Tim's Library

Author’s Note:  This is the first of the last two installments of my 12 month/article journey through “lessons from building a foundation”.  I promised last month that the last two articles of this series would be a compilation of short stories and lessons attached to each so, here goes:

Story

My once and still favorite charity began working with us in 2001.  They remain our symbol of both success and failure (ours, not theirs). 

Early on, we worked on issues as simple as “finding where their money was” by sending over my company’s bookkeeper every Friday afternoon.  Shortly after, we had our first marketing concept success with them – which I still use as an example of building revenue streams using what your organization already does well. 

Then, we made our first mistake by responding to a seasonal lag in revenue one summer by closing that gap with a large contribution.  Not surprisingly, the next three summers brought a similar request for funds and I “ponied up” each time to get them through the trouble.

Our final blunder came when we paid for a development person who didn’t work out. 

Lesson

We are functional when we are teaching bookkeeping or building marketing concepts. But we lose our effectiveness, to ourselves and to our partners, when we just cough up money.

Teaching and conceptual support leads to sustainability without us.

Coughing up dough leads to dependence – not independence.

Story

Just as my foundation got real money in 2007, the Catholic Church closed the parish we had been working at since 1997.  This parish in the inner city of Cleveland had long since lost its financial viability (I sang with about 50 parishioners on a good Sunday) but the early 1900 constructed buildings were sturdy.

God bless the diocese and some very hard working people who’d helped repurpose the buildings for everything from free health services (entirely volunteer staffed) for the aging to Head Start for their children and tutoring by some wonderful Ursuline nuns.  We even turned the old convent into three apartments for refugees from war-torn countries.

Once the parish was formally closed, though, the diocesan bureaucrats showed up with all the answers.  The good news – they’ve continued most of the services that were being provided.  The bad – they no longer needed us.  “We’ve been serving the poor for 2,000 years”, I was told as we were dismissed.

Lesson

Don’t get mad, get happy.  As long as the neighborhood was going to still be served, we had to get our egos out of the way (though it was not always easy).  And so we simply asked which services they didn’t want to continue and took those to another building in the same neighborhood.  There we nurtured those services for a couple more years, then blended them into other already existing service programs.

Story

So, with more money than we could spend in the inner city effectively, we did just what any serial entrepreneur like me would do: We came up with a dozen new ideas and built a staff and board organization (of great quality) to try to keep up with all my (please note the sarcasm) brilliance.

Due to the embarrassing nature of this story (to me), we will end it at that.  J

Lesson

Focus, focus, focus, focus……then if that’s not enough, focus some more.

No more than three major initiatives will ever be “on our plate” again.  And what few board and staff we still maintain support folks already doing service to the poor rather than serving ourselves.

Story

I am uncomfortable with awards.  Those who know me know that’s not due to lack of ego, it’s just I don’t find taking them to be consistent with our mission.

I’ve made a few exceptions when the organization convinced me we could advance their process by taking the award.  And so, I accepted one and used the event to kick off a fund raising campaign with $60,000 donated by me and a few friends of mine.

Three months later this group found out to their surprise and mine that they were not financially viable and were forced into a two year “sabbatical.”

Lesson

Trust but verify.  I had known and served these folks and their mission for several years but I’d never really bothered to do a complete review of their books and business model.

That will never happen again.

The common theme of these four, and the four stories and lessons I’ll share next month, is that I must always strive to “reach for the middle” when serving those who serve the poor.

I think a lot of people lose momentum by seeking perfection or “reaching for the stars” as they say.  And many others lose momentum through despair when confronted by the inevitable hurdles.  This is a one step forward, two steps back business, I have found, just like most others.

And so, we must take our lumps and keep our spirit – and try not to get to high or too low. 

Peace,

Tim McCarthy 

 

Editor’s Note:  Thanks to my cousin, Kathy Walsh, who blogs via www.redcupboard.com, I came upon a social enterprise that also match my interest in books.  Better World Books http://www.betterworldbooks.com is a very serious businesses that exists to buy used books, resell them online with the proceeds going to libraries and literacy programs.  Sounds like a nice “little” business, right?  Au contraire – in eleven years they’ve donated almost $12 million and over 6 million books to libraries and literacy programs by recycling almost 80 million used books.  That’s scale in my view.  I encourage you to take a closer look at these righteous folks and use them if you can.  I know I will never buy another “non-Nook” book from Barnesandnoble.com again.  Here’s a summary of their story from their website:

“Better World Books is among a unique and growing group of triple bottom line companies who understand that profit is not the only way to measure business success. People also matter. And so does the planet on which we all live.

