Single Corp versus Federation – Getting a New Perspective
Volunteering on a local nonprofit board has changed my perspective on some things I used to say with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY, and with a microphone. As an example: “The federated model is inefficient. All organizations are on the path to single corp, without exception.”
Here’s my story.
On July 1, I transitioned from CEO of Turnkey For Good, a firm I founded in 1989, to Founder. That released a bit of time for me which I decided to invest locally, at a chapter of the Arc—The Arc of Hanover. I live in Hanover County, Virginia. The Arc of the United States is a federation of chapters like mine.
The Arc serves intellectually and developmentally disabled people, and my 32-year-old daughter has Down syndrome, autism, and type 1 diabetes. She is also either a princess or a cat (undiagnosed as yet) with another whole set of foibles.
So, it made sense I joined the board of a local Arc. This particular Arc is also responsible for, many years ago, helping me navigate the system to get my daughter what in Virginia is called a “waiver.” This archaic language means she gets government services as a disabled American, and it is the golden ticket of being disabled. Among other things, it means you get caregiving support, medical care, and, if you need it, a place to live. Anna lives with her family, but so many disabled people have no one, having outlived their families. I owe the organization.
To my great awakening: I have always believed that federations were an inefficient way of accomplishing the mission goal. A federation meant that many people were not in alignment and were not pulling on the same rope in the same direction. But I got a new view of this in my local Arc.
A little background on the Arc of Hanover:
Almost died several years ago when the best-executive-director-ever left to work for the Arc of Virginia.
Round of several executive directors followed; revenue crashed; services crashed; everything crashed.
Two stalwart volunteers took the helm and revived the organization, breathing life into a near dead corpse that had been stinking up its community relationships with non attention and mishandling.
A new volunteer board recruited (including me) with penchant for high activity
What drives this entity is volunteer satisfaction. We still have only 2.5 employees, 1.5 of which is deployed in programs. The work force is volunteer.
Here’s where the federated model works brilliantly. Because the national organization is protected by a separate 501c3, they don’t mess with us. We do all sorts of things that I know, for sure, would be shot down by a rigid structure. Example: we run a thrift store. When I first heard about this, my single-corporation heart fell. I thought, “Oh no, so much energy to make so little money with no mission connection.” How wrong could I be? Very wrong.
The thrift store we run has become the heart of the organization, as planned by the two volunteers who breathed life into it. Here’s how it works:
The community drives into our parking lot often to donate and to buy.
Our mission population gets to volunteer in the store in a welcoming, safe environment. Even the shoppers know how to support them.
Volunteers are lined up to volunteer in the store. There is some weird fascination that I don’t understand, but volunteers do everything, including taking furniture home to repair and bringing it back to be sold. People sort old socks and delight in doing so.
Because the store has so many community connection points, we use it to fundraise. Here is our latest effort—The Art of Arc: The Chair as Art. No website, only a Facebook page: Facebook Page Art of Arc. These chairs were pulled, useless, from our warehouse by volunteers and recreated for auction.
The point here is that these volunteers, including me, experience great satisfaction from what we at Turnkey call the Trifecta of Satisfaction: autonomy, competence, connectedness.
https://www.nonprofitpro.com/post/3-key-factors-value-proposition-needs/
The federated model minimizes organizational risk to allow us to create that satisfying situation for volunteers. Some missions like JDRF focus on research (which takes money primarily) and are very well served by the single corporation model with its inherent, more rigid activities. Others would do well to look at federations where satisfied volunteers run the show and accomplish the mission in tandem with a national organization doing what only they can do well: fund research, advocacy, mission awareness.
My greatest hope is that we can find a way to preserve the positive and fruitful volunteer experience of having autonomy, competence, and connectedness that the federated model provides, while enjoying the benefits of the single corporation model. How do we walk this line? How do we create this experience for the volunteers while enjoying the benefits of single corporation efficiency?