Living and breathing the work of Community Benefit Organizations*, this is no small matter. Taxes are revenues. And even if you barely squeaked by with a D+ in Business 101, you know that without revenues, there is no service - there is nothing!

Which brings me to a roadblock I share often here - the illogical focus on means over ends. Taxes are money, and money is never an end. It is always a means to something else.

During election times especially, Americans regularly hear the talking-point words, “It is better to reduce tax rates and let businesses and families decide on the most productive way to spend money.”

Such a means-based statement leads me to ask:

When you head to the market this week, how much road are you intending to buy?
How much improvement to your community’s sewer system?
How much library will you be purchasing?
How about economic development activity?
How much criminal court would you like to purchase today? $1 worth? $10 worth?
And would you like fries with that?

The fact that “means” - taxes - have become an “issue” is simply illogical. Issues have to do with end results. We might just as soon determine that “swallowing” is an issue. Or “dog food.” One cannot logically be for or against means.

If the “question of taxes” is a meaningless question, then, for the sake of the things that matter most to the Community Benefit Sector, I propose we begin asking meaningful questions instead.

What kind of country do we want to live in?
What kind of communities do we want?

Do we want a country with crumbling infrastructure? (See New Orleans. See bridge in Minneapolis. See Missouri levees.) Do we want a country where healthcare quality ranks below virtually every other highly developed country, as well as many countries with a lower “standard of living” than the U.S? Do we want a country where we are always looking over our shoulder to see who will try to harm us next?

Those are the questions that matters most for those of us doing Community Benefit work. And they lead to the logical next question: “What might it look like if our nation aimed at end results, rather than means?” (For the sake of this discussion, let’s narrow that question to focus on infrastructure.)

In the 1980’s, after helping Afghanistan defeat the Soviets, U.S. troops left the country, as we continued to provide ongoing military aid - again, focusing on the means.

What if instead the U.S. had spent that money to rebuild infrastructure in Afghanistan - build schools and water systems. Yup - a Marshall Plan. What end results would the efforts to build infrastructure have been aimed at? Perhaps the result of a self-sufficient society as we see in post-war Europe and Japan? Is it possible, 20 years later, that people who are not living hand-to-mouth might be less likely to choose violence as their only perceived option for survival?

What if, instead of continuing to feed an illogical war in Iraq, we took all that energy and effort and rebuilt Iraq’s infrastructure - roads and electricity and water systems? What might the results be? Are those results different from the results of simply continuing to fight?

And what if, instead of talking about continuing to keep taxes low here at home, we instead built our own nation’s infrastructure? If our economy is losing jobs, what if we put people to work building what is crumbling here at home. Yes, what if we brought back the WPA?

Aim at end results - strong infrastructure and strong societies in all ways. Stop aiming at the means - low taxes, winning a war (and yes, war is always a means as well. Winning a war is never the desired end result - it is what we hope will happen AFTER we win that is the desired end result).

When we aim at the means, we always mess up. Always. When we aim at end results we all agree on (communities that are healthy, vibrant, safe, humane places to live, both at home and around the world); and we align our means behind those ends with integrity - those are the results we will get.

And so, when it comes to the “issue” of taxes, the question of “ends vs. means” moves the discussion from one of “spending” to one of “investing.”

Spending is about the means; investing is about the end results. Spending is about today; investing is about forever.

Building infrastructure so people can comfortably and peacefully get on with life is an investment in BOTH today AND the future we are creating. Healthcare is infrastructure. Roads and bridges and levees are infrastructure. Sewer systems. Libraries and schools. That infrastructure helps us today and builds towards our future.

And that future we build is the ultimate end result we strive to achieve - as a Community Benefit Sector, and as individuals living on this planet.

Which brings us back to taxes.
And so, here is what I ask of each and every one of you:

Every time someone mentions the bogeyman of “keeping taxes low,” reply with this:

“That phrase is SO twentieth century. In the 21st century, low taxes are known as maintaining low community standards and crumbling infrastructure. The modern term is investing in our communities for now and the future.“

When they talk about the bogeyman of “socialized medicine,” tell them that is SO old school. In this new century, we call that kind of talk keeping hard-working people sick and economically devastated. The modern term is investing in our communities, for now and the future.

