Book’s Advice for Charity Leaders

In his new book, Begging for Change, Robert Egger, president of D.C. Central Kitchen, presents his “Rules for Nonprofit Groups.” Among them:

• “Look at what you do. Are you a 19th-century charity or a 21st-century community corporation?”
• “The recent downturn in public support for nonprofits isn’t about the economy or 9/11. It’s about skepticism. The public has had enough with pity and platitudes. Americans want a plan.”
• “As John Gardner [former president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and co-founder of Independent Sector, an umbrella coalition of corporations, donors, foundations, and organizations] says, it’s better to be an excellent plumber than a bad philosopher. The era of talk is over. Say what you’ll do, and do what you say.”
• “Credibility isn’t tied to money. It doesn’t matter how much money you make or how much money you raise. It’s how that money makes something happen in your community.”
• “The wage genie is out of the bottle. Donors want to know how much nonprofit executives make. Can you justify your salary?”
• “Make sure volunteers and donors see how their contributions help. Show them tangible links with their efforts. They’ll be so excited that they’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on, and so on…”
• “Beware of the language you use. Are you elevating the dialogue about what you do and whom you serve, or are you relying on outdated images or desperate calls for help to keep the checks coming in?”
• “We are a house divided. Hunger isn’t about food, homelessness isn’t about housing, and poverty isn’t about money. The issues are interconnected, yet we in the nonprofit sector think and act otherwise. Until we create a dialogue to share ideas and devise a unified, sectorwide strategy, we’ll continue to be ineffective, and our clients will stay disenfranchised.”
• “If you chase money, you’ll be on an endless loop. If you chase results, the money will come.”

These excerpts were reprinted with the permission of Harper Collins, in New York, the publisher of Begging for Change.