. I’m no longer interested in why politicians are motivated to do what they do—I’m interested in the action they take to keep my family safe and help us and other families thrive. Maybe they are afraid of angry voters who perceive safety measures as government overreach. Maybe they are afraid of what the NRA will say about them. But regardless, they are abdicating their duty as elected officials and not protecting the people they have sworn to serve. They have broken the public’s trust and should not be allowed to make decisions on behalf of citizens.

I ask you to join me as a single-issue voter. But know I am not asking you to join me as a Democratic voter. Because although the Republican Party is most aligned with anti-gun violence measures, the recalcitrance on gun violence is a bipartisan problem. (On the 2017 vote on “Conceal Carry Reciprocity,” which would essentially force all states to accept the weakest gun safety laws, 14 Republicans voted against it, and six Democrats voted for it. Five Democrats voted against the post-Sandy Hook gun safety reforms; four Republicans voted for it.) This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans. This is about the safety of our kids and our loved ones.

Although I’m not certain of this, I have a feeling that a commitment to ending gun violence is an indication of support for many issues I care about: helping families thrive, improving healthcare for all, reducing income inequality, ending racial injustice, etc. Because if you don’t care about kids dying, why would you care about anything else that helps everyday people?

If you are a public official and you are not actively doing what you can to make our communities safer, then you have blood on your hands. You are staying silent as our uniquely American carnage—to quote the president—continues.

This is a hard problem. But it is a problem we can solve. Every other country with our level of wealth has already solved it. So join me as a single-issue voter and let’s do what we need to do.

 

(If you want to take action to help end gun violence, sign up to be a “Gun Sense” voter, which is an initiative between Everytown and Moms Demand Action.)

 

Photo credit: RHONA WISE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Three Years of Lessons on Collaboration

It’s been almost three years since I brought together a group of friends interested in writing about creating change using collaborative methods. That group of friends became the first group of bloggers for UnSectored, which, three years later, has grown into much more than I could have expected. UnSectored now has a volunteer team of six and has published over 250 posts exploring social change through sectoral and organizational collaboration. We’ve hosted dozens of events to help people connect with others interested in working between and beyond sectors to create large-scale change.

After three years of involvement, I’ve decided to step down from my day-to-day responsibilities managing UnSectored. Starting next week, I will be working at Living Cities as a part of its Integration Initiative. Kathy Chamberlain, UnSectored’s Managing Director, will take over my day-to-day responsibilities, and I can’t wait to see where she takes the organization.

At this moment of reflection, I wanted to take some time to share what I see as the key lessons I’ve learned over the past three years working on UnSectored. Not only does UnSectored encourage discussion about collaboration, it is a collaborative initiative itself. I’ve divided up my lessons learned into two sections: Lessons about collaboration, and lessons about running a collaborative organization. I hope you enjoy, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.

Lessons about collaboration:

Collaboration is a process, not an outcome

This seems obvious, but has some important implications. The act of collaborating can be used in almost any scenario, whether to provide social services or put on a multi-stakeholder event. Successful collaborations, regardless of the focus area, have similar characteristics that can be applied to diverse situations. I won’t go into the criteria that form a successful collaboration here, but I encourage you to check out this post from my Living Cities colleague, Tynesia Boyea-Robinson, on how to apply collective impact to any policy problem.

Ego over everything

At almost every in-person UnSectored discussion we had, the problem of ego came up. Either organizational arrogance or individual arrogance will be a problem for any collaborative initiative. Ego can cause problems even when you’ve established complete buy-in from all parities. All organizations have individual motives for participating in a collaboration, and sometimes their actions may be focused on serving their own needs rather than the greater good of the partnership. Organizations within a collaboration must navigate the constant tension between acting on self-serving motivations and sacrificing for the collaborative.

Trust is foundational

The antidote to ego is trust. A successful collaboration will require that all parties involved trust each other to do what is right by all members. Without this trust, collaborations cannot be successful. Trust is particularly important for the long-term initiatives focused on solving system-level problems, as these require constant re-negotiation of terms and goals as the reality of the real world changes over time. Trust between partners is also the only way to navigate the tension between selfishness and selflessness. (For more on trust, check out UnSectored blogger and all around good guy Mark Hecker’s latest post on the topic.) 

