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In 2021, more than 40 percent of all retail stores that opened in the United States were dollar stores. These stores—which now total over 37,000 outlets nationwide—are often located in low-income neighborhoods populated mainly by people of color. Today, more Americans live within five miles of a dollar store (75 percent) than within five miles of a hospital (60 percent). Increasingly, dollar stores are driving “grocery stores and other retailers out of business” (6), according to a recent report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

In short, dollar stores often function as economic kudzu, spreading relentlessly and cutting off the flow of dollars to homegrown businesses. It’s not rare for dollar stores to swamp an entire community.

An example of this was profiled at NPQ in 2019, when we published a detailed study about the closure of a food co-op that had opened three years before in a Black community in Greensboro, NC. From 1998 to 2016, that community lacked a full-service grocery store; the co-op’s opening marked a triumphant moment after many years of community organizing.

So, why did the co-op effort fall short? As the study’s authors, Marnie Thompson, Sohnie Black, and Ed Whitfield, detail, the community co-op failed in large measure because it came “under direct pressure from more than 30 dollar stores within its two-mile radius.” These dollar stores were not grocery stores per se, but they siphoned away enough sales to sink the community store.

Greensboro’s is the story of many communities. What can be done about this pattern? Quite a bit. But to respond effectively, it is important to understand dollar stores’ growing importance, how communities are responding, and how public policy might better support community-based businesses.

The Dollar Store Business Model

Dollar stores offer convenience and stock many low-cost items—some of which might be deals, others not so much. These stores go by three brand names—Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar—and have two corporate owners, as Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar in 2015. Nationally, the number of outlets has doubled over the past 15 years. Today, there are more dollar stores nationwide than locations of McDonald’s, Starbucks, Target, and Walmart combined. Importantly, in recent years dollar stores have greatly expanded their food offerings; today, an estimated one in five consumers regularly purchases groceries from these stores and, in total volume, grocery store sales at dollar stores now exceed national sales by Whole Foods (6).

The ILSR report’s authors Stacy Mitchell, Kennedy Smith, and Susan Holmberg note a direct relationship between the growth of Walmart—which, since 2001, has been the largest grocer in the United States—and the subsequent rise of dollar stores. Effectively, the Walmart Supercenters, which average 187,000 square feet per store, or the size of three football fields, took market share from traditional grocers (both chains and independent stores), causing many to close.

But this left a market gap. What if a resident doesn’t want to drive to the closest Walmart and negotiate the Supercenter’s aisles just to pick up a few items? Or, what if that person doesn’t own a car and wants to avoid the time and expense of a cab, car share, or public transit? Enter the dollar store. The average dollar store is about 10,000 square feet, with sales averaging about $260 per square foot or over $2 million per store. That means it is much smaller (and has lower overhead) than a traditional supermarket (average size of which is now over 51,000 square feet), but it is also larger than a convenience store (average size between 2,500 and 4,000 square feet) and therefore able to stock a much wider range of items than a 7-Eleven franchisee can.

Dollar Store Tactics—and Consequences

While the hollowing out of supermarkets precipitated by the rise of Walmart is one driver of dollar store expansion, Mitchell, Smith, and Holmberg also highlight some of the tactics that dollar store corporations use to expand their networks. One is to site store locations in low-income areas, both in large cities and small towns. In cities, dollar stores are typically located in low-income Black and Latinx communities.

For example, in DeKalb County, GA—which includes a small part of Atlanta, as well as surrounding suburban areas, and is about 55 percent African American—only three of the county’s 70-plus dollar stores are in the two mostly White districts. DeKalb County is not unique. On its website, ILSR maintains a set of maps showing the overlay of poverty and store location in multiple metropolitan areas.

A second tactic is to site stores across the street from existing grocers, with the goal of acquiring enough of the more profitable sales of prepared food items to force the grocery across the street out of business. Mitchell, Smith, and Holmberg write, “Reports from local grocers suggest that it’s typical for sales to drop by roughly 15 to 30 percent after a dollar store opens” (12). Grocery stores are legendary for their narrow profit margins; such a revenue loss can be devastating.

