Blue Avocado

Unhappy New Year! . . . as the chorus of nonprofit discussion seems to be singing. As if we don't need more troubles on top of the ultra-negative projections about the economy, the advice about what nonprofits should do is depressingly empty. Whenever we see something like "Fundraising in Challenging Times," we feel compelled to read it. What if the answer's here?! But after reading these articles and hearing these speeches, we feel, well, unsatisfied.

Scanning dozens of "what to do" lists recently, their lack of nutrition seems to fall into three groups. A lot of the advice is pious and too abstract: "Focus on the mission" or "Be strategic." I'm reminded of a nonprofit exec from the for-profit sector who reflected that she had given out such advice as a board member and then, when receiving it as an executive director, couldn't believe how obnoxious it was. Other suggestions such as, "Monitor expenses closely," and "Delay the start of capital projects" are good advice but kind of "duh." And then there's the good advice (like "Diversify your revenue streams") that's good advice the same way "lose weight" and "achieve inner peace" are good advice: the reason we aren't doing it isn't because it hadn't occurred to us.

As is too often the case, the advice from the philanthropic-consultant industrial complex (PCIC!) is enough to make a person depressed or even angry. I heard a well-known nonprofit guru tell an audience, "And when we were really stuck about what to do, I picked up the phone and called my friend Al Gore." I felt like throwing a shoe at him! How is this a replicable, usable strategy?

Here are four ideas that might not be better than the others, but at least you may not have heard them before:

1. Declare an emergency. When people have permission to act out of the normal grooves, they can be bolder, more creative, energized, or at least

 

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We understand the reasoning that allows funding only for proven, evidence-based practices. But too often this requirement has become a club battering community nonprofits. Evaluator Clare Nolan explains how to do your best work in the evidence-based minefield:

Safer sex can be a life and death issue. And many nonprofits make safer sex education the centerpiece of their work. But how do they know whether what they're teaching is working - that lives are being saved?

A San Francisco Tenderloin neighborhood had a safer sex education program modeled after a "proven" intervention being promoted by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). But their own expertise with their population led them to want to change the model. That's why they asked me to design a program evaluation -- to see if the model could be changed.

Their education approach was modeled after a "proven" intervention being promoted by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). As part of my background research, I was surprised to learn that the intervention was first shown to be effective among a primarily gay white population in a small Southern city. Would this intervention really be successful at reducing HIV risk behaviors among residents of a diverse urban neighborhood struggling with poverty, homelessness and crime?

This situation reflects a broader trend in the nonprofit sector in which funders encourage and sometimes require nonprofits to use "evidence-based" practices and models. Evidence-based practices (EBPs) are strategies that have been shown through rigorous research to be effective. The premise sounds great. If there's strong evidence that something works, nonprofits should use it, right?

Not so fast. Models and practices with positive track records are a potentially > Read more

"A solar cooker is a heat trap - a greenhouse effect in a pot - like the way your car heats up in the summertime when the windows are closed.

"When people use solar cooking, they save time from foraging for wood and suffer less from being in smoky cook houses. In November, there was the world's largest solar cooking demonstration in Torreon, Mexico, and 150 people were cooking at the same time in the middle of the city!

"As people in the U.S. become more interested in saving money and conserving energy, they are taking up solar cooking. We recently participated in the international slow food conference in Turin, Italy, where the slow food movement is embracing solar cooking. It makes you more aware of nature, and brings us in solidarity with our sisters who don't have appliances. We share the same sun and we all have the same needs."

-- Louise Meyer (above), Solar Household Energy: She brings solar cooking to places such as Bamako, Mali (right); 93% of their participants in Central America and Africa are still using the stoves after three years.