Funding Friday: Maybe It *Is* Time to Call Someone

I have an upper respiratory infection.

I know this because, after being sick for nearly a week, I finally went to a doctor.

And by “went,” I mean I had a virtual appointment. From the moment I finally decided that I needed medical attention to the time I had seen a doctor and picked up prescriptions for antibiotics and Flonase, less than an hour had passed.

Nearly a week of feeling miserable. Less than an hour to do something about it.

There is probably a Funding Friday lesson in there somewhere.

Small and mid-sized nonprofits can be remarkably resistant to asking for help. We convince ourselves that we can figure it out. We can get through this grant cycle. We can fix the bookkeeping problem. We can straighten out the board. We can develop a fundraising strategy later. We can update the website ourselves. We can deal with the database eventually.

Sometimes we do figure it out.

Sometimes we spend six months struggling with something that someone else could have helped us address in an afternoon.

The problem is not always a lack of resources. Sometimes the problem is that we wait until the situation becomes painful enough that we are finally willing to look for them.

There are understandable reasons for that. Small nonprofits operate with limited budgets. Paying a consultant, accountant, attorney, grant professional, technology specialist, or other outside expert can feel like a luxury when every dollar already has a destination.

Institutional stubbornness also plays a role. We are nonprofit people. We are accustomed to doing extraordinary things with inadequate resources. We improvise. We learn new skills because somebody has to do the work. We ask volunteers to stretch. We stretch ourselves.

Resourcefulness is one of the nonprofit sector's great strengths. It can also become a liability when we stop distinguishing between something we can do ourselves and something we should do ourselves.

That distinction matters. Outside help does not necessarily mean signing an expensive, year-long consulting contract. It might mean paying someone for two hours to look at a problem with fresh eyes. It might mean asking another organization how it solved the same problem. It might mean attending a workshop, joining a professional association, finding a mentor, arranging a consultation, or simply admitting to someone who knows more about the subject: We need some help with this.

And sometimes the answer is surprisingly accessible. My doctor's appointment certainly was.

I spent considerably more time this week resisting the idea of seeing a doctor than I spent actually seeing one and getting treatment.

Nonprofits do this, too. We can spend months talking around a problem. We put it on board agendas. We create committees. We revisit it at the next meeting. We complain about it in the parking lot afterward. Meanwhile, the underlying problem remains exactly where we left it.

Another cost doesn't always show up in the budget: the time spent struggling.

If a staff member spends 20 hours trying to solve something an experienced professional could address in three, doing it ourselves wasn't necessarily the inexpensive option. The same is true when an unresolved problem costs donors, volunteers, opportunities, staff morale, community relationships, or organizational credibility.

So this Funding Friday, perhaps the question is not simply, “Can we afford to get help?”

Ask a few more:

How much is this problem already costing us?

How long have we been talking about fixing it?

Do we actually have the expertise to solve it ourselves?

Is there someone who could help us solve it faster and better?

And perhaps most importantly:

Why haven't we called them yet?

I could have asked myself that question several days ago.

Instead, I am writing this while waiting for the antibiotics and Flonase to do their jobs.

Learn from my mistake. Sometimes asking for help is not an admission that your organization cannot handle something. Sometimes it is simply the most efficient way to handle it.