When I was younger I vividly recall hearing with curiosity that several older acquaintances of my family had died, of all things, pneumonia. I didn’t know what it was, and I certainly didn’t know how to spell it, but I knew it was getting people. My young imagination feared dying by gunshot wound, or bizarre car accident, but that’s not what gets most of us. We age, we hurt ourselves, in our weakened condition pneumonia sets in and we pass.
But what kills non-profit organizations and programs? With economic challenges affecting income, Foundations and traditional funders like United Way shrinking their direct investment in services, increased investment needed to fund raise effectively, growing health care costs, ever-rising need for the critical social services and more, giving non-profits organizations heartburn these days, it is difficult to pinpoint one poison pill that is the greatest threat to non-profits as a whole.
Yet even with all of those external factors putting pressure on organizations, the greatest threat to non-profit ministries in my opinion is pneumonia, brought on by INERTIA, the lack of movement within organizations to change, adapt, reshape and create at rate that will keep pace with the rate of change forced by external forces.
Most Organizational Deaths are not Murder. If you watch american TV while traveling overseas you’ll likely feel embarrassed by how many of our programs revolve around murder, and how often it seems that people die through murder. While even one murder is too many, in real life it doesn’t happen that way. Most of us will die of natural causes.
So it is with organizations. Most non-profits will not die of some external, violent takeover, or because someone has decided it’s time to shut it down, but of internal causes that precede the final death blow. These include: the inattention to detail, lack of financial wherewithal, discontent and lack of unity, lack of direction and purpose, narrow focus, non-essential service being provided, antiquated and expensive communication methods, and more.
That’s why it’s so critical for leaders to spend their time working on those critical internal issues and functions that make an organization work well. These issues aren’t nearly as exciting as working externally on committees, associations, denominations, task forces, and other community issues that get the leader exposure and a sense of importance within the community, but they are the things which will keep your organization healthy and will keep you from dying from organizational pneumonia.
David Curry
