By DAN PALLOTTA
The nonprofit sector has limbs. It has fingers that reach into the most neglected corners of society, forearms that lead large national chapter and affiliate organizations, legs made up of the nation’s foundations and massive individual donor base that fund it and help it to move. It has blood pumping through its veins – 10 million people doing its good works day in and day out. It has a central nervous system that alerts it to pain in the form of looming federal policy threats to tax exempt status and other core functions. It has eyes and ears in the form of an army of program officers and internal assessment functions trying to analyze the impact of its work.
But it doesn’t have a brain. It doesn’t have one center of organization and imagination looking out at the far horizon to inspire and guide all of the component parts to get to a place together that none operating independently could ever get to on its own. It doesn’t have one voice to tell the rest of the world where it is headed and what it requires to get there. It has no coordinated analytical capability to help it understand its progress.
This reality makes its gait something like one of the zombies in Walking Dead. It’s moving. But in no particular direction save toward sustenance when it senses its presence.
This story originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review on May 13, 2016. Read More