Have patience

This also seems obvious, but when you’re in the third meeting in as many weeks re-explaining the goals for your collaboration, you’ll need a little patience. Everyone has a different framework for thinking about problems, and it takes time to ensure that all organizations are aligned on how to think about the tasks at hand. Gaining clarity about the problem, the goals and the activities at the beginning of a collaboration will help to minimize those seemingly unnecessary conversations down the line.

There’s hype, but there’s also integrity

To me, the opposite of hype is integrity. The last three years have certainly produced a lot of hype around collaboration, partnership building and collective impact. The social sector latches on to “it” ideas, only to discard them a few years later once something new comes along. Many people in our UnSectored conversations expressed the concern that collaboration was just another fad that would disappear into the fog of old ideas in a few years.

While there is quite a bit of hype around the idea, there is a lot of integrity behind existing collaborations and their associated lessons learned. Collaboration may not be in vogue for much longer, but the power of collaboration to solve social problems will not diminish. The integrity of collaboration can be seen in two recent case studies on collaborative initiatives, one from my previous employer, VPP, and one from my new employer, Living Cities.

Lessons about running an organization:

There is no name for this

The largest struggle I faced in growing UnSectored was finding an appropriate organizational structure that fit our way of operating. For most of UnSectored’s existence, we were an unincorporated organization, run by a group of people willing to volunteer our time. As we grew, I decided we needed to establish a structure that allowed us to bring in some revenue and sustain our operations over time. All organizational structures that would allow us to take in a small amount of funds (less than $500 a year) would also double our operating costs in the form of legal fees. Ultimately, I decided the cheapest option was to incorporate as an LLC, but we have continued to have issues maintaining this structure.

Many other organizations I’ve met along the way operate similarly. These organizations are fueled by individuals willing to donate a few hours of their time outside of work each week, as well as low-cost tools provided by the internet and social media. I do not know what to call UnSectored and similar organizations other than a “collaborative organization,” which requires very little money to run sustainably. UnSectored relies on a combination of donations and revenue from our events, and no one involved with UnSectored expects to make significant profit off of the organization—instead, they want to better understand the social sector and contribute to a cutting-edge conversation. The current organizational structures exist for entities that rely on profit or donations, and nothing in between. We need an organizational structure that is flexible and adaptable to the needs of organizations like UnSectored.

Successful organizations fill needs, not what founders want

I started UnSectored as a group blog, and was not expecting anything more than producing a few posts each month. However, the idea of “working for change between and beyond sectors” (UnSectored’s original tag line) resonated with people and they wanted more. We started to develop event series, and eventually integrated our blog posts with our events. We began to partner with other organizations in the DC area that were interested in joining our conversations.

I have seen many organizations similar in scope to UnSectored fail because the leader only wanted to pursue his or her ideas, not what their community of support was asking for. I think UnSectored has been successful because I allowed the community to direct our action. When I tried to control the organizational direction too much and steered it in a direction I thought was best based on my personal interests, we always failed.

If you are trying to start or run your own organization, particularly an organization with a social focus, remember that the organization isn’t about you—it’s about the community you are trying to serve or the problem you are trying to solve. If you try to force an organization in a direction it isn’t naturally headed, you will probably end up in a worse place than where you started.

Surround yourself with good people and support what they want

A common maxim in business leadership is some variation on “surround yourself with good people and get out of their way.” (Which I was surprised to find is originally attributable to Ronald Reagan.) I would amend this maxim to say: “Surround yourself with good people and support what they want.”

I take the role of “servant leader” very seriously. When I am put into a leadership position, I don’t think of myself as in a driving position, but rather in a supporting position. My leadership successes have been a result of me seeking the input of others and supporting them to accomplish their goals. My tendency to do this is another reason why UnSectored was more of a “collaborative organization” than anything else. I ensured that everyone on my team gave input into our activities and were able to drive their own ideas when it made sense within the context of the organization’s growth. My role in UnSectored became more of a coordinator than a leader, which contributed to our success as a volunteer-run organization.

