If Hope Is Not A Business Plan, Neither Is Passion
Feb 10th, 2010 by David Svet
Around the corner from my house is a lovely pre-Civil War era house, the Alexander Majors house. It’s a historic landmark in Kansas City. Alexander Majors helped open the west by leading the first wagon train from Westport (Kansas City) to Santa Fe and then made a fortune along the Santa Fe and California trails. He then lost a fortune by founding the Pony Express just as the telegraph became available. His great-granddaughter re-purchased the home to preserve her ancestor’s legacy. The house made the front page of the Kansas City Star this morning because it was discovered that there are no funds to operate or maintain the home. It had been operating on the personal passion and funding of a family friend who recently passed away.
As the economy continues to lag, I am seeing this happen more and more. Organizations flawed operations are being exposed as they continue to operate, or even try to grow, in spite of no sustained funding. They are operating on passion for their mission and hope that it will all work out. In good times you can occasionally get away with that. In harsh times it’s fatal.
When our government does this the Congressional Budget Office calls it an unfunded mandate and tries to bring it to a halt. Sound businesses of all types adjust their operations to match their revenue. But it’s the organizations that were founded on passion alone that are suffering because they were never sustainable. Without a core revenue stream they have no hope of survival.
Passion is great — it’s essential for every entrepreneur, social or commercial. But you only have a sustainable operation when your passion is shared by a source of continuous funding. Passion doesn’t trump supply and demand.
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Your idea that money is necessary to nonprofit success is in the box thinking. We run a very successful business without money at all (OK, $10 a year for website domain registration) and we could do it in any city around the world. Do the nonprofits you’re talking about require money? Sure, but the idea that you have to have it to be sustainable is simply wrong and more importantly money is absolutely NOT essential to a sustainable operation if you are creative. It’s sad that this myth needs to be propagated again and again by the nonprofit world.
Thanks Jessica. I appreciate your input. I believe sustainability requires resources. It can be money, people, time, land, or any other resource. The problem that I am seeing is that some of these organizations aren’t acquiring a sustaining resource, they’re relying on hope and passion to see them through and it isn’t working for them.
I think it’s awesome that you’ve developed an organization that relies on so little money as a sustainable resource! Kudos!
I also looked at Jessica’s link for the Seattle Free School. It appears they are sustainable on little money, because that was one of the conditions for their vision when the program was created. What a great idea! But that is not the kind of situation this post addresses.
So many small organizations start up based on passion, but without a clear vision or plan to make that vision possible (which includes sustainable funding). What would be possible in our communities if that passion was used to support existing efforts?
You make a great point, Nancy. The Seattle Free School succeeds because they developed a clear vision and process to succeed in a sustainable manner outside of the traditional economic system. It’s an awesome accomplishment! But, too many organizations rush in to try to fix a social ill without planning for their long term survival. They end up paying a very dear price instead.
Hey all, thanks for the kudos. “because that was one of the conditions for their vision when the program was created” Actually it wasn’t. When we started we didn’t have a clear vision about money. We had some people that wanted to take donations (usually the people who wanted to spend the money, not do the fundraising work) and some that didn’t. Personally I knew that the fundraising would fall on me and I felt that my energy would be better spent teaching and getting things rolling. I figured we’d deal with money later, when we needed to, and when we’d built a little more reputation.
Those that wanted to raise money said that we wouldn’t get publicity, class attendants, spaces without money. I personally figured we’d deal with that when the time came. We didn’t need all that much of any of those things at first.
It turned out that BECAUSE we don’t take money we didn’t have problems with any of those things. We’ve managed to get into all but one of the major print publications in Seattle (including two glossy mags) and have over 1200 email list subscribers. Our classes have gone up to 125 people (the most we can handle and still teach!) and we have people signing up to teach all the time. Now we refuse any cash contributions (it costs us $10 a year to register our website, that’s our costs). I can tell you that it’s personally very enjoyable to say no when people want to give and to instead tell them to donate to the space we’re using or donate their time instead.
All this said, I do work for a regular nonprofit. In this economy it makes me even happier that we decided to work without money but I realize it’s not possible for all nonprofits. Talking to my ED at work we were discussing how it takes passion to run something like Seattle Free School or any nonprofit without money but thinking about this I questioned, is that any different from a regular nonprofit? No, not at all. A normal nonprofit is going to require both funding and passion. Funding without passion is worthless. Passion without money can be worthwhile, IF (and that’s a big if) you are very, very creative.
Finally though, if you have set up a system that requires cash then please don’t bother if you’re not going to be sustainable, because you’re just taking away from the ability of other nonprofits to get their work done…. which I think is at least part of the point of this post
Good reminder for me not to make assumptions
Thank you for sharing the story of how the Seattle Free School was created. You may just inspire someone else with your vision of what is possible in your community!