New Online Course: When Changes Comes to Nonprofits (Ready or Not)

I have just added another online course to my Udemy offerings: When Change Comes to Nonprofits (Ready or Not!)

In this course I share several case studies from my experiences of managing through crises as an Interim Executive Director. In fact, an apt sub-title for the course might have been Confessions of a Serial Interim ED.

In the first few lessons, I give the details of a couple of successful mergers, and merger negotiations that were ended without an agreement. I also talk about organizations that seemed all but doomed, and how they rebuilt to be stronger than ever. And one organization that went into bankruptcy, and what factors led to that fateful decision. 

In the second half of the course, I share several of the tools I've used in these situations for program evaluation, organizational assessment, and partnership evaluation, for students to take back to their organizations to help them work through their situations.

I originally created this course earlier this year to deliver as a presentation at the annual meeting of the South Carolina Human Services Providers Association. I did that conference session in early March, and the response was very positive. I then knew that I'd need to adapt it to the online format and share with others.

If you're interested, please follow this link to learn more and register.

My other Udemy courses that are currently available are:

Basic Training for Your Nonprofit Board of Directors, and

Basic Grant Proposal Writing for Nonprofits.

Click on the course titles to learn more or register for classes.

Shoe Changes Foot

All of us in the nonprofit sector have heard the drumbeats over the last few years accompanying the chants of, "Merge! Merge! Merge!" That pundits outside the sector were saying it, we could brush aside as the rantings of somebody who didn't know how efficient and cost-effective most nonprofits really are, but when our funders - including government at all levels - joined in, many of us took it seriously and at least explored mergers, whether they were completed or not.

And now, the tables have turned... A nonprofit in New Jersey has now made it its mission to get towns to get with the times and start merging:

In New Jersey there are 566 towns. California, by comparison, has only 482 municipalities. An organization called Courage to Connect N.J. believes that the situation is unsustainable in light of the growing financial straits of local governments... They say too many local governments, and the costs associated with them, drive up property taxes.

While I was at first simply amused by the headline and the irony of nonprofits encouraging governments to merge, when I read the article I simply had to agree. If there's one thing that for-profit businesses and nonprofits can agree on, it's the inefficiencies of government.

And now, after the merger fever that's swept through our sector the last few years, who is better positioned to show how mergers can really work for the benefit of constituents and the public good than nonprofits?

Nonprofit Mergers & Alliances: An interview with Thomas A. McLaughlin (part two)

Thomas McLaughlin is Vice President for Consulting Services for the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a nationally recognized expert on nonprofit mergers and alliances, having consulting in over 200 such collaborations, and the author of the excellent and indispensable volume Nonprofit Mergers & Alliances, now in its second edition.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Mr. McLaughlin about his book and his experiences with nonprofit mergers and alliances. What follows is part two of our discussion:

(Click here for Part One of this interview)

Ken Goldstein: I've heard that, on average, only 1/3 of organizations that enter merger negotiations actually wind up merged. In my own experience, I've been successful in 2 out of 3 rounds of merger negotiations. What do you find are the most important factors in beating the odds and having a successful set of merger talks?

Tom McLaughlin: I don't know whether it's 1/3, 2/3, or 1/2... because we don't have standardized reporting, or any reporting at all, whereas with the FTC for-profit companies have all sorts of reporting to do. How do you define success? If you're talking about the very beginning, and just talking and exploring, that might be 1/3 successful, if people are sincere in the discussion, but there are many things that can intervene... if you start the clock ticking when organizations "get serious" and start to plan something, enter the implementation planning stage, I think the percentage goes up to 75%. Until that point it's just discussion, once you commit, things start to fall into place and you start making decisions that have lasting effects and consequences. In the future this activity will be frequent enough that organizations will say "we're always talking" but that doesn't mean we're always "getting serious." I would say that once you get over that first hurdle of the feasibility stage, your chances are quite high. Because there's something in it for both organizations. These are voluntary organizations; organizations in this sector cannot and should not be forced to merge. This should be a voluntary process from the ground up and should not be somebody else's grand plan. I think it's stronger when two organizations choose to put their groups together and follow through.

Given what you've just said about mergers needing to be voluntary, is it right for United Ways or Community Foundations or other funders to be cheerleaders for the trend, and to be encouraging mergers?