Imagine the conversation:

“I’m for low taxes.”
“Oh, you’re for lousy roads?”

Discussing short-term means is a waste of time in a world where we hold ourselves accountable for the future we are creating right now.

So in THIS century, let’s focus our political issues on the community and global results we intend to create. Healthy communities, healthy individuals. A peaceful world where we eliminate the day-to-day survival issues of having water to drink, food to eat, electricity and schools and roads - eliminating the primary motivation for otherwise decent people to forsake hope and fall prey to the call of irrational violence.

Tax-and-spend liberal?

Nope. I’m an investor in a strong community, a strong nation, a strong world.

Investor in the present AND the future.

As a participant in the Community Benefit Sector, it is our job to focus those conversations back to those ends - Community Benefit.

Repeat it and share it - we are Investors, not spenders.

And please, for the love of all that is holy, someone raise my taxes. There is much I would like my dollars to buy.

*********

For a succinct account of how western influence has created current situations throughout the Islamic world, I cannot recommend enough Benazir Bhutto’s final work, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West

Curious about the term Community Benefit Sector?

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Here’s a riddle for the weekend:

If an organization is considering Performance Pay for its CEO, what is “performance?”

The answer in a “nonprofit organization” is usually about fundraising - money.

But is having the means to provide service the only measure of performance? Isn’t real performance about end results? In a Community Benefit Organization, isn’t real performance about Community Benefit?

I wrote the other day that words matter. The choice of seeing our work as “nonprofit” vs. “community benefit” changes so much of how we see things.

The board of a “nonprofit hospital” might logically consider basing performance pay on “profitability.”

But what happens when they are not considered a “nonprofit hospital” - what happens when they are considered a “Community Benefit Hospital?”

What, then, is “performance” - in any Community Benefit organization? And how do we measure and reward for that?

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An example:
In my local market, I can buy “Organic” vegetables, or I can buy “conventionally grown” vegetables.

Another word choice, another image:

I can buy vegetables sprayed with poison,
or I can buy vegetables that are NOT sprayed with poison.

Sticks and stones. Words matter.

Here’s another one.
A recent addition to the dictionary of U.S. Political slams is the label “flip-flopper” - a term to describe those who change their thinking throughout their lives. First you voted for it, then you voted against it.

Another word choice, another image: How about the word “Grown-up?” How about “Mature, thinking adult?”

The ability to keep growing and expanding our thinking by applying what we have learned is certainly a sign of maturity. We don’t have to go rigid as a 3 year old, staking our claim and screaming “I want it I want it I want it.” Grown-ups learn and (we hope) change their actions based on what they learn.

Same action, different label, different image. Words matter.

So what does all this have to do with the work of Community Benefit Organizations*?

Plenty. Just look at some of the words we use!

“We are integrating seriously mentally ill patients into the community at large.”

While such language may work as jargon with other professionals in the field, we forget that when we use those same labels with those who do not spend their lives doing our work, their image is often tremendously different.

The image in your mind, as the mental health professional, may be an image of work that is affirming, rewarding, compassionate, strength-based. But the person with whom you are speaking likely has a very different image indeed - perhaps an image described with the words, “NOT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD, YOU’RE NOT!”

What if instead of the label “Seriously Mentally Ill Patients” that mental health professional said, “We are helping folks get their fullest lives back after they have learned how to keep their mental illness in check.”

The same holds true for labels like working poor and uninsured and recovering addict and all the other buzzwords and labels we use without thinking of their real effect on just plain old community members.

To have the most impact possible in our communities - to replace fear and bigotry with a sense of compassion and possibility - we must keep in mind the images conjured by our words. Those images matter, and that is why words matters.

Flip-flopper or “mature, thinking adult?”
Poisoned food or “conventionally grown”?
Uninsured or “my neighbor who works two jobs and still can’t afford healthcare.”

Sticks and stones may indeed break my bones. But in the work we all do, so can words.

* Speaking of words, if you’re curious about our use of the term “Community Benefit Organization,” this link will explain!

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Here is what Kelly said:

Board recruitment is nothing more than stating the case for an institution you love to people who will be prepared to do the same thing.

Perfect!

You all know that I wrote what I am often told is “the book” on Board Recruitment. What you may not know is that that book came out of frustration, because boards routinely recruit HORRIBLE board members.

