Three Years From Now, It Worked

Leadership under pressure · Part 1 of 6

What changes when a leader sets down the inbox and plans further out, not less.

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When money is tight, planning shrinks. The horizon moves from the next three years to the next grant cycle, then the next payroll. It feels responsible, but it is the wrong adjustment. The leaders who need a longer view most are the ones whose daily pressures make it hardest to take.

What scarcity does to thinking

Behavioral economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, in Scarcity (2013), show that having too little of something, whether money, time, or staff, captures attention. The mind focuses on the shortage, and that focus crowds out everything else. They call it tunneling. It helps you meet an urgent deadline. It is poor at long-range thinking, and long-range thinking is what a funding crisis requires.

The nonprofit sector has its own version. In 2009, Ann Goggins Gregory and Don Howard of the Bridgespan Group described the “nonprofit starvation cycle”: funders expect low overhead, organizations underspend on infrastructure to meet that expectation, and underinvestment makes the next crisis more likely. Crisis planning keeps organizations in crisis.

The inbox is not the horizon

Try ten minutes of structured distance. Set aside the inbox, the calls, the board, and the funders. Now picture your organization three years from now and assume it worked. Not perfect, but real and standing. Where are you? Who is there? What have you stopped worrying about?

The vision was never missing. It was crowded out.

Most leaders who do this find they can answer nearly every question. That is why a longer horizon needs to be scheduled rather than hoped for.

Build with the community, not only for it

A sustainable future is rarely one where a community simply receives services. It is one where the community participates in building and sustaining them. Co-designed infrastructure tends to last because the people who use it have a stake in it. They contribute ideas, volunteers, advocacy, and money. A strategy that treats the community as a recipient alone leaves all of that on the table.

Why boards and executives talk past each other

A frequent source of tension is the funding mix. Board members from business backgrounds often favor unrestricted individual gifts, which are flexible and quick, and which follow a familiar sales logic. Executives often favor multi-year institutional or public funding, which is larger and steadier but slower and more restricted. Individuals give the majority of charitable dollars in the United States, so the board is not wrong. Institutional money funds continuity, so the executive is not wrong either.

The conflict usually comes from two groups defending different risks: volatility on one side and dependency on the other. Naming the risk each is protecting against moves the conversation from positions to design.

Two practices help. First, bring the board into a concrete raise with a defined target and timeline. People trust a plan they have helped carry. Second, make financial literacy routine. Boards that read financial statements monthly are far less likely to be surprised.

Options beyond “raise more”

• Coalitions. Funders increasingly prefer collaboration, in part because it lets them make fewer, larger grants. Applying together also adds safety in numbers: a cut that hits a shared funding stream becomes a shared conversation.
• Earned revenue. Most organizations hold expertise and infrastructure others will pay for, through fees for service, training, or licensing. Earned dollars are unrestricted.
• Money you may already be owed. Public revenue sometimes flows through mechanisms nobody is watching. It is worth asking whether dollars intended for organizations like yours are reaching them.
• A clear case for support. A concise brief with research and data that explains why your work is essential turns a vague appeal into a decision.
• New structures. Some leaders are not only closing this year’s gap. They are designing pooled or intermediary funds that give their communities more control over how money moves.

Donor fatigue and honest framing

Donors are asked constantly, and the response to that is clarity rather than apology. The problems nonprofits address are structural, and the honest framing is that you are asking for resources to fix gaps that should not exist. Conviction, not hesitancy, is what donors respond to.

Isolation is a cost

The executive seat is often a lonely one. There are few people with whom to compare notes, and the people you compare with are often your competitors for funding. Capacity builders teach tactics, but tactics are rarely the whole problem. Peer connection supplies what tactics cannot: ideas, introductions, and the reassurance that others are working through the same constraints. It is also where many opportunities begin, from the simple question of whether there is a connection worth following up.

One action, within seven days

Planning only matters if it moves. End any strategy conversation by naming one concrete action for the coming week: check a possible revenue source, draft the case for support, call a partner. Small actions stated out loud to someone else tend to get done.

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Sources

Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (Times Books, 2013).

Ann Goggins Gregory and Don Howard, “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2009.