Robert Egger's Piece of Mind

It seems like just yesterday, but it was over two years ago that I stood, sweating like a pig and smiling ear to ear as I crossed over the Makah Pass, in Northern India, which was (and remains) the highest place I had yet to set foot–17,500 ft above sea level.

I was sweating for obvious reasons…but I was smiling for three.

First because I had gone to India with only a ticket there and back and I had made a profoundly amazing adventure happen from scratch. I had found my way over the highest road in the world to Leh, the capital city of the northern province of Ladakh, where I made some great friends (travelers note—New Zealanders are tons of fun to hang with) and ended up walking up, over and around the Himalayas to a point where I could have almost tossed a rock into China but for the fear of what they’d toss back.

Second because I was thinking about my wife and daughter—Claudia and Julia—and what they would have thought if they could have seen me slugging it up those hills, without anything but a pack on my back. I’m glad I had a camera, so that they could share in the triumphant moment when I hauled my aging ass over that pass.

But the biggest reason for my smile was that I had just had one of those ideas that are so crazy that it makes you laugh out loud for the sheer lunacy of it. I thought of calling for a congress of nonprofits.

Earlier in my journey I had spend a few days in New Delhi specifically to study the Indian National Congress and the road to independence that led Indians from being vassals in their own country to masters of their own fate. That took me to the home of Jawaharlal Nehru, the COO (if you will) of the movement and, later, India’s first Prime Minister. His home is now a museum for the movement, and it was there that I had had what, for me amounted to a revelation.

I had gone seeking some grand strategy, some diabolical method by which 3,000 British officers (the most that were ever stationed in India) could dominate 350 million people, on a sub-continent, for over 150 years. I had prepared myself for sinister genius…what I found was commonplace to the point of being filed under D for “Duh”.

As long as the British could keep Indians divided by race, class, caste, language, geography…and fighting each other for scraps or petty power, well…it was a piece of cake. And it dawned on me, at that very moment, that the nonprofit sector in America was JUST LIKE THAT–divided, weak and fighting each other for funding.

And, for the next three weeks, I had been stewing on that—and what could be done.

And it was at that moment, as I sat under the tattered, furiously flapping prayer flags that mark the summit, that I thought to myself…imagine if the nonprofits of the US got together and we held a Congress. What would it be like if we stopped, if only for a moment, and like the Indians, realized that our power as well as our destiny lied in the need to look beyond self interest and see the power and opportunity of unity.

THAT’S why I smiled….and with my first step off that pass, that’s what I set out to be part of.

Fast forward to now. With my amazing partner and friend Audrey Alvarado, who heads up the national network of State Nonprofit Associations over at NCNA (www.ncna.org), we are about to embark on a truly revolutionary journey towards independence…and not just for the nonprofit sector in this country, but for those we serve, and for those who volunteer.

Like every similar journey one reads about, this one seems daunting from the onset…but imagine the potential. If you do, then the risk seems, like the Makah Pass, only something you have to sweat and work to get across.

Please look to the website for the Congress at www.nonprofitcongress.org. More to the point—send it to your friends, and even your competitors, for the first step is to see that we are all fighting similar foes—and that everybody has a role in the effort. And then be part of it….lend your ideas, your vision, your sweat, your time, your energy, for there is but one way forward…and that is together.

Much more, very soon.

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Robert Egger

Robert Egger is the Founder/President of CForward, a 501(c)(4) education/advocacy organization as well as a Political Action Committee (PAC) with the expressed purpose of educating and electing political candidates for office (federal, state, and local) who recognize the value of the nonprofits sector as a viable and strong asset in the economic rebuild of America. Since its founding in 2011, CForward has been recognized as one of the "Top Ten Nonprofits to Watch in 2012" by The Chronicle of Philanthropy. In addition, Robert is the Founder and President of href="http://www.dccentralkitchen.org">DC Central Kitchen. His book on the nonprofit sector, Begging for Change: The Dollars and Sense of Making Nonprofits Responsive, Efficient and Rewarding For All, received the 2005 McAdam Prize for "Best Nonprofit Management Book" by the Alliance for Nonprofit Management. In Washington, Robert was the founding Chair of both the Mayor's Commission on Nutrition and Street Sense, Washington's "homeless" newspaper. He was also the Co-Convener of the first Nonprofit Congress, held in Washington DC in 2006. Robert speaks throughout the country and internationally on the subjects of hunger, sustainability, nonprofit political engagement and social enterprise. Read Robert's full bio The opinions here are his own

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Related posts:

1. Live from the Nonprofit Congress
2. Path from the Congress
3. 30,000 ft., en route to Manchester, NH
4. Risk, Reward . . . and Nonprofit Heritage

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 at 10:57 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.