Chain stores take profits out of communities; local stores keep resources in communities.

A third tactic that dollar stores use, one familiar to students of the Walmart business model, is to squeeze suppliers by leveraging “their power as major buyers to coerce suppliers into providing them with special package sizes and lower prices, while charging independent grocers more and restricting the products available to them” (12). As Mitchell, Smith, and Holmberg point out, this is illegal price discrimination—a violation of the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, a New Deal-era antitrust law, but it is also very common given lax antitrust enforcement.

What is the impact of dollar store expansion on communities? One effect is on employment. Dollar stores tend to employ 20 percent fewer people per sales volume than competing stores. They also pay their workers less. According to Mitchell, Smith, and Holmberg, in 2019, the average dollar store worker earned $14,571 a year in wages. Even store managers earn a very modest average annual salary of $40,000.

The loss of local ownership has other effects. Chain stores take profits out of communities; local stores keep resources in communities. In economics jargon, local ownership creates a greater “multiplier effect.” Not only do local stores keep profits at home, but they are more likely to buy goods and services from local vendors.

Dollar stores also negatively impact public health. To the extent dollar stores drive out grocery stores, residents’ access to healthy food is reduced. As Smith observes in a related study, “health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity are strongly linked to poverty and reliance on cheap, low-quality food.”

Communities Organize to Limit Dollar Store Spread

Increasingly, local communities are organizing to put on the brakes. In 2021 and 2022 alone, more than 50 communities rejected dollar store projects, Mitchell, Smith, and Holmberg report. They add, “Over the last four years, at least 54 cities and towns have enacted measures limiting new dollar stores and, in one case, banning them altogether” (18). Of those 54 cities, 15 imposed temporary moratoriums, while the remaining 39 implemented permanent zoning changes.

One common policy strategy is to mandate a minimum set distance between store locations. Atlanta, for instance, mandates that new dollar stores must be at least one mile away from other similar stores. Cleveland, OH, mandates a two-mile zone and requires 15 percent of shelf space to be dedicated to the sale of produce and other minimally processed food items. Birmingham, AL, takes a somewhat different approach, creating a “healthy food overlay district,” which limits dollar stores and incentivizes fresh-food retailers (18).

In Tulsa, OK, a successful community campaign in North Tulsa, a largely Black section of the city, resulted in a law mandating that dollar stores be at least one mile apart from each other. This policy victory also paved the way for the creation of a new community-owned grocery store, Oasis Fresh Market, which is 16,500 square feet and cost $5 million to develop (19). The new grocer opened its doors in 2021, becoming the first neighborhood grocery store in 14 years.

Typically, laws restricting dollar stores are enacted in large cities, but rural communities also have mobilized. The ILSR report authors give a few examples of such rural campaigns, including one from Morgan, MN, a town of 800 people, in which a petition drive of 100 people stopped a dollar store project; and one from Algansee, MI, a small township near the Indiana state line with a population of 1,817. In that town, more than 200 residents—over 10 percent of the town’s population—showed up at a local planning meeting to oppose a permit for a dollar store to be built across the street from the community’s local grocery store; not surprisingly, the town commissioners voted down the dollar store’s proposal.

That said, these community victories, important as they are, remain the exception, not the rule. In 2021 and 2022, over 3,000 new dollar stores opened nationwide. While community efforts have succeeded in placing some limits on dollar store growth, the overall trend of chain expansion and resulting resource extraction persists.

The Call for Policy Change

What is needed to move from local victories to a trend shift at the national level? Mitchell, Smith, and Holmberg contend that local activists need help from state and federal policymakers, for instance, in reviving enforcement of the Robinson-Patman Act that limits price discrimination, which the report authors label “predatory buying.”

State governments can…[reinforce] local planning agency authority to reject developments that are not in accord with community needs.

