Lukenbill & Associates

Helping Nonprofits Grow

Small Nonprofits Begin in the Heart of One Person on a Mission

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The leaders of small nonprofit organizations are the social entrepreneurs of the nonprofit sector. They have seized hold of a truth and organized others around it for the good of the community. The community is best served by their being able to keep closely aligned with their core values, vision, and mission as they evolve into a community institution.

While one of the goals of all nonprofit organizations is to become institutionalized to the point that community support becomes a stable given, it is too often precisely the point at which they become much less effective as a mission-driven organization. The truth often gives way to the expediency of becoming stable and solvent.

Community transformation emerges from the small nonprofit organization, through the work of a few committed individuals coming together for a great cause. It is from the grassroots that individual dignity is protected, hope encouraged, communities strengthened and their bank of social capital deepened.

The leaders of these organizations are the true inheritors of the voluntary associations of virtue and service to the public good that Benjamin Franklin brought to fruition in colonial America and Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at in the 19th century in his landmark book, Democracy in America.

De Tocqueville came to America in the early 1800's, met with many of the country's founders, and wrote one of the most perceptive books ever written about America, (Democracy in America, (2000) the translation by Mansfield & Winthrop). This is a small part of what he wrote about voluntary associations and America: "Thus the most democratic country on earth is found to be, above all, the one where men in our day have most perfected the art of pursuing the object of their common desires in common and have applied this new science to the most objects. Does this result from an accident or could it be that there in fact exists a necessary relation between associations and equality?" (p. 490)

Among the nobility of the time, of which De Tocqueville (as a French count) was a member, good work was accomplished, when it was, by the nobility coercing others to follow them in the accomplishment of their aims. De Tocqueville had never witnessed common people banding together voluntarily to accomplish social ends and he marveled at it, understanding that it was, in many ways, the basis of democracy itself.

When I think about what defines a small grassroots organization, I think back to this initial formation: mission-driven, entrepreneurial, voluntary and community-based. The real grassroots organization begins in the heart of one person who has witnessed injustice and wants to right it, or been moved by beauty and wants to share it, or gained wisdom and wants to teach it, or transformed the pain of their suffering into the power of teaching and comforting others.

These leaders often begin without any money, but have an idea to help, in some way, the world they see in front of them. Through their passion and dedication they bring others along with them in their journey of healing and joy and begin the process of transformation and sharing.

If they are wise, lucky, and committed enough, they will survive and grow strong, and we will be the richer for their struggles, as they bring their healing and joyful service to our troubled world. If they succumb to the lure of financial stability over the purity of their vision and mission, we will ultimately be the lesser as their promise becomes merely the maintenance of the status quo.

"The best things are nearest; breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you." Robert Louis Stevenson