Category Archives: WHATEVER

Passion, Mission and Vision

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I attended a phenomenal breakfast the other day at the Chicago Union League sponsored by a local National Day of Prayer committee. I was the guest of someone that works for Regent University.

If you don’t know what the National Day of Prayer is it is a special day every year (the first Thursday of May every year) that is dedicated to bringing people together to pray in solidarity for a wide range of things – such as government leaders, students, candidates, and so on. The primary event is held in Washington, DC at the Cannon House and is attended by many high level politicians and religious leaders but there are also smaller gatherings, like the one I attended, all around the country.

The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May, inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation. It was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman.  http://www.ndptf.org/about/index.cfm

In any event, the reason I bring this up is because the speaker was one of the more inspirational orators I have heard. He was articulate, funny, engaging, and intensely focused on his topic which was laced with spiritual overtones and a clear Christian theme. But it went far beyond that. No matter what faith one is his message could be applied to an individual’s life situation without exception.

The first concept he presented was PASSION. This is the only word I will focus on because I don’t want to bore you to death, plus you would be better off reading one of his books as I intend to do. You can learn more about the speaker at www.rameshrichard.com

Dr. Ramesh Richard says “You can tell a person’s passion by what he is willing to die for. What he is willing to die for is what he is living for – the passion of his life.” Dr. Richard says passion is so foundational, so pivotal, that our choice of passions defines who we are.

What Dr. Richard put forth is the simple notion that we can have many passions in life but we can only have one passion of life. The bottom-line, he said, is that we can have many things in life we are passionate about – our spouse, our children, camping, tennis, golf, basket weaving, fast cars, antiques, and so on. But there can only be one passion of our life.

And many of you will immediately assign your spouse to this category. But the point Dr. Richard was trying to make (after all it was the national day of prayer) is that God must be the passion of your life. Personally, I agree with him and many of you may too.

Often when I hear a talk with religious/spiritual overtones I try to apply the message to everyday professional or personal life. Consequently, as I sat, listened and took notes I began to apply his message of passion to other aspects of my daily routine – not simply the spiritual aspects.

I began to realize that, yes; I must put God at the center of everything I do; but I also can literally apply the message of passion to everything in my life. I decided I need to introduce passion into everything I do; what else is there I realized? If I don’t have passion, I don’t have drive, if I don’t have drive, I lose my will to get up in the morning and face whatever God throws at me with 100% of my interior passion.

Look out – here it comes… the government is going to save the day!

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Steven T. Miller, commissioner of the IRS’s tax-exempt and government-entities division, said the tax agency will be “more aggressive” in monitoring the “efficiency and effectiveness” of charitable organizations, even though such monitoring is not expressly within the agency’s jurisdiction. Mr. Miller added: “The question is no longer whether the IRS has a role to play in this area, but rather what that role will be.”

See: http://philanthropy.com/news/updates/index.php?id=4498 

Wow – those are fighting words. At least they should be to those of us with half a brain in the nonprofit community. Is this really what it’s going to take to get our industry to wake-up and smell the sentiment of society, and within our own government? The last thing we should want is have the government aggressively monitor a nonprofits efficiency and effectiveness!!! Isn’t that an oxymoron?? To have government in the same sentence with efficiency and effectiveness? My gosh – the irony of this is beyond belief.

But such are the times we live in aren’t they? The government is going to step in and save us all. I can only imagine the regulations they will put in place – just like Sarbanes Oxley did for the for-profit sector. Our fundraising ratios are going to get hammered because we will need to allocate more money, hire more people, and spend more time than we ever have before on complex regulatory accounting practices to prove to the government that we are efficient and effective and meet their set of guidelines; which undoubtedly will not be viable for the the vast majority of nonprofits.

Wouldn’t you just love to know the effectiveness and efficiency of the tax-exempt and government-entities division of the IRS that Mr. Miller runs?? One can only imagine. I am sure they are just like the nonprofits he intends to regulate – understaffed, underfunded, overworked, facing incredible competition, fighting for every dollar they make, while at the same time providing a USEFUL AND IN MOST CASES LIFE SAVING and LIFE CHANGING SUPPORT THAT WOULD NOT BE AVAILABLE OTHERWISE!

Pardon the caps and the bold type but I feel like sticking my head out the window and shouting – “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore“…

We have to figure out a way to stop this nonsense before the government figures out a way to get into our pockets. A wise man once told me to “follow the money” – and I think this is one of those times were if you follow the money the whole thing will make sense. Think about that for awhile and see if you come to the same conclusions that I have.

I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist but there are forces at work here that won’t be good for nonprofits out there – especially those that are ethical, moral, accountable, transparent, hardworking, honest, service oriented and passionate about their mission and above all provide a service the government can’t or won’t or is unable to provide.