It appears that the Biden administration is taking some steps in that direction. At a minimum, Biden’s actions have alarmed many corporate law firms, such as Duane Morris, which issued a blog post this past January noting that the Federal Trade Commission may be “resuscitating” enforcement of Robinson-Patman.

A second priority, the authors contend, is to support local finance. Michell, Smith, and Holmberg observe that “The disappearance of local banks, and the loss of small business lending they provided, has been particularly harmful for local grocery stores” (22). Federal policy, they contend, in the best case would use antitrust law to break up the “too big to fail” banks, which the authors argue are squeezing out local banks that have been central to keeping local grocers in business. Failing that, they suggest one step would be for the US Small Business Administration (and possibly state agencies as well) to establish “grant and loan programs that are targeted to independent food retailers looking to open or expand in underserved communities” (22).

One last area where state governments can play an important role involves reinforcing local planning agency authority to reject developments that are not in accord with community needs. This can be done, for instance, by making dollar stores “a conditional use that requires approval from the municipality (that is, it is a use that is never allowed ‘by right’) and further clarifying that local governments may reject these stores on a wide range of grounds, including if they are likely to have a detrimental effect on the local economy or access to fresh food” (23). 

The Road Ahead

The report’s authors are not unaware of the irony of calling for state and federal intervention in a field where such policies have often lent a helping hand—in the opposite direction. During the COVID-19 pandemic, dollar stores were deemed essential businesses—and increased their market share as a result (4).

But what policy giveth, policy can taketh away—if movements are able to compel a shift in government priorities. To date, the authors note that federal policy, particularly the lack of antitrust enforcement and the consolidation of banking, has helped facilitate the proliferation of dollar stores. Reversing those policies could have the opposite effect.

Nonetheless, even when dollar store expansion is halted, more is needed. As Smith emphasizes in a companion strategy guide, building community health and wealth requires residents to develop “a concrete plan for rebuilding their local economies, with locally owned businesses at the heart of their strategies.”

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

This article is, with publisher permission, adapted from a more extensive journal article, “A Tax Credit Proposal for Profit Moderation and Social Mission Maximization in Long-Term Residential Care Businesses” published last year by Nonprofit Policy Forum.

We propose using federal tax credits, combined with Medicare and Medicaid dollars, to restructure the ownership and financing of the nursing care industry.

For decades, for-profit nursing homes and assisted living facilities have seen profit maximization overrun social mission. The result has been the neglect—or even abuse—of the frail and elderly, a situation that became patently clear amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though companies are funded through public Medicaid and Medicare dollars, patients receive little protection.

Fortunately, existing policy tools can address this. Specifically, we propose using federal tax credits, combined with Medicare and Medicaid dollars, to restructure the ownership and financing of the nursing care industry. By making federal payment contingent on partial employee and impact investor ownership, limiting the use of complex organizational structures, and sweetening the deal with tax credit incentives, we believe the federal government can restore the alignment of the nursing care and assisted living industries with a social mission of providing patients with top-quality care.

Understanding the Unacceptable Status Quo

Numerous studies demonstrate that for-profit senior care facilities show higher rates of neglect and abuse when compared with similar nonprofit entities (Comondore et al. 2009). These statistics hold true across time and national boundaries (Brennan et al. 2012) and demonstrate the failure of government regulations to rein in abuses (Coskun 2022; Silver-Greenberg and Gebeloff 2021). Moreover, the for-profit service quality gap worsens when private equity intersects with complex corporate structures. A rigorous study shows that private equity ownership of long-term care facilities increases the short-term mortality of Medicare patients by 10 percent (Gupta et al. 2021).

Today, 70 percent of US nursing home providers are for-profit businesses (Goldstein, Silver-Greenbergand, and Gebeloff 2020; Lendon et al. 2019). While one approach might be to shift provision back to nonprofits entirely, we suggest a middle-of-the-road intervention that makes skilled caregivers co-owners and incentivizes for-profit providers to maximize their social mission through a tax credit mechanism.

