The Donor you should marry

Do you remember that girl in high school who said she thought you were kinda cute but she wouldn't go out with you because you couldn't quote Shakespeare (or couldn't stop quoting Shakespeare)? Well sometimes, the old school method of funding social benefit, the world of grants and gifts, is kind of like that girl.

If we're honest with each other, we can all tell stories about that donor with the huge potential who made us go through twenty seven revisions to the proposal and ended up with a much smaller gift than you'd started out with that funded something that wasn't really key to your mission. And you did the gift letter, and put the donor's name on the side of whatever it was he funded. Why? Because you knew that your payroll account was a month from running dry and you needed the money. Or because you had some fundraising goal that the Board had set and you knew that this one would put you over the top. But did it really move the mission forward?

The other day, I found myself in another one of those discussions about what does and want doesn't qualify as a social enterprise. Now, I can get down into the weeds as easily as the next guy, but c'mon now - this is not what we're here for. To me, social entrepreneurship is not about percentage or definitions. It’s about changing the conversation and leveling the playing field. Having earned income gives you the freedom to say no thanks to that big donor that's not the right fit and would love to fund you if you just change the program a little bit. I can hear him now - "what you should REALLY do is....... (whatever crazy idea it is that I want to see my name on)".

Didn't we learn that lesson in high school? That cute guy who wants you to grow or shrink some portion of your anatomy? That really hot girl that's out of your league but would date you if you could only quote Shakespeare or stop quoting Shakespeare (actually it was my obsession with the philosophical insights of Warren Zevon, but that's another post).

The thing that earned income does is allow you to be free of the one sided conversation that is at the heart of donor based funding. When all we can do is beg and say thank you, we have absolutely no bargaining power, so we must (and do) take whatever we can get. And it's also not about what type of earned income it is. We get the same freedom from a direct business/service model that generates income and also matches the mission as we do if we're a subcontractor providing services as a proxy for another entity. Even a service delivery contract under a government grant does the trick (although with the state of government funding these days, I'm not sure that the long term cash flow is all that stable). Anytime we can create some financial space between us and that donor with the 27 revisions, it's a good thing (and don't think for a second that the donor doesn't sense that you're desperate - they can smell the sweat even if they don't know it consciously).

You see, the reality is that not every social benefit organization is a good fit for an earned income strategy. There are times when a direct business/service model can serve to generate earned income for a social program. There are far more times when an existing social program can produce outcomes that are valuable and can be monetized

Now I do recognize that there is a need for distinctions in order to be able to do analysis and make observations about any situation - hey, I can geek out with the best of them. But if we spend our energy on those definitions, then it's that much less energy that we can spend on actually moving the dial.

To go back the high school dating metaphor, the real issues is that desperation is unattractive and confidence is sexy. And earned income gives you that confidence. The confidence to believe in what you're doing. The confidence to know that the social change model you've worked so hard to perfect is the right one, and it's making a difference in people's lives. And when you can walk with your head held that high, that's when you meet the girl who really gets you. The one who can quote Shakespeare even better than you. And her, you marry.