I think funders should be advocating collaboration, but not forcing any particular merger. They're independent voluntary organizations. Outside matchmakers don't have the inside knowledge and could push for a potentially bad result for all the right reasons. Funders can create an atmosphere that encourages talking, fund it... one of the best things they can do is provide Critical Juncture Financing; external financing provided to defray the cost of collaboration between two or more organizations. Those two parts are essential: collaborating organizations - to facilitate the process, not to ordain it. In Boston they call it a catalyst fund, these are efforts on the part of forward thinking foundations to provide what otherwise might be a pretty heavy lift for organizations to come up with on their own. One thing worth noting here, this is asking foundations and funders to do two things they're not used to doing: one is to pay for collaborative activities, not a strategic plan for one organization... the second is that this is not funding for programs, it's funding for management and infrastructure, and that's okay, it's the only way to get some of these going.

I really appreciated that in your book, you're clear about the differences between nonprofit and for-profit mergers, including issues of ownership, motivation, and the lessoned need for absolute secrecy around the talks. Do you find that a lot of board members, whose main lives are in the corporate world, are surprised or uncomfortable at these differences?

Yes, absolutely. For-profit board members who are bankers tend look at the nonprofit sector and see a lot of little banks. For-profit board members who are manufacturers see a lot of little factories. That is a problem because the incentives, the processes, the reasons for doing things, are very different in the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. The vast majority of public organizations tend to focus more on doing back-room collaborations for savings, but we already keep our overhead as low as possible for a lot of reasons. Say you have overhead costs of 8%, which is very low. If you can save 10% of 8% you're a genius. If you go into a nonprofit merger to save money, you will be disappointed. At some point you'll say, "We're doing all this to save $25,000? And we might not even come up with that kind of savings?" A sliver of a sliver is not a major savings.

You also do a bit of "myth busting" in the book - particularly around unrealistic expectations of immediate administrative saving, as you've just said, and that "only failing organizations merge" - How do you convince strong organizations that mergers or alliances are to their advantage with lowered expectations of quick payoffs?

It ultimately has to be strategic in nature. Everybody talks about strategic alliance. Strategic is a popular label to apply to things, but it really does need to be strategic. You may or may not regard 2% savings to be a lot of money. But if two dance troupes get together and they talk strategically about the ability for having bigger shows, to attract more media, to produce original shows... I can't put a value on that, if its' worth 2% or 5% or 10%. But if you can put a strategic vision like that on it, it's hard to say, "Eh, not worth it."

Nonprofit Mergers & Alliances: An interview with Thomas A. McLaughlin (part one)

Regular readers of this blog know that I've been involved in two successful nonprofit mergers, as well as a third attempt that was never consummated, and I've written several blog posts on my feelings about nonprofit mergers. So, when I received a message asking if I was interested in speaking with Tom McLaughlin, author of Nonprofit Mergers & Alliances, I jumped at the chance.

McLaughlin's book is a must read for anybody interested in the topic, or any nonprofit leaders (board or staff) who are considering any sort of merger or alliance. I found myself nodding my head and saying, "Yes, yes," throughout reading the book, and wish I'd had it during my three sets of merger negotiations. The following is part one of our talk:

Ken Goldstein: You certainly make a strong case for mergers and alliances as a strategy for growth, cost containment, reaching a sustainable size, and simply surviving in these times. Are there any times when you advise against a merger or alliance?

Tom McLaughlin: Oh, sure, absolutely. Here's the starting point... the two reasons that are most cited as reasons why organizations don't get together or it falls apart and doesn't work are, ironically, the same in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, and that is, that they can't decide who the CEO is going to be and culture clash. I'll give you an example of what I mean by culture clash, it's rooted in what the organization does and how it does it. Years ago I was working on a merger between a VNA (Visiting Nurses Association) and a hospice. I was working with the VNA, and they had had a number of conversations with the hospice down the street, part of the community, and it never worked. Never any animosity, it just didn't happen for different reasons, and the primary one was that they were just different cultures, two very different models for how they do their missions. With a VNA, it's a health care model; death is failure. With Hospice, it's a social care model; death is part of life. I believe that was at the heart of why they couldn't get together.

That was a specific example of why a particular merger didn't work, but is there a time in the life cycle of a nonprofit when a merger not advisable?

