Stop the World.....

Years ago, there was a Broadway hit called Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.  I remember little about this play except it was co-written by and starred Anthony Newley on whom I, as a very immature high school student, had a burning crush.  However, the sentiment seems appropriate for today.  I suspect that many of us would like to get off this world and get onto somewhere more appealing.

An “influential group of philanthropic and civic leaders, ” according to a recent LA Times article, recently met to come up with a more appealing nonprofit world in Los Angeles.  Their goal, I think, was laudable:  to prioritize how resources should be directed in a way that is centered on racial equity.  

I would, however, feel much better about this exercise if they had included some of the people who live with racial inequity every single day.  And some of the smaller nonprofits who are there on the ground, working daily to create a more equitable society.  I can’t help but feel we should stop having people who are earning north of $500,000 a year—as many of the people on that committee do—decree what is needed for people suffering from food insecurity, inadequate shelter, lack of health care, dismal educational opportunities and yes, racial inequity.  It feels so much like noblesse oblige and the country club set worrying about “those” people.  

 I am lucky to work with a lot of grassroots organizations who know what is needed because they are there with their clients, but don’t have the money, the clout, the political power to get it all done in a large way.

So they scramble.  And work way too hard.  They make do or try to do more with less.  When they go to these foundations asking for help, they have to jump through hoops that don’t help them get the needed work done. 

Unsurprisingly, the report that came out of this blue-ribbon group made no firm recommendations and has no concrete suggestions for how to change the way things are.

Studies like this can be important, but too often, like the infamous strategic plan of too many nonprofits, they end up on the shelf having changed not one thing.

I would challenge this group to ask the people who are making real differences in the lives of those who truly need to stop the world and get off to a better place what they are doing that is working.  And how they can help them to continue making a real difference.