Thoughts About Recent ARNOVA Conference

Jeff Greim

I sometimes ask my students whether their nonprofit functions like a “day laborer” or like an  “entrepreneur.”  This question is meant to highlight the differences between a nonprofit that is contracted by funders to operate very prescribed program models, and a nonprofit that has the financial independence to creatively identify and address unmet needs in their local community without first obtaining  financial approval from a funder.   


This distinction came into sharp relief while I attended this year’s ARNOVA conference held in Indianapolis on November 15-17.  As I listened to many paper presentations, two seemingly competing themes emerged.  One theme emphasized the need for nonprofits to do a better job providing funders with valid performance measurements to demonstrate the effectiveness of their services.   The underlying assumption was that nonprofits--in order to obtain and retain funding--had to demonstrate their worthiness by excelling in funder-specified program and performance measurements.  This theme reflects a top-down management perspective.   

A second theme reflected a “bottom-up” perspective.    It emphasized the importance and benefits of nonprofits being responsive to community-identified needs and to be supportive of creative solutions developed organically in collaboration with community members.

As I thought about these two seemingly contradictory perspectives, I recalled a third theme that my students and I developed during a recent Capstone Course at Bay Path College and that draws on the writings of Chambers & Wedel and Elizabeth Schorr. This theme states that while a majority of people can normally be served adequately using a “one-size-fits-all” service model, there will always be a certain percentage of “outliers” who can only be helped using idiosyncratic methods that take into account their unique circumstances.   In our class, we visualized this theme as a bell curve distribution of service recipients with a majority of them grouped under the middle of the curve (and adequately served by standardized program models) and a minority of recipients located under the two-tails of the distribution requiring flexible, client specific services. 

This third theme suggests that the merit of a top-down or bottom-up perspective is contingent upon the service needs of the target population.  If the nonprofit’s target population is the majority of people who can be served by a standardized service model, then an emphasis on providing those prescribed services efficiently, effectively and economically—as measured by valid performance measurements—would seem very appropriate.  On the other hand, if the nonprofit’s target population is the “outlier”—those requiring unique services--then the nonprofit really has to be flexible in its development and provision of those services and not be artificially constrained by the “canned” protocols of standardized service models and/or performance measurements.    Thoughts?

2012 ARNOVA CONFERENCE - 2013's conference will be in Hartford!

Hi,

As I write this, I am sitting in the Charlotte Airport on my way home from the 2012 ARNOVA annual conference that was held in Indianapolis.   I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and its now Saturday evening.  The conference is a jam-packed kaleidoscope of “all things nonprofit” including though-provoking paper presentations, association meetings, colloquiums, and many side-bar conversations among the 800 or so attendees.  To give you a sense of the depth and breadth of topics discussed, there were complete “session tracks” in the following areas:

1)      Boards, Governance & Accountability;

2)      Collaborations & Networks;

3)      Community & Grassroots Organizations / Secular & Faith-based;

4)      Effectiveness, Evaluation & Programs;

5)      Fundraising & Giving;

6)      Innovations & Entrepreneurship;

7)      Management, Leadership & Strategies; 

8)      Public Policy & Law;

9)      Teaching & Education;

10)   Theory & Methods;

11)   Volunteerism & Volunteering; and 

12)   The Conference Track:  Re-Examining Philanthropy. 

In all, there were 170 separate sessions.  I wanted to attend many more than was physically possible and all the sessions I attended were very good.  

I'll write some polished thoughts about the conference on a later blog.  But for now, I just want to share that the conference is a wonderful professional development opportunity that you should not miss if you ever have the opportunity to attend.   And that brings me to the real point of this blog.

 

ARNOVA’s Annual Conference next year will be in held on November 21-23 in Hartford, CT – in Bay Path College’s backyard.  So if you are within driving distance of Hartford, I strongly encourage you (and your staff) to participate in next year’s conference as a presenter and/or attendee and start planning now to do so.  The call for papers normally occurs in the early spring.  I’m a member of the Host-Site Committee and will share updates on next year’s conference as plan are finalized.  If you have any questions about the conference, contact me or go to ARNOVA’s website.  OK? 

Jeff 

Hi, 

In the post-election "reflections" sweeping the media, one person getting a lot of attention is Karl Rove, the organizer of the SUPER PAC "Crossroads" and its "sister" 501c4 "Crossroads GPS".  Below is a link to a front page article in yesterday's NYTIMES.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/little-to-show-for-cash-flood-by-big-donors.html?pagewanted=all

The gist of these media "stories/articles" seems to be that Rove is on the "hot seat" because he raised and spent somewhere between $340 - $390 million dollars on campaign ads and seems to have nothing to show for it.  Apparently none of the candidates his organizations supported got elected.  

So the discussion is focusing on whether all this money flowing into the campaign process (due to the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision) can actually influence elections, or was Rove incompetent, or was he just backing a "bad" product.  Interestingly, I’m not hearing a corresponding evaluation of the effectiveness of Rove's "opposition", the millions of dollars in pro-OBAMA campaign ads.

Unfortunately, this discussion misses the real point.  In previous blogs and two presentations I've made this fall, I've argued that using 501c4s as PACs is particularly damaging to our democracy and to the reputation of the nonprofit sector because the 501c4s are funneling undisclosed money into political campaigns.  From my partisan perspective, "the bad" 501c4s didn't "win" on Tuesday and that is "good."  But as Robert Reich, former US Labor Secretary, said on MSNBC last night, this is only the beginning.  As long as the 501c4 option is available, very wealthy people will secretly pour more and more money into political campaigns and--regardless of the election outcome--this will not be good for our democracy or the reputation of the nonprofit sector. 

Thoughts?  

Jeff  

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/08/us/politics/little-to-show-for-cash-flood-by-big-donors.html?pagewanted=all