Yes, probably a small handful of those situations. The one that's most common is when one, or both, of the organizations is so financially stressed, that they are only paying attention to getting cash in the door and not brining in enough of it. The value of their programming is likely to be similarly stressed and declining. At some point an organization in a downward spiral like that, the programs become too much of a risk, just too neglected to be salvaged by another organization. An example of decision delayed tragically. In those cases, it would have been preferable to think about this a lot earlier.

While the main thing people are interested in, and the book focuses on, are mergers, you make the case for alliances at several levels below the full merger, with your CORE (Corporate, Operations, Responsibility, Economic) model. Does lower level collaboration always have to lead to full merger, or can it be an end in itself?

It certainly can be an end in itself, and that is what I try to communicate with the CORE model. You don't enter an alliance and then ask why. You have the question and build the alliance around that. It its whether it's a question of how to strengthen services or how to save money (etc.) that leads to the appropriate level of alliance or merger. It's entirely possible that organizations would create some kind of alliance first and move on to a merger; it's a nice progression if it does happen that way, but it doesn't have to.

Related to organizations entering mergers and alliances, there are organizations that come into being as pseudo-independent nonprofits, but they're under the fiscal sponsorship of another group and enjoy many of the benefits of an alliance. In the past, this was seen more as a "nonprofit incubator" approach, and the organizations were expected to eventually blossom and go out on their own, but I see that more and more, they'll embrace fiscal sponsorship and alliance as a permanent ideal for single-program nonprofits. Do you have any comments on this?

That's a relatively rare phenomenon, but it does happen. It takes a long time to incubate an organization, in any case, the fiscal sponsorship model has some characteristics similar to a management company or management services organization (which I have written about), where there is 501(c)3 that provide management services to others that are, effectively, subsidiaries. The most effective way is to lock the boards together, and it's kind of a merger under a different name. And I think that is one of the least understood models in the nonprofit sector. Why I say that, one of the attractive features of that generic kind of model is that both entities retain their brands and the connection occurs mostly in the backroom area, if that's the case, and there's not a board interlock, then you've got two separate entities with separate brands. You can have the same situation in the management company model, where if you have three subsidiaries you can three different brands, plus the brand of the parent corporation. I think we need to get out of the one corporation, one program, one site model. I think there are shades of gray here that quickly become black and white when we talk about changing corporate structures.

Part Two of this interview will post tomorrow morning.

Merger Complete

Now that the ink is dry and the papers filed and the merger official and done, I can publicly reveal that the Interim Executive Director assignment I was working on for the past 8-1/2 months was for the Support Network for Battered Women (SNBW), and that as of April 1, 2010, Support Network is now a division of the YWCA of Silicon Valley.

We completed the merger quicker than many thought possible, but we did it well. Because we knew we had an ambitious schedule we committed early to frequent meetings of the negotiations team, open and frequent communication out to the full board and staff of each organization, and to bringing together the implementation team and planning process even before the final agreements were completed.

The transition was smooth as the YWCA's CEO and COO each began attending SNBW staff meetings to assist with updates and get to know staff early. As negotiations wound down, the YWCA Administrative Director also began spending time at SNBW to begin answering HR questions and allay any concerns staff might have about transitioning to the YW's employment.

About that time it was announced that the YW's COO would be the Support Network Interim Division Director following the closing date, and she began dividing her time between the Support Network's office and the YWCA's office before the official merger date. When April 1 came, and my services as Interim Executive Director for SNBW were no longer needed, it was simple and stress-free to transition my duties over to her and make my exit.

Because of the focus on communications and transparency we managed to avoid the pitfalls of too-quick a transition and the potential jarring effect that could have had on staff and operations. As it was, when the official date came, it was a welcome move, well-understood by all, and a positive experience. Support Network staff attended a YWCA orientation session before the closing date, and a final private celebration of the 30-year history of SNBW took place to provide staff closure to that period in the organization's life.

Of course, while this was all happening each agency conducted their full due diligence review of the other agency's operations, including full financial review, personnel records inspections, etc., and a communications plan was continually updated to guide our messaging to key funders, constituents, and community partners.

As I've mentioned in earlier blog posts, this was my third time going through merger negotiations as an Interim ED. Each time is a little different, and the lessons learned help guide the next project, and then there's more to learn again.

And now, I'm available, once again, for an Interim (or the right permanent) Executive Director position, if you know of an agency in need of my services...