And why does that happen? I think it occurs for at least two reasons.

First, as a sector, we tend to de-value boards. Ask any group of leaders in this sector, “What is stopping us from creating more significant change in our communities?” and “the problem with boards” will likely be high on that list.

From that assumption, governance models are, almost to the one, prescriptive - the lists of things boards must do, the lines they are not allowed to cross. And we assign to them the God-awful task of “accountability for the means” - the risk management issues of legal oversight, operational oversight.

If board work was an ice cream sundae, the flavor of the month would be Dull. The cherry on top would be “scary.”

So first, when boards are not governing via a system that encourages them to be the force for inspired leadership within an organization - leadership towards the thing they care about in the first place (the mission) - the results go beyond simply knowing their work is a combination of dull and scary.

The result is that THAT is what they are recruiting board members to!

The second reason boards recruit horrible board members stems from the first. If boards are assumed to be an organizational afterthought - a pain in the butt that is legally required but we would just as soon do without - then what difference does it make how we recruit or who we recruit?

And so boards routinely tell us their recruitment criteria is “warm blood and a pulse.” (Sadly, one look around their board table, and you see they are not kidding!!!)

And that leads to this reality:

Boards take more care in hiring the guy who clears trash out of the parking lot than they take care in “hiring” their board.

What if that doesn’t have to be the case? Let’s try this:

Sit back, close your eyes, and imagine your board is extraordinary. Imagine they are engaged. Effective. Energized. Imagine your board is your organization’s greatest asset - your greatest advocate for your mission.

Now let’s take a peek into what recruitment looks like when it is an inspired process, rather than a “No-One-Good-Will-Ever-Sit-On-Our-Board-So-Why-Bother” process.

What To Seek in a Board Member
Step 1) Get rid of the board recruitment matrix. I am not sure who thought it was a good idea to create that universal checklist of what every single board supposedly needs, but throw it away. Burn it. You’ll see in a moment that you do not need it - at all.

Step 2) Make a list of the qualities you want every board member to have. Passion for the mission is usually high on that list. Time to commit to doing the real work. Works and plays well with others. Etc. What are the characteristics you want every single board member to possess?

Step 3) Make a second list - qualities it would be nice if some folks had, but they don’t all need. Perhaps connections and money. Perhaps financial acumen. Perhaps experience in the field of the organization’s work. These are things not everyone needs to have, but it would be nice if some folks did. (This is where the universal matrix becomes “things specific to our board.”)

Step 4) Do NOT put “pro bono” anything on that second list. I won’t dwell on why not in this post, but you can link here for a long explanation of why not.

Step 5) Now make a third list. This is the list of qualities you NEVER want to see on your board. It might be ego, or someone who never shuts up. It might be “know-it-all.” It could be any of a number of qualities that make for REALLY BAD BOARD MEMBERS. Why list these? Because they are often the things we overlook when we are seeking “warm blood and a pulse.” And the only way to keep people with those traits off your board is to be conscious about what you want AND what you do NOT want.

(As an aside, how many of the people on your list of “dream board members” have huge egos? Are you really sure you want them as part of your team?)

You now have your list of what you’re looking for. And Kelly’s quote above says it: You want to find people who are so passionate and excited about your cause that they want to help however they can.

The rest of the Board Recruitment book shows how to find those folks - and how to “test drive” them to be sure there is a fit. But the bottom line is this: If you don’t specify what you are looking for - AND what you are NOT looking for - then warm blood and a pulse will continue to be your recruitment criteria.

Which leads to the tag line we have used since the book came out, back in 2001:

Think of the worst board members you have ever seen, and remember: Someone recruited them.

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Have you ever wondered what it takes to sustain an organization’s efforts?* Is it just money? Or is it something more fundamental?

I’m thinking about this because we spent time at the Diaper Bank last week - our “grandchild.” There is such an extraordinary energy surrounding the work they are doing, and that feels so good to see. Is that from some super fundraising effort? No - it is because they are engaging folks in what the Diaper Bank is at its core, and that is building all sorts of momentum. That engagement is sustaining them in every way imaginable!

Perhaps I’m also thinking about “sustainability” because my birthday is rolling around again later this summer. And that brings up all the images of last year’s birthday, when my friends swept through my house and did all the fix-up work I had neither time nor inclination to do.