For Better World Books, the triple bottom line comes in lots of forms. From helping to build a nursing library in Somaliland to offering customers carbon neutral shipping on every book they buy, doing good is not just a part of Better World Books’ business—it is the business.

Social: power to the people
We've been thinking about some people we're proud to know. People like John Wood, the founder of Room to Read. John quit Microsoft in 1998. Eight years later, he’s building libraries in rural villages in Nepal with the "scalability of Starbucks and the compassion of Mother Theresa." John has written a book about his journey called Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.

We love literacy programs like Room to Read, Books for Africa, Worldfund, National Center for Family Literacy, Invisible Children, and our 80 other literacy partners. They provide the building blocks for children and families to learn, grow, and share in the vast collection of human knowledge committed to paper. It just makes sense that a bookstore ought to generate funding for these programs, and we do it with every book we sell.

Environmental: love your mother
One book that really got us thinking was The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken. Paul argues that a true economy mimics ecology in its circular no-waste systems and healthy fecundity of niches. In a perfect world, we'd package your books in edible bamboo pouches and load them into Willie Nelson's biodiesel bus, where he'd hand deliver them with a song. We’re not quite there, but we've got some things we think you'll like.

We've gone from a carbon offset program that covered emissions generated when books were shipped to our customers, to one that covers emissions associated both with shipping and our company's other operations and activities. Thanks to a careful audit of our emissions, we now know our total carbon footprint and are taking steps towards balancing out the carbon emissions generated from all of our organization's activities. Giddy up!

We worked with Sustainable Business Consulting and followed the World Resources Institute Greenhouse Gas Protocol to develop the methodology used to calculate our carbon inventory. Then we partnered with 3Degrees, a leading green power and carbon balancing services provider, to purchase the appropriate number of Renewable Energy Certificates and verified carbon offsets (namely, wind) to get Better World Books carbon balanced. A few cents collected from every customer at checkout helps fight global warming by providing support to wind projects that help avoid carbon dioxide emissions.

Couple that with the National Postal Service. They use the lowest energy per package of any carrier, thereby generating the least amount of carbon in the first place. We use local post offices whenever we can – so be sure to choose eco-shipping on checkout.

Of course, our greatest contribution of all is finding homes for books. We've even heard horror stories about librarians dumping unwanted tomes down a well at midnight because they couldn't find a good home for them. We gladly accept these orphan books and work hard to find new readers for them. So far, we've kept over 8,000 tons of books out of landfills.” 

Editor’s Note: Ever since hearing a presentation 20 years ago from a surgeon who said “30% of your health is chance (heredity), 70% is choice (how you treat your body and mind) this issue has interested me greatly. I’m not a health nut but I strive to do more good to my body than bad. This article, given me by my friend, Brad Roller, is alarming but in a very helpful way, in my view. Hope you enjoy.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/242516-Heart-Surgeon-Speaks-Out-On-What-Really-Causes-Heart-Disease

“Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings.  It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s mind.”  Mark Twain

Editor’s note:  I went back and forth on featuring this book due to Kagan’s known conservative credentials and the books rambling nature.  But in the end, two ideas, one past and one future, are powerful.  The past is that the United States became “sole world power” somewhat ambivalently.  That is, Kagan says, over history we tend to 1. Resist getting engaged in conflict, 2. Engage only when there appears to be a human cost that we feel can no longer be ignored and then 3. We become uncomfortable with the power we’re given by our engagement.  The second, far more importantly, is Kagan’s future view from past learning which is that we must decide now not later how to act as one of two or three world powers since we will soon no longer be at the top alone.  His conclusion, as noted in the excerpt below, is that this is not a one dimensional issue, as it is so often considered.

Excerpt:“What will this require?  Above all, it would mean working to shore up all three pillars – politics, economics and security – of what has made this American age, with all its brutalities, a golden age for humanity.  We have a tendency to separate politics, economics and security – “ideals” from “interests,” support for democracy from defense of security – but in the American world order they have all been related.”  

 Editor’s note:  The Southern Cross is a constellation long loved by sailors.  The song is one of the early, more obscure Crosby Stills and Nash songs but is one of my favorite for its harmonies, its melody and its meaning. The song is about failed love but as the excerpt below suggests, has a far broader meaning to me.  Peace. 

Favorite lyric:

When you see the Southern Cross
For the first time
You understand now
Why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from
Is so small.
But it's as big as the promise
The promise of a comin' day.