US long-term care businesses (see Table 1) often operate under conditions where they have an extreme information advantage over their customers. This is because those who pay for services are not typically the people directly receiving the services (Chou 2002). As a result, the buyer often unknowingly purchases poor-quality services for a vulnerable individual who is typically unable to communicate service shortfalls. We posit that an antidote to this situation is to rein in profit maximization that benefits private investors.

A table documenting the scale and the scope of the $250-billion industry is below:

Our proposed policy solution is to create a tax credit contingent on changing the ownership and financing structure of the industry. It not only rewires the incentives away from profit maximation to profit moderation but the subsidy from the federal tax credit also provides extra liquidity to financially stressed nursing homes. In this manner, it becomes possible to root out many ills in the system.

We envision that, after a window where alignment with abiding by the tax credit provision is voluntary or only required if facilities are failing on quality measures, Medicare and Medicaid could phase in a requirement that businesses wanting to receive federal dollars abide by its provisions (Coskun 2022).

Policy Design

Table 2 below outlines the problems that for-profit nursing homes and assisted living currently face and our proposed financial and legal policy solutions:

We propose a tax credit that would have four provisions tied to it to address the four problems outlined above. The first provision requires that a minimum percentage of investments in the for-profit come from socially minded funds (social impact bonds and impact investing); this is done to put the social return on investment on equal terms with the economic return (Lohr 2021). The second creates a sliding dividend cap that adjusts with the amount of social investment. The third stipulates that long-term care businesses must have at least partial employee ownership. A fourth provision would place strict limits on the use of complex corporate structures that make it difficult to identify who owns the care facility when there are service quality issues (Kahn 2018). We flesh out each below.

Changing the Structure of Care Finance

To redirect profit in long-term care facilities and increase accountability, the tax credit law would require that a minimum percentage of ownership in the for-profit long-term care business come from social financing through providing initial capital or buying out conventional financial return-seeking investors. This helps ensure that investor pressure for social returns balances out financial pressures. Here, by social financing, we refer primarily to impact investing and social impact bonds (Geobey and Harji 2014; Han, Chen, and Toepler 2020; Rosenman 2019).

Impact investing, as defined by the Global Impact Investing Network, is an investment tool “made with the intention to generate positive, measurable, social and environmental impact alongside a financial return.” This means that investors put their money behind businesses trying to provide quality products or services and address societal problems. Regulatory policy, tied to long-term care agreements with impact investment funds, can contractually require that certain health and social care standards are met, thereby helping ensure the vulnerable elderly population receives the quality care that is largely being paid for by taxpayer money.

Second, Social Impact Bonds help organizations raise funds for socially oriented projects from the backing of private, public, and/or investors interested in philanthropy (Joy and Shields 2013). Admittedly, they are relatively new (Crowley 2014; Katz et al. 2018). Between 2010 and 2019, 138 SIBs accounting for $441 million in capital have been issued globally, ranging in causes from workforce development to education and medical services (Hulse, Atun, and McPake 2021).

SIBs have their drawbacks. For example, because SIBs depend on buy-in from private investors, SIBs may empower private investors to promote social changes that don’t correspond with the public interest (Child, Gibbs, and Rowley 2016). Nonetheless, we believe that impact investing and SIBs, shifting investor pressures toward accountability, would help improve social outcomes.

A Sliding Dividend Cap

A second provision that we recommend is a sliding dividend cap. The cap would limit profit distribution based on a sliding scale dependent on the level of social investment made in the long-term care business. For example, if social financing equaled 20 percent of overall capital investment, profit distribution to the remaining 80 percent representing regular investors would be capped at 40 percent.

On the other hand, if social investments only equaled 15 percent of overall investment, then the distribution of profit to investors representing the remaining 85 percent would be capped at 35 percent. Therefore, the greater the amount of social financing in the investment mix, the greater the payments that can be distributed to regular investors.

While the sliding dividend cap relative to social financing is a newly proposed policy idea, static dividend caps on investments are not new and have been implemented in many countries (Liao, Tawfik, and Teichreb 2019). A dividend cap has been in use the longest and most prominently as a component of the Community Interest Company established in 2005 in the United Kingdom, providing an opportunity to examine the use of this policy tool.