It felt amazing - WAY more amazing than if I had found the time and dollars to pay professionals to just do the work.

And I’m realizing that when we were talking with the Diaper Bank’s ED and board, it was clear that was what THEY were feeling. They were so obviously energized, excited, joyful.

So what does it really take to sustain an organization’s efforts? And how can that work be energizing and joyful?

When I teach sustainability in workshops, I always ask the group, “What is Sustainability?” Here’s what they tell me, every time:

• Ongoing cash flow
• Not being dependent upon grants or any other single source of funds
• An endowment
• A large pool of donors
• Diverse funding sources
• etc.

Then I ask what makes us sustainable in our real lives. And suddenly the room comes alive.

• Health
• Family
• Love
• Faith
• Beauty
• Fun
• Food
• Friends
• Chocolate

People are smiling, joking.

Now imagine those same feelings of energy and joy when you talk about sustainability. Is that how it feels in your board meetings, in your fund development meetings? If not, is that perhaps due to the reactions we feel when we look at the two lists above? While one of those lists makes us smile, the other brings up thoughts of ‘just more work to do.’

For me, then, the frustrating part about the standard approaches to sustainability is this: Not only are those standard approaches not joyful - they also have not worked.

How can I say they have not worked? Well, how many organizations do you know that are truly financially stable? With all the books and workshops out there on building sustainability, wouldn’t you suppose there would be a LOT more sustainable organizations by now?

Looking at the Diaper Bank, though, and the extent to which their work is so deeply engaged in the community - well it reminds me of why my friend Dan Duncan from Tucson’s United Way told me years ago, “You couldn’t kill the Diaper Bank now if you wanted to. The community wouldn’t let you.” **

And so this week, it is exciting to see that even as we founders are now almost 3 years retired from running our “baby,” that the Diaper Bank’s approach is still about Community Engagement. They have seen firsthand that when we engage the world in the mission - at whatever level the world wants to engage - the money (and everything else) just takes care of itself.

I am always proud to crow about our “grandchildren” - both the Tucson and Phoenix Diaper Banks. But in this particular case, in these tough economic times when everyone is worried about money, it was especially heartening last week to spend time with them, to see that their main desire is to just engage the community in everything they are doing.

So perhaps that should be this week’s assignment.
Look at your to-do list today, choose one item, and for that item, ask, “How could engaging the community in this item make the results more effective?”

I can’t wait to hear what you come up with!

* I have written pretty extensively about Sustainability at our website, including “Sustaining Your Mission for the Long Haul” and “Asset-Based Resource Development: How to Build and Sustain Strong, Resilient Programs.” Let me know what you think!

** Dan’s quote is from FriendRaising - you can read the whole Introduction to that book here.

And one last thing. While the title of this post is “Nonprofit Sustainability,” we cannot sustain our efforts if we continue to consider ourselves “nonprofits.” Sustaining “Community Benefit Organizations” just makes more sense, doesn’t it?

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Good morning and Happy Monday! The GREAT news around here is that I finished my book this weekend! Yes, The Pollyanna Principles is ready to go into layout!

And so this morning, yes indeed, I love the whole world!

Yessiree, the world is just awesome. And yes, that will be stuck in our heads all day. And for me, that is completely ok.

Have a great Monday and a great week, all!

Special thanks to Nick for finding this week’s Rock Out!

And if you are a fan of the comics at XKCD, you will love their tribute to the Discovery Channel - and the whole world!

(If you are new to the Monday Morning Rock Out, you can find previous Rock Outs here - enjoy!)

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Community-Driven Governance is a framework that defines a board’s primary purpose as leadership towards making a significant, visionary difference in the community the organization serves. Because “making a difference” is the reason most board members join boards in the first place, we call this framework “Governing for What Matters.”

A board Governs for What Matters by holding itself primarily accountable for creating a better future for the individuals the organization serves and the communities it is affecting. Only then, within that context of Community-focused accountability, does the board hold itself accountable for ensuring the organization has the means to accomplish those end results - preventing legal and operational problems, eliminating existing problems, and most importantly, ensuring the organization has adequate infrastructure for accomplishing significant community-driven results.