If you are a leader in an organization, I would strongly recommend you take a “servant leadership” approach to your work. Serving as a coordinator of activity rather than a director will help to ensure you do not miss out on what your community needs from you. For more guidance on the philosophy of servant leadership, look no further than the wonderful sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct.”

Review of “The Solution Revolution”

My review of Bill Eggers’ and Paul Macmillan’s new book, “The Solution Revolution: How Business, Government, and Social Enterprises Are Teaming Up to Solve Society’s Toughest Problems” is now available through George Washington University’s student-run policy journal.  Check it out.

The book delves into a phenomenon I often discuss on this blog and elsewhere–the trend towards social consciousness and social impact. Eggers and Macmillan, both from Deloitte, name this trend the “Solution Economy,” but others have deemed it the “Impact Economy,” the “Social Economy,” or more recently, the “Purpose Economy.” Whatever you call it, Eggers and Macmillan provide a useful framework to consider how different organizational actors work together to solve social problems.

Please read the full review and let me know what you think. But the bottom line is that the “Solution Revolution” is a necessary book combining disparate schools of thought on how to solve social problems. They gloss over a lot, but their simplification makes the concepts more accessible. Their explicit focus on cross-sector collaboration is a unique addition to other literature discussing our global focus on social impact.

Again, you can read the review in PDF form here. You can also check out the full site on the book.

It’s not our fault we don’t work in government

The New York Times ran an interesting article today about how only a few young people in Obama’s inner circle have made the jump to run for public office. An interesting trend on its own, but the Times took this evidence a little too far and implied that millennials in general are not interested in public service. This conclusion was summed up by a former Obama pollster, Sergio Bendixen:

“After getting swept up by the Obama movement of 2008, [Bendixen] said, ‘They went on to the next website and then the next click on their computer. I just don’t see the generation as all that ideological or invested in causes for the long run.'”

I don’t know anything about Bendixen and his work, but assuming he wasn’t misquoted on this, I take extreme issue with this statement and the resulting implication that millennials don’t care about causes larger than themselves. His overall conclusion is problematic for two reasons:

One, it just isn’t true. Anyone with a cursory understanding of the social sector will know that millennials are a huge player in defining what social action looks like. While there may not be solid research on showing that millennials are more devoted to causes than previous generations, we certainly aren’t less committed. I could cite tons of research displaying this, but I won’t because if you are reading this, you probably already agree with me and I don’t want to waste your time. (But if you do want to see some studies, comment.) Bendixen’s assertion seems to rely only on anecdotal evidence and a gross misunderstanding of what it means to be socially committed these days. Which brings me to:

Two, Bendixen and the Times fell for what I’m going to call the “doing good sector” fallacy, which assumes you can only improve society through the nonprofit or government sector. In reality, all sectors have their role to play in the causes we care about. And more importantly, no one sector is unified. So even though young people may not be running for office in large numbers (and with Congressional approval ratings at 13%, who can blame them?), there are still many ways to engage with government: volunteering, working for an agency, or serving in a public liaison role in another organization. Even if they don’t want to work in government, the nonprofit and private sector offer many ways for socially conscious millennials to have a career with impact.

Unfortunately, it’s true that millennials aren’t going to work for government. But the problem isn’t that millennials are disengaged, it’s that government does not seem that attractive to us. Bickering and gridlock from Capitol Hill does not inspire much confidence in the institution. I’m all for more millennials getting into government service, but I don’t think that will happen until it proves itself as an effective entity to the broader population. (There are many examples of government effectiveness, don’t get me wrong, it just it isn’t perceived that way.)

It’s very easy to blame our perceived laziness and obsession with social media for the limited millennial interest in government service, but it’s much harder to understand why a very socially conscious generation may not be interested in government. Government no longer has a monopoly on social change, and if it doesn’t want to get left behind, it needs to think about how to incorporate millennials into its workforce.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

3 tips for landing a job at a social enterprise

Photo credit: Sergey Nivens, Shutterstock

I wrote another piece for the Idealist blog, this time about how to land a job at a social enterprise. I tried to stay away from the typical “how-to-get-a-job” advice, and focus on the bigger picture of building a cross-sector career. You can check it out here.

