Dear John, 

What Refrigerators Have to Do with Managing Nonprofits

Why you should give today to support NPQ: reason # 47—It helps stop stinky stuff from occurring.

I have always subscribed to the theory that the nonprofit management attention span is like a refrigerator.

This is how I figure it: Nonprofits are notoriously complex entities, with multiple stakeholders, tricky business plans whose multiple revenue streams each have their own set of requirements and restrictions, and an ever-changing political, policy and funding context. All these things, and many other equally important ones, need attention.

But we are mere mortals, so sometimes we ignore those all-important complexities. Here is where the refrigerator comes in: inevitably, when I go shopping, I will get some super healthy vegetable that I optimistically place in a refrigerator bin…where it eventually grows fur and starts buzzing as I eat the stuff that is in plain sight—the foods more easily addressed after a long day. If left to fester, the formerly unremarkable substance in the bin will begin to stink up not just the bin but the whole refrigerator, which has fallen into its own larger crisis. Imagine your nonprofit is that vulnerable refrigerator.   

This is how it goes in nonprofit management. If you turn away from some element of your organizational or external landscape for too long, it begins to alter the integrity of what’s around it.

That’s why 60,000 nonprofit and philanthropic leaders subscribe to the NPQ newswire, because we are here to give you the “heads-up” about the critical issues you may be facing but to which you are not really paying sufficient attention.

NPQ, in other words, is an invaluable scout on your journey to make the world and your organization a better place.

But we cannot bring you the news you can use without your generous donation, which will be doubled today by NewsMatch.

We must raise another $25,000 minimum before the end of the year, and we will not make that goal without YOU.

PLEASE, click to donate today!

P.S. Go one step further and forward this email to someone who will join us in standing up for high-quality, truth-seeking journalism. It takes a village!