Latest Projects & More on Mergers

It's hard to believe that I've not posted here since December! In that time I've been hard at work in yet another Interim Executive Director (IED) position, as well as working with a local educational foundation on their strategic planning process, and teaching a grant writing workshop at a community foundation. It's been a busy several months, to say the least.

In the IED position, we are close to completing a merger agreement that will take this 30-year-old social service agency (about $1.7M budget, 20 employees) and transform it into a division of a larger ($7M budget, 100 employees) multi-service organization that's been in the community for over 100 years. It's an exciting proposition, and will hopefully give our agency the administrative capacity to expand its programs over the next several years, as well as round out the services of the  new, larger agency. But that doesn't mean it's easy.

Although this is my third time going through merger negotiations as an IED, I'm not one who is a default cheerleader for mergers, or who would ever say anything like, "There's too many nonprofits." On the contrary, I love having a vital marketplace of nonprofits, large and small, competing to make our communities better places to live.

When it makes sense to merge, I'm on board to help. But in tough economic times like these, many smaller organizations are under pressure to merge, whether it makes sense or not.

Last June, Emmett Carson, CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, had a guest editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle in which he wrote,

Mergers are not for the faint-hearted and, contrary to popular thinking, merging two weak organizations does not result in a stronger organization but rather a weaker one.

Mergers are expensive and disruptive. It takes money to consider how to integrate services, staff and systems, and time to think through the merits of such a strategy. Unfortunately, both are in short supply.

Even more challenging is the fact that merging organizational cultures is a delicate, complicated exercise under ideal conditions, and even harder when leaders are faced with the urgency of responding to burgeoning community needs.

Mergers require enormous amounts of energy from the boards and senior management of both organizations, which can distract them from focusing on their core work.
...

The alternative is to let the marketplace work. As financially strapped nonprofit organizations are no longer able to sustain their operations, they will cease to exist and those that are stronger can expand to serve other areas and constituencies. ...

While I may have put it in slightly less Darwinian terms as that, Dr. Carson is absolutely right. In some cases, it may be better to allow certain agencies to die rather than expend scant resources in trying to move them under another organization's roof. If the mission is vital to the community, somebody else will pick it up, if there aren't seven other organizations already working on that issue.

As we come close to completing our current merger, and I think about having been a part of this three times, I have another caution that I'd add to Dr. Carson's list: What will you do if you spend months negotiating a merger, and it doesn't happen?

It's looking very much like this current merger will go through. But there are still a million things that could prevent it from being finalized. In my first merger, things sailed right through. In my second merger, talks went on for 10 months, and then, when we thought we had a final legal agreement, it all fell apart, literally overnight. The agency had gone a full year without a permanent ED, we'd spent time, money, and energy pursuing a path that didn't pan out, and now we had to rebuild. We did, but that lost year will haunt them for some time to come.

The reality is, of those nonprofits that begin merger discussions, only 30% result in successful mergers. If/When my current project ends in success, I will officially be beating the odds. I'm sure we can do it. But caution is advised.

Resisting the Pressure to Merger

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post here about when it makes sense to take an existing partnership and explore a merger. In that posting, I wrote that

the reality is that it is increasingly difficult for small organizations (budgets under $750,000) to operate successfully, and create sustainable funding. As much as I love small, grassroots organizations, sometimes they can better serve their communities as part of a mid-sized agency.

Today, that is truer than ever, and many of the small agencies that I love so much are in major trouble as their funding dries up, while clients are still lining up at their doors. Also true right now is that there is growing pressure on these small organizations to merge coming from the funding community (foundations and local governments).

In the long term, many of the mergers they envision may indeed make sense. But the savings they imagine will not occur anywhere near soon enough to be a solution to this year's budget problems. In fact, to make mergers truly work for the betterment of the organizations (and their clients), will actually require an additional investment for FY 2009-10 - an investment that doesn't seem likely to come from any of the sources promoting the mergers.

"Quick and easy" mergers really only exist when one of the partners is in such deep trouble that their only other option is shutting their doors and the other partner has plenty of resources to invest in salvaging the best of what the defunct organization has to offer.

When two small- to mid-sized organizations, who are each struggling but surviving, come to the table together, there's much to discuss and agree upon before any mergers occur. From deciding on what name the resulting organization will be called, to which Executive Director stays on (and what to do with the one that doesn't), to how to merge the boards (and elect new officers), to going through and reconciling each line of the two different sets of by-laws, this is a process that can take at least several months to over a year to settle. And once that's done, it's time for the lawyers to review what's been decided and put it into a legal form.