Prioritizing Employee Ownership

Also tied to the tax credit would be a requirement to use an employee-ownership business structure. This would help create internal checks and balances to ward off poor service quality. Employee-owned businesses are a tested solution in this area, especially the Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP, housed in S and C corporations.

Established in 1974 to encourage businesses to share wealth with employees, an ESOP is essentially a company-funded retirement plan whereby the company contributes or provides debt-purchased shares on behalf of its employees (Hricko and Starr 2014). Businesses are incentivized through tax benefits; the most generous of which accrue to ESOPs in S corporations, which “do not have to pay tax on profits attributable to the percentage of the company’s ownership in the ESOP. For example, a 30-percent ESOP avoids tax on 30 percent of the profits” (Hricko and Starr 2014, 67). Also important, an employee’s shares are subject to vesting, such that the longer employees work, the more shares they accumulate, with full vesting required at no later than six years of employment (Hricko and Starr 2014).

Research on ESOPs has shown that employees in such companies are more motivated and have higher retention rates than workers at investor-owned companies (Hricko and Starr 2014; Jenkins and Chivers 2022; Josephs 2021). When closely held, ESOP companies perform well across a range of other benefits for employees and company performance (NCEO 2018). Of interest to investors, ESOPs see a per year 2.5 percent increase in sales, employment, and productivity growth relative to what otherwise would have been expected (Hricko and Starr 2014).

ESOPs also provide workers with important governance rights. Among these, in private companies, ESOP participants must be able to direct the trustee on the voting of allocated shares for sale of all or substantially all the company’s assets, merger, liquidation, recapitalization, reclassification, dissolution, or consolidation (NCEO 2012).

Shareholders of existing long-term care facilities could benefit from a transition to the ESOP structure in several ways, including deferment or elimination of capital gains taxes, corporate tax savings, greater cash flow, and more motivated employees (Hricko and Starr 2014).

Compelling Accountability  

A fourth key provision we propose is to restrict the use of complex corporate structures that shield many for-profit long-term care facilities from accountability. The literature on corporate structures concerning poor nursing home service quality implicates three features that are often found together: multi-layer shareholding, related party transactions, and chain ownership. We propose limits on all three.

First, multi-layer shareholding makes the chain of accountability longer and harder to hold investors of nursing homes accountable (Kahn 2018). It is defined as ownership that cannot be traced back to natural-person shareholders or beneficial owners within a couple of layers (IDB and OECD 2019). Harrington, Ross, and Kang (2015) conducted a case study of a California nursing home chain and found that complex, interlocking individual and corporate owners and property companies obscured its ownership structure and financial arrangements (see Figure 1).

Second, closely tied to private equity are related-party transactions found in three-quarters of nursing homes—more than 11,000—in the US (Rau 2018). Such transactions between related parties—for example, between a holding company and subsidiary companies that share a common holding company or shareholders (SEC 2017)—can easily be abused. Compounded by loose disclosure rules, this practice often results in nursing homes being underfunded—leading to understaffing, a shortage of essential supplies, and injuries to residents (Duhigg 2007).

A tax credit is a suitable policy tool to encourage the socially responsible operation of for-profit long-term care facilities.

Third, chain ownership is also linked to poor service quality. Grabowski et al. (2016), studying nursing home data from 1993 to 2010, found that nursing homes in chains of all sizes had many more deficiencies than independent nursing homes did and that low-quality nursing homes were targeted by chains for acquisition.

The combination of private equity and chain ownership is particularly toxic. A study by Harrington et al. (2017) of the five largest for-profit nursing home chains in five countries (Canada, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States) finds that private equity investors increasingly own large for-profit nursing home chains, have had many ownership changes over time, and have complex organizational structures. These chains have high profit margins and often have documented quality problems (Burns et al. 2016; Grabowski et al. 2016).