In practice, the board’s work centers around an annual plan that aims first and foremost at the difference the organization will make in the community. The plan then addresses the organizational infrastructure needed to accomplish those goals. Throughout the year, then, the board is conscious to ensure that its interim decisions are all aligned with furthering the organization’s Vision, Mission and Values.

The approach is intended to be simple enough for any board to put into practice, while comprehensively addressing first the ends, and then the means for which a board will hold itself accountable. Simplicity is the key, as the more complicated and convoluted a system, the less likely it is to be maintained.

Community-Driven Governance differs from other approaches most significantly in its expectations - that boards will hold “leadership towards creating more significant impact in our communities” as their primary purpose. The board’s actions and systems then flow from those expectations, ensuring the organization has what it takes to make that impact a reality.

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I know I have been covering this topic in detail in the series of articles I have been doing at our website, but this synopsis was just so concise - well I appreciate your indulging me by letting me share it. And to those of you who have been using this approach, please let me know - is there anything I missed in this explanation?

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I am so pleased to share another letter from Nora Lester Murad. Nora lives with her husband and three daughters in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem, in Palestine’s West Bank. In addition to her consulting work to NGOs, Nora has co-founded Dalia Association, a community foundation created and run by people who actually live in Palestine - a rarity in a land dominated by foreign aid (and therefore foreign priorities). Dalia Association’s purpose is to get beyond the politics and just take care of the people.

Nora has blessed us by agreeing to guest blog here, to share what it is like to try to run a Community Benefit Organization* amid the chaos and insanity that is day-to-day life in Palestine. You can find her first post here, and her bio is below her post.

I hope you will continue to welcome Nora and Dalia Association into your hearts.

**************************

Dear Hildy,
Thanks so much for asking about the strategic planning process we did for Dalia Association. I hope your blog readers will have some reflections that will help us in the future.

Our strategic planning process was constrained by our donor, an excellent foundation overall that tries to help applicants access funds by getting involved in shaping the grant proposal.

They suggested that their grants committee would be much more likely to approve our application if we specified that we’d be seeking an international consultant, rather than a local consultant, to facilitate our strategic planning. They said that in their experience, it is worth the expense to get an objective point of view from someone who specializes in community foundations.

Were they helping us to get a grant that we would not otherwise have gotten? Were they passing on valuable information they’ve learned from years of experience around the world? Were they driving our agenda? Or did they not fully comprehend the assets we have right here in our own community? I suspect all these things may have played a role.

The strategic planning retreat itself had some good outcomes. We invited some non-board members to bring new perspectives to our thinking, and this helped deepen our relationships with some key community members who we’ve been trying to involve. We recruited two new board members and two committee members from among those guests.

The board itself came to new clarity and stronger consensus about the need to focus on successful implementation of our three grantmaking pilots over the next 18 months.

And the international consultant became a champion for us, which I think was helped along by the drama we went through when we took a break from our planning to observe a nearby village being completely surrounded by an illegal Israeli settlement. That incident led to us all being detained and questioned by Israeli soldiers for a very tense 20 minutes or so.

But were those achievements worth one-third of our annual budget? The plan itself is unimpressive. It documents what we are planning to do and puts it into a framework that donors and others can relate to.

But is it a plan we can follow? Or is it just a good idea on paper?

As in other third world and regions of conflict, planning in Palestine is very, very difficult. True, the political situation is uncertain, but this is not the challenge. We can pretty realistically predict that the situation on the ground will continue to get worse.

We will continue to have no access to Gaza, nor will Gazans be able to reach us (which is why our Gaza board member did not participate in our strategic planning).

We will continue to be able to enter Jerusalem and Israel only when Palestinian ID holders are granted travel permits by the Israeli military (almost impossible to get). We have had to schedule all our pilots inside the West Bank, as our community organizer has been denied a travel permit.

We will continue to be delayed and frustrated by over 500 mobility barriers (staffed and unstaffed military checkpoints, trenches, concrete blocks, etc.) that divide the West Bank itself into bantustans. The occupation is something completely out of our control, but we can fairly predict how it will affect our operations.

Sadly, all of that is the predictable part of doing our work here.

On the other hand, our financial situation is unpredictable. We’ve planted many, many seeds, but because what we’re doing is so new, and most donors have little or no experience in the Middle East, it is very difficult to predict what we will or won’t get in terms of funding, which means we don’t know if we can hire more staff, expand our projects, or do any of what we have planned to accomplish.

