What a semester it's been! Over the past three months, my class has explored the possibilities of how steemit can support non-profit ventures. We attempted to award grants fueled by cryptocurrency, wrote about every possible topic relating to 1918 we could think of, and grappled with the ethics of raising money via steemit.
Now, we're approaching our last meeting, our grant experiment ended up not working, and we have around 3000 SBD (around $9,900) to give away. This week, we're considering how much impact that money could have by exploring what we could do with varying amounts of money, from $10,000 to $10,000,000.
Unsurprisingly, I'm going to talk about an issue that has emerged from many of my recent posts: staffing.
A screenshot of a classic @dril tweet
What's the problem?
In our readings for this course, most of the cases where a non-profit has gotten into trouble or a project has failed had one thing in common: poor leadership. Many non-profit leaders, such as presidents and boards of trustees, have put themselves in a position similar to @dril: their institutional mission, priorities, and budgets do match up and lead to failure.
A major cause of this is the focus on growth culture within the non-profit world. Organizational leaders become focused on doing bigger and better, and eventually on maintaining a good reputation and a facade of functional normalcy. A near-universal divide between upper-level staff/boards and lower-level staff leads to the upper-level staff deciding how to make the institution, and by extension themselves, look good while routine operations and projects that fulfill the institutional mission deteriorate. Additionally, the vast majority of non-profit boards and leaders are made of privileged (white, upper class, educated, etc) people who prioritize maintaining their privilege above all else.
@dril's "problem"
How can we solve the issue?
The non-profit sector is a conservative field (one of many reasons why this steemit experiment did not work). The problems plaguing non-profit organizations are largely caused by the capitalist system in which they exist, and the unwillingness of cultural leaders of sacrificing their privilege to work within that system. Cultural leaders are not interested in change, and so change can only happen if the cultural leaders themselves change.
Various grant amounts can make different levels of impact. Smaller grants, as I've previously discussed, could be used to fund paid internships to get a wider range of students (namely those who cannot afford unpaid internships) in the field on the ground floor. Larger grants can be used to make boards more inclusive with no financial burden, to form consulting panels that could make stern recommendations to struggling non-profits, or even to help non-profits downsize if needed.
The largest obstacle in this situation is removing the board members and presidents who are currently in power but probably should not be. Forcing someone to step down is a messy and sudden process that can also leave an organization shaken and its staff overwhelmed. Instead, could a grant be used to facilitate a change in leadership and even a "retirement bonus"?
@dril does not want to step down, either
But what can we really do?
The kinds of changes within the cultural sector that my classmates and I have advocated for are some huge, tough changes. It's going to be pretty hard, if not impossible, to overhaul the entire non-profit world for an improved model that values financial efficiency, diversity and inclusion, institutional missions, and true partnerships between organizations and communities, over growth and reputation. As we're mostly young and at the beginnings of our careers, what kinds of say can we have?
We can loudly voice our opinions and make our stances known within the organizations we're trying to change. This can include spreading our ideas that follow best practices, seek out and lift community voices that would otherwise be ignored, or condemn poor decisions that leadership has made. I believe that changes can best be made from the inside, and this class has helped me to become more attune to opportunities to express my own opinions within the organization where I work, whether that's recommending partnerships with community organizations or fighting on behalf of the ethical treatment of contractors. I may not have $10,000,000 but I do have my voice.
a variation on @dril's timeless announcement