Tax Credit Structure

The term “tax credit” under the US taxation system is defined as direct forgiveness of tax owed by the taxpayer, which “reduces tax liability by an amount exactly equal to the credit” (Mikesell 2016). A tax credit is a suitable policy tool to encourage the socially responsible operation of for-profit long-term care facilities. It does so at a public cost that is lower than with tax-exempt nonprofits, which are exempt from corporate income tax on all mission-related activity. Using a tax credit policy also avoids the need to establish a new government agency to administer the policy (Howard 2002).

The sliding scale feature of the policy design can be realized structurally in the tax credit with sliding tax bases and rates; in other words, a firm with greater social ownership would qualify for a greater credit amount. Since one of the goals of having the credit is to lower financial pressures on nursing homes to cut corners on care, it should also be refundable. That is, if, due to low earnings, the tax owed is less than the value of the tax credit, they would receive the difference as a rebate.

That said, there are still several potential obstacles with implementation—the most serious of which is the possibility of gaming the system. Just as nonprofits may sign contracts that benefit related parties and thereby evade regulation, tax credit recipients may engage in similar evasions. Nonetheless, we believe that, on balance, the policy design offered here could improve nursing care quality for millions of Americans.

Putting Care at the Center of Federal Nursing Home Policy

As noted, long-term residential care businesses today maximize profits, often at the expense of vulnerable individuals. We identified four major issues that work to maintain this situation and propose four policy ideas to address them—all of which would be anchored by the purchasing power of Medicare and Medicaid, and our proposed tax credit.

First, we propose that nursing homes be required to obtain a minimum percentage of social financing. Second, we recommend implementing a sliding dividend cap that ties the payouts received by non-impact investors to the business’ success at acquiring impact investment financing. Third, we recommend adding a requirement to use an ESOP or similar structure to provide partial employee ownership, thereby increasing workers’ ability to hold nursing homes accountable. Fourth, we propose limits on complex corporate structures that keep ownership hidden and reduce accountability.

To achieve the intended improvement in the quality of care for residents in these facilities, these policy components need to work together. Since most of these policy tools have not been used extensively in the long-term care industry, pilot projects are needed to test the various policy components, perhaps first in a state-level program. We suggest that a program evaluation component be included in pilots to accumulate empirical knowledge.

Eventually, a well-thought-out and locally tested “social responsibility in long-term residential care tax credit” bill could be proposed in Congress. We believe such an approach could be applicable in other fields where businesses share similar characteristics, such as the for-profit provision of care for vulnerable individuals. These include for-profit hospices, childcare centers, and group homes for youth and individuals with disabilities, among others.

The fact of the matter is: our current system of nursing homes and assisted living care is broken, costing thousands of people their lives each year. The government can and must act to restore a social mission of providing patients with top-quality care. The need is clear.

References  

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This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Rural America is primarily powered by electric cooperatives, which have tripled their renewable energy capacity over the last decade. Projects such as the Microgrids, Infrastructure Resilience, and Advanced Controls Launchpad should accelerate this positive trend by using data and case studies to prove the cost-effectiveness and reliability of renewable energy sources such as wind. On a smaller scale, renewable energy is powering the expansion of electrification to remote parts of Nigeria, enabling rural and coastal communities to become energy independent and unlock economic opportunities like never before. Nigeria’s rural electrification expansion can teach the US the importance of meeting communities where they are as we move away from our dependence on fossil fuels.

According to a January 2022 IRENA Analysis, Nigeria, along with Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, have some of the largest populations on the continent living without electricity access. Electrification data shows that Nigeria has an electricity-access rate of around 55 percent. This leaves an estimated 90 million Nigerian citizens without access to grid electricity—most of whom live in rural and semirural areas.

The country’s unreliable power supply limits residents’ access to a functional healthcare system, quality education, and potable water. Unreliable electricity also limits the growth of many Nigerian businesses and, indeed, the country’s private sector as a whole, leading to annual economic losses of around $26.2 billion, according to a World Bank press release, which ranks Nigeria 171 on a list of 190 countries in electricity access. Challenges posed to businesses include a lack of access to farm irrigation and facilities in which to store perishable products.

