Learning from Teaching

Last week, a panel of board members was kind enough to give their time to and share their expertise with my students in the nonprofit financial management and fundraising class I teach at DU. Two weeks before that, a panel of executive directors spoke to the class. It was thrilling to see the wheels turning in the students' minds as what I had taught them in class and what they had read in their books came to life right before their eyes. It was true. It was real.

And it was confusing, too. Pitting theory against reality is always a challenge, and never is that more true than in nonprofit organizations. In class, we talk about how nonprofits need to be transparent to their constituents, donors, and the public, but few publish their annual reports or Form 990s (the IRS information return nonprofits must complete) on their websites.

I tell the students that the scarcity mentality is the death of organizations: "begging" for money, not budgeting enough money to compensate qualified personnel, thinking first about cutting expenses rather than raising more money. Then we hear that a very real worry for executive directors of organizations that have been around for a long. long time is that they will not have enough money in the bank to make payroll.

In the end, despite the mixed messages, I know that this class will make an impact on twenty lives. Some of these students will decide that nonprofit management is not for them, that they need to make an impact one person at a time by being social workers. Some will decide that, like me, they will work to change "the system" so that nonprofits will not just survive, but thrive. Maybe one will become an investment banker and live the life some of us secretly envy.

I am blessed to have the opportunity to teach them and learn from them, too. Twenty lives intertwined with mine... awesome.