 

The Problem with Philanthropy

I was lucky enough to attend the After the Leap conference last month. The two-day event was a culmination of more than two years of work on encouraging nonprofit performance management by a small coalition of people, led by Mario Morino. The movement began with the release of Leap of Reason, a book primarily authored by Morino, which made the compelling argument to nonprofits and funders alike to pay more attention to achieving tangible results. (Disclosure: I worked with Morino to help release the book and build momentum around its core messages.)

The event was attended by over 400 people from around the world—an impressive feat when you consider its eye-glazing-over topic of public sector performance management and evaluation. But I thought the most impressive part of the conference was the general feeling in the audience, and reflected in some of the speakers’ remarks, that funders are mostly to blame for a lack of effectiveness and performance management in the social sector. It is rare you find a group of people brave enough to blame a major source of their livelihoods for any type of problem. Many people lambasted funders for not supporting the infrastructure necessary to invest in the people and technology that create performance management systems.

Nancy Roob, President of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, said in her keynote address that the reason funders don’t support performance management is that they are focused on “piecemeal” activities and not on results. Her five suggestions to change this, summarized in Twitter form, were:

These suggestions by Roob will help push funders in the right direction on performance management, but ultimately fall short of solving the main problem with philanthropy: Ego. Until we remove ego from philanthropy, no other sector-wide reforms can happen. Until philanthropists and foundations understand that their own goals and agendas are secondary to the results of the sector as a whole, those results will continue to be piecemeal.

Here’s why: Philanthropy has no incentive to change the way it is working. Right now, there’s no punishment for not achieving results (save public disapproval) for any type of philanthropy. This means that foundations and philanthropists can go on creating their own initiatives and funding their own pet projects without recourse, even if those end up being complete failures.

The only way philanthropy is going to change is if their stakeholders stand up to them. Look at Roob’s list of five suggestions again—they are all self-imposed changes. There are no structural changes, such as tying tax-deductible status to demonstrated social impact, or increasing required endowment payout for foundations. If the government won’t change the rules around philanthropy, the only other constituency that can push philanthropy in this non-piecemeal direction is philanthropy’s beneficiaries—the nonprofits.

And it is a rare nonprofit that can stand up to its funders and turndown money, or negotiate on the terms. One nonprofit, Communities in Schools, was able to do it, according to another conference keynote given by its president, Dan Cardinali. But unfortunately, a lot of the advice given at the conference to nonprofits about securing funding based on results was to work only with those funders who understood the long-term time horizons that performance management implementation takes, and ignore the others. For most nonprofits, they do not have that privilege, and are forced to sacrifice on operations, or mission, or both, to bend to the wishes of funders.

Without a significant cultural shift in the social sector away from ego, it is unlikely we will achieve widespread nonprofit performance management or increased results. We need to move to a more collaborative environment, with results as the guidepost, not personal goals and ideas. What we need to do is “keep the arrogance out of social change,” as UnSectored blogger Laura Tomasko put it, and work together better.

So how do we create this culture change? The same way all cultural shifts have happened—from the anti-slavery movement to women’s rights to same-sex marriage—by speaking truth to power. This is hard to do, especially when the powerful are funding your paycheck. But a lot is happening within the social sector to stand up to those funders too focused on ego to put results first—evidenced by the large attendance at the After the Leap conference, which included many funders in addition to Roob. Changing culture will require coordination on both sides of the issue—funders and nonprofits—just as all social movements require input from actors with different motivations.

After the Leap was a great start to a small part of this culture change, and many attendees by end were asking when the next one would be. It’s gatherings like these that will continue to chip away at the institutional ego of philanthropy and encourage collaboration among all actors in the social sector.

Photo credit: danger0usdays

Re-Thinking Sector Stereotypes

I wrote another piece for the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog about the need to re-think our stereotypical views of each sector. Our preconceived notions of the sectors hinder collaboration and limit the full potential of society to produce social outcomes. I use my work with UnSectored to show that we have some pretty backwards views of what the sectors can accomplish, but some are bucking stereotypes and using sector frameworks in new ways.

Check out the post here.

