Examples of transformation
Thinking About Reconstruction Part 3
Image description: Looking up through some tall trees at a sky filled with stars. Photo by Ryan Hutton on Unsplash.
What is possible? Here are a few examples of recent change initiatives at Northwest nonprofits.
· The story of Choose 180 changing their salary structure in 2021 is a hopeful one. Then Executive Director Sean Goode described his process of slowly realizing that change was possible and making a radical change—committing to $70K+ (living wage) salaries for all staff.
· The nonprofit Only 7 Seconds has designed in several unusual, appealing, and mission-aligned employee benefits from the start, including a stipend to be used for fun social activities each month.
· The Montana Nonprofit Association, sister organization to NAWA, went through a very intentional process to move to a 4-day workweek in 2022 and shares what they learned in a free course. It is important to note that this is not a new concept. For example, Okanogan Community Action implemented a 4-day workweek over 20 years ago.
· RVC has been very thoughtful in how they have designed their organizational structure to improve equity. You can learn more about their evolving structure through Key Decisions Transform Your Organization: An RVC Retrospective and subsequent updates. RVC has had to downsize this year and has made some further shifts to their structure as a result.
· Seattle Works was an organization that profoundly shifted its work to reflect the leadership team’s understanding of how to build an anti-racist organization. Their work including shifts to their programming, shared leadership, and an innovate governance model. Unfortunately, the organization has since ceased operations after difficulty attracting funding to support their new direction.
Is it more realistic to just found new, competing nonprofits that operate in new ways and let the old ones slowly decline and fade away? There is some evidence that newer organizations are better positioned to embrace new, more equitable strategies, but these examples highlight change initiatives at both newer and more established organizations. One common denominator is determined leadership and strong convictions.
Whether you are at an emerging or established organization, I hope you see new possibilities by hearing about these initiatives. We are lacking data on long-term sustainability and success of some of these changes in the nonprofit sector (there is good data supporting the 4-day workweek!). There is also some evidence that organizations that become unrecognizable violate the norms of funders and risk their funding. Whether through better reporting or academic research, I hope we can learn more from these and other worthy experiments.