The thing about a labor of love is that it can quickly take up more energy than you intended it to. I spoke with a wonderful librarian who told me about going from believing their job was about cultural enrichment, to realizing it was about maintaining the last free place in a failing social infrastructure.
The other shoe really dropped on the day they experienced three simultaneous crises: One staff member administering Narcan for an overdose, another managing a hospital patient who'd walked out with an IV still attached, trying to pull the needle from their arm, and the director breaking up a physical fight. They rose to the occasion, out of necessity.
If your nonprofit spends most of its time managing crises that stem from other systems' failures, you're not alone. But it IS a problem because scope creep is not sustainable, nor is it attractive to funders.
Thousands of small instances of going above and beyond also chip away at your staff’s capacity to do the work they were trained for. It burns them out. It’s also a problem when funders think you’re getting distracted by solving problems that don’t directly link to your output metrics.
At some point, the question becomes: How do we get funded for the work we're actually doing, not just the work our organization was designed to do? The answer lies in the messaging.
If we can be brutally honest about community needs, and show how our seemingly scattered attempts to support all types of problems actually ties into our outcome goals, then we can raise money for that.
For example, a library in California fought for (and won) a fixed percentage of municipal budget, which meant their total budget grew as the overall budget grew. This was stable, predictable funding that allowed real investment in the wraparound services they needed.
It happened in part because an oversight body asked to see the original budget request (not the watered-down version that got approved), and the gap in between the two made the community livid. That transparency catalyzed change.
What do you say you do, vs what do you actually do? And are you being strategic about communicating your “overtime”?
Warmly,
Noella