Here's a sample, simplified merger budget:



As you can see, while mergers may save money in the long run (and even that is often questionable if the deposed ED is needed to stay on to manage a second site), there are considerable upfront costs, and a major time investment required to make them work. And, bringing us back to the start of this post, the partnership has to make sense.

Question: Seeking merger funds

From my email:

There are two nonprofits in my community that are considering a merger/acquisition scenario. I have advised them to bring in a consultant, which they will consider. Do you know of any capacity-building or other grants available that could help with the consultant and other costs of this major strategic move?
Redmond, Oregon

From my reply:

Usually funds for something like that are best sought locally. I can't think of any national foundations, off hand, that are interested in funding merger type activity.

Your best bet is to have honest (and confidential) conversations with the local community foundation, the local United Way, and some of the local funders who are already involved with one (or both) of the organizations.

Return to blogging

First I must thank all of you who continued check this blog site during my extended break in regular posting. I appreciate it very much, and is one of the reasons I've determined to start posting again.

My absence has been partly due to plain old being busy, and partly due to a bit of soul searching.

First the busy part. I was completing nearly one-and-a-half years as the Interim Executive Director of Grail Family Services in San Jose. It was a wonderful and satisfying experience, through which I learned much and gained terrific insights and experience. Yes, even as a consultant, and somebody with nearly twenty years of public service, half of it in leadership positions, I continue to learn every day.

The assignment began as a simple "caretaker" role, keeping daily operations running smoothly while we negotiated a merger. As the merger talks dragged on, more leadership was required as the normal course of things brought about staff changes and all the other crises that come at nonprofit organizations on a regular basis. After nearly ten months of negotiations, and a draft of the final agreement, it became clear that the merger was not in our best interest, and talks ended.

We then began a process of determining the best path for GFS. Should we pursue another merger? With whom? Should we hire a permanent ED? Could GFS be sustainable if it remained independent? Much time had been lost with developing new funding sources when we thought we were merging. Still, the more than a year of uncertainty had taken its toll on staff, and all agreed that finding a way to make the organization stable and successful on its own was the best avenue to pursue.

After a search of several months, and interviewing some wonderful candidates, we wound up re-hiring the previous Executive Director, who was once again available. The organization is on track for another great year. I completed my tenure as Interim ED about a month ago, but I am continuing as a consultant to assist with their upcoming Strategic Planning process.

And so, that completes the "too busy to blog" story. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the soul searching, and where I am now. Thanks again for your patience during this absence.

Assymetry versus Strategic Funding

My friend, Tom, over at the True Talk Blog, has an interesting post called "Asymmetry is the New Black." The concept of asymmetry explains how small, start-up companies or organizations can effectively compete and steal marketshare from larger, established ones. Tom sees asymmetry in action in everything from YouTube to the blogging movement to the Iraqi insurgency.

Tom explains it like this:

Asymmetrical competitors use size (small), speed (fast), and thinking (innovative) to more than compensate for their relative lack of resources. This brand of competition is enabled by today's technology, which dramatically reduces the barriers to entry.

As I wrote in my comment on Tom's blog, I love the concept that being small and agile is a competitive advantage in the corporate world. It's a very exciting and inspiring idea.

Unfortunately, in the nonprofit world, we tend to be behind the curve in these types of trends. Right now it's seems that we're all witnessing contraction and mergers.

This is at least partly the result of funders getting more "strategic" with their dollars (ie: fewer, larger grants to established organizations, rather than many smaller grants to a variety of organizations).

While nonprofits look to joining forces with each other to achieve some sort of efficiency, what are we losing? Does our growth destroy the competitive edge we had in achieving our missions? I'm afraid that may well be the case in some of this.

So, how do we communicate this to funders? We've got to let them know that small is beautiful!

Tom says that, "The only option for established market leaders? Get small, get fast, get smart. Now." Isn't it an irony that as the corporate world adopts this ideology, we're being told to do the opposite?

To partner or to merge...

If you've been working in nonprofit management for any amount of time, you should already be fairly adept at recognizing good partnership opportunities. Whether it's working with a local office supplies retailer to put together back-to-school packages for the low-income children you serve, or joining with other social service agencies that provide complimentary, but different, services in a public outreach campaign, there are a million reasons to work in partnership with other nonprofit agencies and businesses.

