There is nothing more frustrating than knowing you can help
someone, but having no way to do so. I go through this too often at One Street as I connect with leaders of
bicycle nonprofits, find out about their struggles, then lose them. They say
they’ll call back. They promise they’ll follow the steps I offer, but too often
I’m left with only silence.
For all the frustration, I still love being here for their
calls and emails and knowing that at least I gave it a try. And for every one
that vanishes, I enjoy ongoing discussions with nonprofit leaders who keep at
their work to increase their effectiveness. These success stories keep me
going, but the ones I lose keep me fired up to do more.
I founded One Street eight years ago to offer a safe haven
where leaders of bicycle organizations would feel comfortable going for advice
and assistance. Over those eight years, I have worked with our board and
partners to develop resources and coaching methods for building influential
organizations that never waste energy spinning their wheels. Most of these
services we offer for free because helping them equates to increasing
bicycling.
The idea came to me after recognizing in the bicycle
movement the same patterns of infighting and wasted energy I’d seen in other
nonprofits over the previous 33 years. Whether their mission was to defend the
rights of animals, save a wetland, battle poverty, or offer wilderness trips to
disabled people, they were all prone to the very same derailments.
I have a particular affinity to the bicycle, not only as a
sleek and efficient movement machine, but as a canary that can warn of a
community’s inhumanity by its absence. As I formed the idea for One Street, I
realized that all this new nonprofit organization would have to do to make an
enormous impact for increasing bicycling around the world would be to help
existing organizations avoid these common traps. Easier said than done.
This blog is the second result of my frustration. The first
was to write the book of the same name, Cures for Ailing Organizations, for any
nonprofit organization. The book captures the patterns of ineffectiveness I’ve found
over my 40 years of working with nonprofits. Tapping my work through One Street
to define and break these patterns, it shows readers how to diagnose their own
organization’s problems, then walks them through solutions so they can get back
to their important work.
The problem with a book is that people have to actually read
it for it to do any good. We’ve sold many copies, mostly through this office,
sometimes in lots of ten or twenty. But nearly every sale comes with a note of
enthusiasm about who the buyer is going to give the book to. At first I hoped
these comments would be few and far between, that buyers would finally start
buying the book to read themselves. Unfortunately, Cures for Ailing Organizations has turned out to be a book that
people buy for other people. And I fear that a free book from a well-meaning
person is not going to reach the top of the to-be-read stack anytime soon.
So, let’s try a blog!
This should be fun. I’ll have a chance to offer parts of the
book in bite-sized chunks and then embellish them with stories and current
happenings. I hope readers will jump in to offer their own experiences, perhaps
even argue my points, and bring in other perspectives.
Blog posts are easy to read and forward. Perhaps this blog
will provide the means I have been longing for to reach and help many more leaders
of nonprofits, bicycle or otherwise, and offer them my hard-won experience from
guiding nonprofits out of common struggles.
You, as a reader, are the most important element toward this
blog’s success. Please read. Please comment. Please forward. Let’s get these
difficult, yet essential discussions out there!
Thanks for taking part.
Sue