Things I Don’t Want to Hear Anymore

Things I don’t want to hear anymore:

1. We can do well by doing good.
2. Society doesn’t need another nonprofit, or social enterprise. Instead of creating something, help out with what others are already doing.
3. The strengths of each sector combined together can do more than each on its own.
4. The world needs leaders with experience in all sectors to solve its most intractable problems.

Haven’t we internalized these things already? Sometimes, I think we waste our time repeating the same axioms to the same groups of people. Can’t we accept as given, move on, and figure out how to best implement these lessons?

Maybe not…

photo credit: James Emery

Efficiency vs. Equality in the Social Sector

Warning: This post is adapted from one of my papers for my cross-sector collaboration and management class. It is quite theoretical and may only be only interesting to nerds like me. If you believe yourself to be a nerd like me, read on.

In the last few decades, there has been an increased focus on “efficiency” in the social sector. Efficiency in the social sector can mean a lot of things–sometimes its about cutting costs, sometimes its about using business practices to better deliver social services (here I’m using “social sector” to refer to both nonprofit and government sectors), sometimes it’s about both cost reduction and business processes unified under the mantel of “entrepreneurship.” In the “entrepreneurial” model of the social sector,  public servants fill the role as service providers for citizens (consumers) that react to market forces. This approach to governance is exemplified by Al Gore’s mid-90s National Performance Review that recommended reforms on how to get better results out of our government.

In this entrepreneurial social sector, public servants use efficient means to deliver better and more responsive services to their constituents. Basically, the role of a government/nonprofit employee is to deliver better services in a more timely manner for less money. Everyone’s happy, right? Well, unfortunately, researchers have shown that this bottom-line-focused approach to public service excludes vulnerable members of our society. By looking only at efficiency, they ignore the promise of equality that our government promises.  This tradeoff between efficiency and equality is well established in social science literature–and it makes common sense: If you’re focused on costs and the best way to provide services, you are going to ignore the most disadvantaged, because they have the most problems and are usually the hardest to reach.

But, the tenants of entrepreneurship and equality are by no means inconsistent. In fact, there is a growing movement to encourage civic engagement through entrepreneurship. The Points of Light Foundation has started a “civic incubator” that supports enterprises focused on building community wealth and citizen engagement. They have supported organizations such as Fuse Corps, which connects professionals with city governments for a one-year fellowship aimed at solving a large-scale challenge, as well as Moneythink, which teaches financial literacy to urban high schoolers. The Rockefeller Foundation launched a “100 Resilient Cities” challenge for cities around the world to compete for resources to strengthen their civic infrastructure. Of course, all of these examples fit into to the broader “social enterprise” movement, and social entrepreneurs around the world are using businesses practices to serve some of the most vulnerable.

One could argue that these social enterprise leaders are themselves public servants, using the tools of efficiency and entrepreneurship to engage with citizens and serve their needs. I believe this is the case, but I’ll save that for another post. Instead, I will focus on the role of “classic” public servants. Classic public servants (that is, those working in government agencies*) can also use the tools of social entrepreneurship to serve the public. By harnessing the power of these social entrepreneurs and serving their needs, the public servant is employing the tools of entrepreneurship through the method of service to create stronger communities, and therefore increase equity. (This assumes that a public servant has some degree of accountability and would not support social enterprises actually end up hurting the community more than they help. I think this “do no harm” assumption is a fair one.)

Taking this view of entrepreneurship, equity and service morphs the public servant’s role to one of facilitator and social infrastructure developer. The public servant works with on-the-ground social entrepreneurs to grow their programs and solutions, through connections as well as resource support. This leads to stronger communities and a more engaged citizenry. In this way, public servants can serve, be efficient through entrepreneurial means, and create a more equitable society. There is no need to make a tradeoff between any of these concepts.

And everyone is happy!

Photo credit: Emily Hoyer

*The role definitions here can get confusing when you realize that both nonprofits and for-profits can be social enterprises.

Is Your Nonprofit the Next NFL?

I had a post in the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog last week on a petition to revoke the NFL’s nonprofit status. I discuss the serious implications this petition will have on the future of the nonprofit sector, as well as how the arbitrary nature of a nonprofit’s tax status needs to be reexamined.

Check it out over on SSIR and let me know what you think!