For example, we have one donor who just this month approved our grant request for $25,000/year. We made that request in September 2006 — twenty months ago!

The delays were due to a combination of bureaucracy and indifference and arrogance, with a lot of preconceived notions, misconceptions and stereotypes added in. I say that because after we passed all the administrative hurdles, they shared that they then went through months and months and months of internal discussion about the “risks” of supporting us.

How do you prove that you’re not a terrorist? How do you prove your innocence? How do we prove we are doing real community development work, good work that is sorely needed?

We have another potential donor who is trying to convince us that our grant amounts of $3,000 are too high. They say that local donors who are poor will be discouraged to give if their contribution is so low in relation to grant amounts.

This was such a strange idea to me that I had to think really hard just to understand this feedback.

Then I realized that in the west, individuals make contributions because they want to have an impact. They want to make a noticeable difference.

But here in Palestine, that is not the motivation at all. In both Islam and Christianity, charitable giving is a regular part of the faith, and it is therefore simply proportional to income. In other words, people give money here primarily from either a religious or social obligation. They expect their generosity to be rewarded by God.

And so there is no shame in giving small amounts. Each family is expected to give in relation to their means. People don’t give because they want to affect some particular change through an organization. And if they did, they would give directly to the organization they want to support, NOT to a community foundation that will make the ultimate decision about how the funds are used.

Now we have to decide, are we going to modify our grant request to increase the chances of funding, since the donor has a specific way of looking at grant amounts? Or are we going to stick with what we know about our local environment and people? This time, I think we will stick to our own plan knowing that we may lose the funding.

Being a grant recipient certainly is helping us to get clearer and more committed to the type of grantmaker that WE want to be. Little things like returning emails, giving full attention when you talk to people, saying up front how long decisions will take rather than saying “in the next few weeks” for months and months — these are the behaviors that communicate to grantees that you respect them as agents of social change (not just as “applicants”) and that you are interested in their success in achieving their mission (not just in “completing the funded project”).

Well, I’ve wandered from the topic of strategic planning a bit. In the future, we expect our resources to become more predictable, which will enable better planning. We hope (and plan) to influence the donor community to be more accountable and responsive. We also hope (and plan) to be less dependent on them once we have more resources under our local control. I anticipate that our strategic planning will look at lot different then!

Best regards to all,
Nora

**************************

Until 2004, Nora Lester Murad combined a life of teaching at Bentley College in Massachusetts with a life of consulting to governments, foundations, corporations and community organizations on matters of racism and intercultural understanding.

In 2004, Nora and her husband moved their three daughters halfway around the world, to the Palestinian community of Beit Hanina, in Israeli controlled East Jerusalem. “My husband is Palestinian, and we wanted to be near his family. We wanted the girls to grow up with a deep sense of belonging to both Palestinian and American cultures, with full access to both sides of their heritage and languages.”

Nora is now the volunteer Executive Director of Dalia Association, a new community foundation that mobilizes resources for Palestinian-led social change and sustainable development in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the Palestinian communities inside Israel.

To get updates on Nora’s life and work,subscribe at the top of this page.

Curious about our use of the term “Community Benefit Organization?”

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Well actually, it’s a special post overall.

This is my 100th blog post! WOW!!!

I have been saving this Rock Out for something special. I have been saving it for something to celebrate. I have been saving it for a kick-in-the-pants to get out there and tackle something that might seem overwhelming (perhaps like creating the future of our communities?).

So please celebrate with me as we continue to tackle the “impossible. ” No excuses.

We are indeed creating the future, whether we do so consciously or not. And we do indeed accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for.

So let’s get out there and create an astonishing future for our grandkids and their grandkids - and for ourselves!

No excuses. Period.

Here’s to another 100 posts, and another 100 after that. Let’s party!

Have a great Monday and a great week, all!

(If you are new to the Monday Morning Rock Out, you can find previous Rock Outs here - enjoy!)

(Very cool birthday cake hot air balloon c/o SkyChariot.com)

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And so I thought it would be fun to share that list here. For those heading into Summer Reading Season, this list will keep you busy. For those heading deep into winter, these will be great books to curl up in a blanket with.

The books range from consulting titles to community titles to life titles and all in between. I have read a number of them, and can’t wait to read the rest. Here goes!

