Community, Cause and Corporation…. Healthy nonprofits and churches

There was a point in my career that I made a change from the corporate-profit world to the church and non-profit world. I knew there were some distinct differences, but I also knew that part of why I was hired was to bring some of my business background to the daily operations of the nonprofit environment I was about to enter. During that journey and transition I ran into some insight from a pastor and consultant that has provided a framework of balance for the last 25 plus years.

The idea comes from a passage in Philippians 2:25 where Paul is commending one of his associates and says… “I thought I should send Epaphroditus back to you. He is a true brother, co-worker, and fellow soldier.…”. The idea is that these three primary metaphors in a church or nonprofit organization describe relationships and ultimately primary functions and all three must exist in some reasonable balance for effectiveness.

Community….Metaphor: Brother or the idea of a family relational connection

Cause…Metaphor: Soldier or the idea of an army with a strategic battle to win.

Corporation...Metaphor: Co-Worker or the idea of a business or employee environment.

Community : In a healthy church or non-profit there is a relational chemistry among the board, the staff and the volunteers that not only makes it a pleasure to serve, but it creates an environment of trust and relationship that functions like a “healthy” family. We laugh together, we cry together, we celebrate wins and we comfort and encourage during losses. We eat together, we do retreats, we serve side by side and we generally do “life” together. And just like a family, in a healthy non-profit I not only care about your work, but I care about your kids, you family and your needs beyond the office. There is a healthy community component to a non-profit world that becomes a magnet to recruit volunteers and engage people in the mission. It can be infectious. And although relationships are huge in every endeavor, nonprofits live in a world where people volunteer without a paycheck to serve for two major reasons…they believe in the cause and they enjoy the journey in community with others that believe in the same mission.

Cause: There has never been a nonprofit entity started that didn’t begin with a cause. That’s a bold statement, but while the profit world is ultimately about “profits”, the nonprofit world is about a “cause”. And that cause is about a hill to climb and a battle to win to impact the world in some way. Here are some intense causes reflected in mission and vision statements:

Feeding America: A hunger-free America

National Multiple Sclerosis Society: A world free of MS

Alzheimer’s Association: Our vision is a world without Alzheimer’s

Habitat for Humanity: A world where everyone has a decent place to live.

 Ducks Unlimited is wetlands sufficient to fill the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow and forever.

 Teach for America: One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.

The cause is the target and in a nonprofit you are joining the army committed to win the battle. And in it’s purest form it is the ultimate motivating reason that people give their time, talent and resources to the nonprofit world without any self serving return on the investment.

Corporation: While people serve in community to pursue the cause, there is a need to do things with excellence and to efficiently allocate the finite resources to the critical growth path of the nonprofit to accomplish the mission. Systems and structures that properly manage money, facilities, people and resources are essential to every church and nonprofit. By laws, articles of incorporation, budgets, performance reviews, worker discipline, cash flow, accounting, org charts, job descriptions… there is a corporation or business side to the nonprofit world that is essential for sustainability.

These three ideas-community, cause and corporation exist in a dynamic tension. Conflict is normal

The best way I know to expand on the idea to address imbalance in the three areas. Technically you can’t have too much of any of the three areas unless one is disproportionate to the others.

Too much Community….not enough Cause or Corporation– This often happens in the nonprofit or church world when leadership is highly relational, but lacks focus and attention to logistics of the organization. The leader can be a magnet to draw and connect people and they love to serve together, but 5 or 10 years down the road it’s hard to tell what has been accomplished. Supercharged relational leaders must surround themselves with strategic, logistical types to be sure that the “family” is moving the ball down the field and effectively in pursuit of the cause. This happens a lot in churches where over the years they are relationally connected and “like family”, but have lost perspective on their mission and are seeing decline in attendance, income and any semblance of forward movement. If the most significant activities of your organization in a year are the board meetings or pot luck dinners, you might have imbalance in community.

Too much Cause…not enough Community or Corporation-This happens with driven leadership. Passion for the cause is very important, but there can be a point where driven leaders use and abuse staff and volunteers. People love to be useful, but they do not want to be used. An imbalance in cause can destroy community and the healthy relationships that sustain the organization. When leaders push so hard that people start to live in guilt mode, the cause will eventually lack support. That also extends to the loss of good corporate practices when the cause gets ahead of resources and accountability of leaders is lacking at dangerous levels. It all has a diminishing effect. A “cause” imbalance is is often happening in organizations where there is a perpetual lack of volunteers and a severe shortage of financial resources.

Too much Coporation…not enough Community or Cause-Often as organizations mature they get more organized. It would be hard to argue with a highly organized nonprofit entity. But if you attend a board meeting of a nonprofit and it is filled with the smallest details of financial discussions with little or no discussion about volunteers and the future vision of the cause, there is a good possibility that the corporation component is out of balance. Organizations that are imbalanced in this area tend to stay focused on keeping things afloat. Growth is not the highest value, preservation is. The leadership is consumed with raising money, cutting costs and funding a budget that keeps the doors open, but does not fuel a vision to ignite progress towards the cause. Volunteers exist in limited numbers, but they are mostly used to raise money and rarely engage in the activities of the mission that created the nonprofit. As a volunteer it’s no fun to be a part of this organization anymore because it’s about survival. This shift often happens as an organization matures and some of the early stakeholders that brought passion and zeal start to yield leadership to logistical organizers and managers. The organization becomes overmanaged and underled.

So there it is.

Community, Cause and Corporation

What if we selected board members with personalities that balance these three ideas? What if we hired staff with attention to all three areas? What if we surrounded the CEO or pastor with people that enhanced any of these characteristics that he or she might be weak in?

A healthy organization is a community of great relationships that march strategically and with focus towards the powerful vision of a worthy cause leveraging accountability to manage resources and people with the excellence of a well led corporation.