But when does the partnership get to the point where you should consider a merger?

A quick checklist might include:

• The existence of ongoing partnerships (or potential for ongoing arrangements) that cover multiple program areas,
  
• Essentially aligned missions (ie: desire to serve the same population or cause),
  
• Similar organizations in adjacent regions,
  
• There's the potential to strengthen organizational capacity (ie: instead of two Executive Directors trying to do it all, one ED and one Development Director),
  
• When you have few funders in common, or your common funder(s) would view you as stronger for having joined forces,
  
• When the new agency will lead to economies of scale, not a bloated bureaucracy,
  
• When your clients will view the merger in a positive light,
  
• When the merger will result in expanded services to your clients,
  
• When one of the organizations is facing a change in leadership (ie: a longtime Executive Director retiring),
  
• When a merger is the best way to achieve the goals in your Strategic Plan,
  
• When the merger can be accomplished without leaving any constituencies behind, and
  
• When the new organization will be stronger and more sustainable than either of the predecessor organizations.

I am not one who regularly pushes merging for the sake of merging. Nor am I one who talks about there being "too many nonprofits." And I certainly am not a proponent of having huge, bureaucratic behemoths attempting community work.

But, the reality is that it is increasingly difficult for small organizations (budgets under $750,000) to operate successfully, and create sustainable funding. As much as I love small, grassroots organizations, sometimes they can better serve their communities as part of a mid-sized agency.

The list above is just a place to start your discussions and soul searching within your nonprofit. You may not meet all of the conditions, and you may have other conditions of your own that lead you to decide to pursue a merger. A merger is the ultimate partnership. It's not to be entered into lightly or without great thought and purpose. But it's not to be feared either.

Too Many Nonprofits?

The Where Most Needed blog has an excellent posting on Charity Mergers Booming on Both Coasts. There are plenty of references to recent articles about particular mergers, and some of the issues involved. The author also points out that one of the best times for such a move is when the chief executive of one of the partners has just left, or is planning on transitioning out.

I read the posting with great interest and agreed with most everything being said, until the last paragraph, which opened with, "Mergers may be the best solution to the excessive number of nonprofit organizations." There was no evidence given, or data to back this statement up. It was just given as a fact: there are too many nonprofits.

I take great exception to this comment. This is not to say that I am anti-merger. I am all for it, when it makes sense for both organizations and their clients. Right now I am involved in a very positive merger negotiation as an interim executive director. I have also had to shut down a bankrupt nonprofit as part of my consulting practice. Nothing about either of these experiences, however, would lead me to believe that they were the result of a glut of nonprofit organizations.

In the current situation, the two organizations are complimentary. They each serve a similar clientele, but with a different program solution. Bringing the two together will give clients the choice of which solution is best for their family. Neither agency "has to merge" - they are each financially strong and healthy. The strategic relationship we are creating, however, will be better for both organizations, their staff members, the funders, and the children served.

The agency I had to close down had come to rely on a single government funding stream. When that funding suddenly ended, the agency was not ready to diversify quickly enough. That, combined with a bit of arrogance and basic bad management, is what shut the doors, not competition from "too many" other nonprofits. In fact, a great hole is still felt in the community where that organization once stood.

I do not see duplicative services as a problem, so long as each agency serves a particular niche. Mass produced solutions may be fine for selling shoes, but often the very nature of the services nonprofits provide require narrowly tailored solutions.

Why does one city need five different women's health clinics? Perhaps one has expertise in reaching recent Asian immigrants. Perhaps another has strong ties to the African-American community. Had these all been replaced by one, large women's health clinic some of the clients may have stayed away and not been served at all. Trust is so essential in the provision of personal human services that I do not think there can be too many grassroots nonprofits with similar offerings.

The funders are complaining about too many grant applications? They have too many tough choices to make? That's wonderful! What a great problem to have. I enjoy working with funders and appreciate the difficulty of their positions. But making their life a little easier is no reason to merge organizations that are just fine on their own.

Again, I am realistic. I will assist in mergers and shut-downs when they make sense. But I will not get so caught up in our quest for efficiency and "operating like a business" that I will make decisions that leave clients un-served or missions unfulfilled.