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations
by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom
How community efforts can multiply their passion and power through shared leadership. (A favorite in our office - we have given it as gifts and made it a required text in the Masters degree course we teach!)

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Whether we are creating a movement to turn the “nonprofit” sector into the Community Benefit Sector, or focusing on local neighborhood initiatives, we can learn to make those ideas “stick” with the people we want to engage in that work!

Reframe Your Blame, How to Be Personally Accountable
by Jay Fiset
The first principle of the Community-Driven Institute is “We accomplish what we hold ourselves accountable for.” Need I say more?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything
by Joe Trippi
Joe Trippi used the Internet to take Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign from unknown to superpower. The Internet is distributing power to the people right now. Trippi shows how to use that power to accomplish our missions.

No Easy Walk to Freedom
by Nelson Mandela
The collection of Nelson Mandela’s articles, speeches, letters from underground, and transcripts from his trials. I cannot wait to read this book!

Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West
by Benazir Bhutto
I simultaneously read this book and mourned the loss of so brilliant a soul. I learned more about Islam, and more about the path that has led to the present reality in the Islamic world than I dreamed one book could teach. Bhutto’s thoughtful analysis of how to reconcile the West with the Islamic world is masterful. Both the book and her death create a call for us to follow her lead.

Attracting Perfect Customers: The Power of Strategic Synchronicity
by Stacey Hall and Jan Brogniez
The authors - both consultants - make one simple and compelling point: Consultants will make more money and be far happier if they only deal with customers whose values mesh with their own. As true for Community Benefit Organizations as it is for the consultants who serve them!

Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
by Jim Collins
According to Collins, the difference between successful organizations is not between the “business sector” and the “social sectors,” but between good organizations and great ones.

No Contest: The Case Against Competition
by Alfie Kohn
This was actually suggested in response to my post about the Collaboration Prize being self-defeating. The premise of Kohn’s work fits with so much of my own writing - the fact that competition is not necessarily reality, and that we can instead assume “cooperation” is reality, creating grand results!

Black Elk Speaks
by John G. Neihardt
The story of Lakota visionary and healer Nicholas Black Elk. Read it as a tale of a Lakota life, as a history of a Native nation, or as an enduring spiritual testament. This one came enthusiastically endorsed by a number of our group’s members.

The Biology Of Belief: Unleashing The Power Of Consciousness, Matter And Miracles
by Bruce Lipton
Bruce Lipton synthesizes the latest research in cell biology and quantum physics to show that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking. (His You Tube video was one we watched during our sessions last week - see Monday’s post for details!)

The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
by Eric Hoffer
Hoffer’s work is 50 years old, and is just as fresh in light of the religious fanatacism that seems to have our world in its grip today, as it was then. This is a classic.

Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
by George Leonard
Drawing on Zen philosophy and his expertise in the martial art of Aikido, Leonard shows how the process of mastery can help us attain a higher level of excellence in all areas of our lives.

The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By
by Carol S. Pearson
Reaching our fullest potential by achieving a balance between work, family, and the self.

Million Dollar Consulting: The Professional’s Guide to Growing a Practice
by Alan Weiss
Can a group of consultants gather without extolling the virtues of Alan Weiss’s practical advice? If you are a consultant and do not read this book often, start now. Really.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
by Robert M. Pirsig
Another classic. The argument of quality vs. quantity, set as a story of a cross-country trip on a motorcycle by a father and son, is more accurately a journey through 2,000 years of Western philosophy. I know more than one person for whom this book has been life-changing.

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
by Parker J. Palmer
Letting your life speak means really listening. It also means tuning out the preconceived ideas about what a vocation should and shouldn’t be so that we can better hear the call of that spirit within. There are no how-to formulas here, just fireside wisdom from an elder who is willing to share his mistakes and stories as he learned to live a life worth speaking about.

Hope Unraveled: The People’s Retreat and Our Way Back
by Richard Harwood
Richard Harwood examines the U.S. as a nation struggling with consumerism, distorted realities, and false divisions that cut across cultural, political, and media landscapes. From there he lays out an alternate path for politics and public life for all Americans.

I am quite sure I am forgetting at least one or two. And if you have a favorite, please share in the comments - what a grand list we might just create!

Happy reading, all!

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