Alliance Online - December 2006

For the elite of the sector or the well-being of the community?

Ruth McCambridge

EVENT Independent Sector Annual Conference
Date 22-24 October
Venue St Paul/Minneapolis, USA
Organizer Independent Sector
Title Many Voices, Shared Purpose: Working Together to Improve Lives

EVENT Nonprofit Congress Annual Meeting
Date 16-17 October
Venue Washington DC, USA
Organizer Nonprofit Congress

Contrast the Independent Sector conference held last week in Minneapolis with a gathering of non-profits a few weeks earlier, dubbed the Nonprofit Congress, and an interesting conundrum emerges about where power comes from in the non-profit sector and what it should be used to accomplish. The Independent Sector conference, reflecting its membership, was attended mainly by the largest non-profits for the purpose of rubbing shoulders and talking shop. Like many other conferences, it offered workshops and plenary sessions that drew on the ‘best and the brightest’ in the sector and celebrated their ideas. Indeed, it was much like the meeting of an exclusive club. Compare this to the first meeting of the Nonprofit Congress, which built its conference from the ground up. Small, new, and firmly connected to those it was meant to serve.

The US non-profit sector is top-heavy in much the same way as other sectors in this country. A relatively small proportion of organizations own most of the assets and attract the lion’s share of individual donations. These larger players include private and public foundations, universities, hospitals and other national organizations, which in some cases are made up of local franchises. Running in those same circles are the think-tanks and theoreticians of the sector. After removing universities and hospitals, whose subsectors are quite powerful in and of themselves, this basically describes the membership of Independent Sector, which held its annual conference on 22–24 October in Minneapolis. More than 700 attended.

Twenty-six years old this year, Independent Sector claims the role of convenor for ‘the leadership’ of US non-profits and foundations. In actual fact this leadership tends towards the elite among American non-profits, a situation that is perhaps reinforced by high conference and membership fees.

This year, less than two weeks before the IS conference, representatives from the less well-heeled non-profit majority convened in Washington DC as the Nonprofit Congress, an effort that was spearheaded by the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (NCNA). The organizers took nearly a year to pull this national meeting together, working through their members at the state level to convene 117 town meetings. Hawaii alone, often underrepresented in national non-profit dialogues, convened 11 such meetings across their five component islands. Within this process they asked these small organizations what their priorities were and then they brought that dialogue to the national level.

One of their priorities, as it turned out, was grassroots activities and advocacy. The living wage and universal health care were just two of the substantive issues that came up in table discussions among participants, well chosen for their central importance to the well-being of the community. No question that the Congress as an idea has a long way to go, but it was a welcome change from the same old crowd. Independent Sector staff did not attend this gathering.

Independent Sector has repeatedly represented itself as the non-profit voice in recent negotiations with national lawmakers on proposals for changes to the non-profit regulatory environment. Outcomes, however, reveal a lot, and changes pursued actively by Independent Sector have primarily focused on donor rights and incentives and have slowed if not stopped the momentum on many other arguably necessary reforms.

In her plenary address to the 700 assembled attendees, less than two weeks before the US elections, where political power in both houses of the Congress may tip considerably, Independent Sector president Diana Aviv chose as her topic the importance of non-profit collaboration. Addressing this overworked issue, she talked about the need for non-profits to be effective as well as good-hearted. To judge from her speech, one stellar model of collaboration and effectiveness is Independent Sector itself. Not only was this confusing in light of her lack of attendance at the Congress; it fell far short of the historic opportunity she had in front of her.

Many non-profits in the US have lost sight of their role in mobilizing communities in civic life and the strategic advantage afforded them by understanding communities as powerful partners. What Aviv had the opportunity to do, at this historic moment, was to reinforce the important role people can play in helping to get out and monitor the nation’s mid-term electoral process over the few days left. There has never been a time when this was more vitally important. Not making this a central leadership message was a serious mistake of the kind that encourages non-profits to allow their natural power to lie fallow.

Still, there was in the hallways and in some of the smaller sessions quite a bit of focus on political action. I could not attend every session but among those I did sit in on, one that stood out for its relevance and timeliness was a panel, unfortunately sparsely attended, on immigration. Eliseo Medina, Executive International Vice President of the Service Employees International Union, the 1.8 million member union that represents hotel and restaurant workers and other service employees, talked in vivid terms about the promise and discomforts of ‘knitting a movement’ that forces immigrant and other marginalized communities beyond their cultural comfort zones into common cause.

In addressing, coincidentally, the living wage, health care and the other cross-cutting concerns of people on the street, this panel referred to the causes that are part and parcel of immigration reform as a collective opportunity that needs to be built laboriously, walking the neighbourhoods, from the ground up. This is civic engagement that builds from the collective longings of individuals out. It is the soul of collaboration and the strategic advantage non-profits have: their power base.

‘The perception is now,’ another panellist commented, ‘that immigrants are electorally defenceless.’ The same might be said about many marginalized communities in which non-profits are active.

To be fair, there were a number of sessions on electoral action at the Independent Sector conference, and there was the same endless tape running on non-profits as the defenders of civic life, but the disconnect between the convenings of the two portions of the sector by Independent Sector and NCNA was disconcerting, given the political, economic, environmental and social challenges this country has before it right now, many of which will deeply affect the rest of the globe.

Ruth McCambridge is Editor of Nonprofit Quarterly. Email ruth@npqmag.org

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