My Lowest and Highest Nonprofit Moments
Posted by Allison Fine on March 1, 2010
Katya Andresen facilitated this month’s Nonprofit Blog Carnival. Although I missed the deadline (deadline, schmeadline!) I’m going to play anyway because it’s my blog and I can do what I want!
Katya asked us to share our great successes and flaming failures of our nonprofit careers. So, here goes:
As for failures, well, it’s pretty darn hard to pinpoint just one since I’ve had so many. But rather than share an event, I want to share an old habit. It’s a widespread nonprofit trap, the one of being a proprietary thinker that I fell into when I ran Innovation Network (InnoNet). I created an organizational culture that framed other evaluation groups as competitors and my job, as the chief fundraiser, was to elbow them out of the way to get to the pot of gold that foundations were holding It was successful in the short-run, but desultory and deflating in the long-run and contributed to my own burnout with the organization.
I am a recovering proprietary thinker and actor now. Although, like all addictions, it’s a day-to-day struggle. And sometimes I relapse and don’t do as good a job of sharing information or giving credit as I should.
But, now, onto the good news. My highs come from my participation in social media over the last five years. It happens because of and within the conversations everyday here on this blog or on Twitter or Facebook. It is energizing when someone comments on my blog, or retweets me on Twitter or introduces themselves on Facebook. It is exhilarating every day when people connect side-to-side, share something that they know, educate me, tell me what they’re thinking about or doing or learning about, when I connect people to one another, when I share what someone else is doing and celebrate it. It makes me awfully lucky to be living here and now and doing what I’m doing with folks like Beth, Katya, Geoff, Holly, Lucy and Tom.
Bottom line: it used to make me feel bad to hoard information and grab credit, and now it feels good to share and link and connect with people.
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This entry was posted on March 1, 2010 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Social Media. Tagged: geoff livingston, Holly Ross, InnoNet, innovation network, Katya Andresen, Lucy Bernholz, Nonprofit Blog Carnival, Tom Watson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
5 Responses to “My Lowest and Highest Nonprofit Moments”
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Joanne Fritz said
Thanks for contributing and linking to the Nonprofit Blog Carnival, Allison! A terrific share.
katya said
Great point! I am still learning this one too – generosity is better than scarcity thinking, sharing is better than hoarding.
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My Lowest and Highest Nonprofit Moments « My Blog said
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