Robert Egger's Piece of Mind

As I detailed in my book, Begging for Change, I LOVE to walk to work. I take many routes to get to where I’m headed, but no matter which road I wander down, it opens up doors to the city I serve—Washington, DC.

This was appropriate today, as I was walking downtown to keynote at the annual Serve DC gathering.

I probably shouldn’t say this, but when I speak, I never write my speeches down. Don’t get me wrong, I know what I want to convey, but the way I get there—well, I make that up, based on a predictable process of being open to inspiration.

I don’t know how it works, but I never fail to find an idea, or an anecdote that makes my speeches personal, passionate and to the point.

Case in point….today, when I left our house in Mt Pleasant at 7am (allowing myself a good hour and a half to stroll) I didn’t really know what I was going to say.

And as I pondered…I wandered.

Right off the bat, I walked past the home where music legend Bo Diddley lived in long ago, which was marked (along with other historic sites) by Cultural Tourism DC, a nonprofit that has created amazing historic tours throughout DC, which tempts tourists off the Mall and into the neighborhoods that make up our Capital City.

I walked down Mt. Pleasant Street, where rioters rampaged a decade ago, to protest police insensitivity to Central and South American refugees that moved here when DC was a “sanctuary city.” I walked past the Latin American Youth Center, CentroNia and the Carlos Rosario School— nonprofits founded by three dynamics women (Lori, Beebe and Sonia) who have helped hold together and heal that neighborhood.

I walked through Malcolm X Park, where Sunday night drum circles fill the air with rhythm and joy…past the offices of Washington Parks and People, a nonprofit that, along with countless others, protects and preserves our environmental resources, keeps our city one of the most beautiful capital cities in the world.

I walked down to 14^th and U, which was an epicenter of riots following the murder of Dr. Marti Luther King Jr. in 1968, and where thousands of people converged 40 years later to celebrate Barack Obama’s election….as not only the first black President, but the first President to get his first job at a nonprofit.

I walked down 13^th street, past Duke Ellington’s boyhood home (another spot on the historic tour), and then past the 12^th St YMCA, one of the country’s oldest nonprofit organizations.

Then I turned right on 9^th, and walked past Shiloh and New Bethel and Sweet Daddy Grace’s United House of Prayer…nonprofit houses of faith which held that community together during decades of decay and neglect.

I walked past Emmaus Services for the Aging , a great nonprofit which works to keep elders at home and active as long as possible.

Further down, I walked past Blagden Alley, where arts flourished and helped introduce a whole new generation of Washingtonians to a side of the city few saw from the universities or the Hill internships that brought them to DC.

Those young men and women are now staying in DC and raising their kids here (versus moving to the suburbs) because nonprofit charter schools are providing a rich variety of educational options… where, coincidentally, social enterprise businesses like DC Central Kitchen are serving locally sourced, cook-from-scratch meals which keep kids healthy and engaged, while employing people who now pay taxes and contribute to our city’s ongoing vitality.

And then I walked into the hotel and down to the ballroom where hundreds of my nonprofit colleagues had gathered for the day.

And you know what I told them? I told them about my walk…and the city we share and the community we love.

I told them that ALL of those nonprofits I passed…they create profit. Not only are they ALL employers and tax paying businesses (contributing millions in payroll taxes), their combined work BINDS this city together and creates the environment which traditional businesses require to create wealth.

TRY making money in a town without education, healthcare, arts, culture and a clean, inviting environment. You can’t…period.

I told them to own that…and to say with pride… “there is no profit without nonprofits.”

And then I challenged them to step forward, stand together and speak UP, and help candidates and political leaders know that cuts to nonprofits limit our city’s ability to attract visitors, retain citizens, launch businesses and THRIVE.

Nonprofits in Washington employ 26% of the city’s workforce. Like NY City, where nonprofits are now the NUMBER 1 private employer….we need to own it and use it…not in a belligerent, defiant way, but in ways that help our city grow and our country understand that nonprofits are dynamic, powerful and important partners who stand ready to rock.

And that’s why, when I got done with my speech, I walked towards the offices of CForward…to help make that happen.

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I just published a new op-ed in the Huffington Post, titled “The Most Important Word for Nonprofits: MERGER” and it accomplished everything I had hoped, and more.

The article itself presents a few ways in which using collective resources could muster better economies of scale for the sector…but the real experiment for me was how the title itself would be received.

Simply put…the nonprofit sector should be a powerful, vital, recognized force in America…but it isn’t. Much of this is due to our subservient nature, born of decades of relying on the extra our society produces, which we use to fuel our efforts. We run our programs on extra food, time, buildings…and most importantly, extra money.

This has produced, I believe, an inferiority complex, that manifests itself all the time in the form of weak thinking, silo-centric organizing and submissive politics. In short…we should be roaring, yet we purr.

Which is what I wanted to demonstrate by using the provocative word MERGER in the title of my article. I knew it would be immediately rejected by many who would see it  as a call for “2 to become 1″, and I wanted to literally shove that limited thinking into the sectors nose…to say, in effect, “SEE…this is why we grovel when we should be standing tall”.

If you haven’t read it, I hope you will.

And as a glorious example of the power of mergers, I’ve attached a video I took time to record during my recent trip to speak at the 15th Anniversary of the Morgridge Center for Public Service at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It features my friend Crystel Anders, the CEO of Community Shares. They just opened the Center for Change, which provides shared space for dozens of nonprofits. It’s brilliant, bold and demonstrates, by design, a glorious example of thinking big….which is what I hope nonprofits in the Badger State will do during the upcoming election cycle. Their role in the economy of Wisconsin is too pronounced to be ignored by candidates, but it’s up to them to stand together and be heard. There are almost 275,000 nonprofit employees in the state–that’s a hard number of votes to ignore–but only if nonprofits don’t ignore the opportunity.

Which brings me to this

It’s been too long since I blogged. I’ve been transitioning from full time President of DCCK (which I still am) to now also leading CForward, an advocacy organization and PAC for the 10 million nonprofit employees.  I now wear two hats, and as such, I have to insure that I do not jeopardize DCCK’s 501C3 status with my political work.

SO…while I wasn’t blogging, I was writing a ton…and establishing  a new office and team….and continuing to speak throughout America.

Hopefully, we’ll see each other more often.

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People say to me…..”Dude, you are ALWAYS on the road!”

And I say, “No, Baby…I’m always on a mission, and the mission takes me to the road.”

This week, the mission took me back to Colorado, Denver to be specific, where I saw countless colleagues from previous visits, or from other cities, but who now call the Mile High City, or that great state, home.

I spoke at the Colorado Nonprofit Associations Fall Conference. The room was packed with over 500 people who came in search of best practices, new ideas and….from me….a sense of what comes next—what we can do, together, to shift the system.

Well, I pointed to a friend in the audience who is already doing some of the early work to rethink the equation and redraw the lines that demarcate the .com world from the .org world.

Her name is Dace West, and she is the leader of the Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships….which was founded by then Mayor Hickenlooper to create a more dynamic, robust and (dare I say) profitable environment in Denver.

Dace and her team are pioneers. She’d be the first to admit that they learned a lot along the way, and that they have a long way to go….but what a trail of ideas they are leaving. FOLLOW her….

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