For example, fishing is the major industry of Ajemitale-Odonla, a coastal town in Ondo, a state in Southwestern Nigeria. The closest national grid is about 30 kilometers (approximately 18 miles) away by waterway. Lack of access to grid electricity has limited the town’s ability to realize its economic potential; fishermen in the area have no refrigeration and reported frequent losses as much of their catch must be thrown away. Locals have started to migrate to neighboring communities in search of improved conditions.

But recently, a solar project made its way to Ajemitale-Odonla, changing life there for the better.

Let There Be Light

“When children wake up at night, they have light to study,” says Ajimitale Johnson, a shop owner in Ajemitale-Odonla.”

Ashdam Solar, a renewable-energy company, is giving Ajemitale-Odonla and six neighboring communities energy independence with the installation of a 56-kilowatt solar mini-grid system. With support from the US African Development Foundation and All On, an independent impact investor, the installation provides decentralized, renewable energy to over 1,500 people in 300 households, 56 businesses, three churches, and one school. Ajemitale-Odonla, along with neighboring villages, now has constant access to electricity—making the town’s electricity even more reliable than in some urban areas.

“Part of the reason why we chose the Ajemitale-Odonla coastal community was because we wanted to get to the last-mile communities where the national grid had not gotten to,” Damilola Ashaleye, cofounder and chief operating officer of Ashdam Solar explains.

“Before now, we were in darkness. We did not have electricity. We always used kerosene lamps when night falls. Some people use generators, which pack up [stop working] after about six months,” says Oladele Orisamakin, the traditional leader of the community. “When children wake up at night, they have light to study,” says Ajimitale Johnson, a shop owner in Ajemitale-Odonla. “Business is boosted too. All the drinks I sell, I put them in the fridge,” he says. “The benefits we have had are uncountable.”

Indeed, community members have lauded the initiative for helping them lower their business costs. “These lights help us so much because in a week we spend nothing less than 5000 naira [approximately $11 USD] by burning fuel, but since Ashdam Solar came, in a week, we do not spend more than 1000 naira [approximately $2.30 USD],” says Demeyin Omosuyi, a bar and a grocery store owner in Ajemitale-Odonla.

To further enhance energy independence, Ashram trained town members to become solar experts and maintain the solar mini-grid remotely, teaching them standard operating and maintenance procedures so they can keep an eye on the system, check power lines, report customer complaints, and engage in other operational and maintenance issues that may arise.

Having received training at Ashram’s Solar Academy, which offers classes on solar installation, design, and customer service, some of these solar experts have also become Ashdam Solar vendors and now sell electricity and other solar equipment to the community as consultants. When a community, business, or household expresses interest in installing a system, consultants act as a liaison to ensure all needs are met. Ashdam Solar is also illustrating the importance of engaging with rural, lower-income communities by providing sustainable payment models that will allow widespread adoption of renewable energy across the country.

Despite the project’s success, integrating the mini-grid into the community did not come without challenges. Many community members had never been exposed to solar energy and were wary of promises of uninterrupted electricity. It was also tough for some community members to believe that they could pay less for electricity as they had always relied upon diesel fuel, which was relatively expensive.

But Ashdam Solar was ready to listen. It enlisted the help of a community-based liaison officer to begin building relationships. The officer helped Ashdam approach community members, understand their needs, and break down the project’s financing and how it would provide reliable energy. “We designed the solution to solve their problem, not to solve the problem of those in the urban areas,” says Ashaleye.

Lessons Learned

Communities across rural America can learn lessons from projects like Ajemitale-Odonla’s.

Some towns are already moving forward and seeing the benefits of renewable energy. For example, St. Mary’s, AK is a remote coastal city that has relied on imported fuel for power, just like Ajemitale-Odonla. Its fuel supply stock was often compromised by the area’s rough winters and forceful winds which often delayed needed resources. But in 2019, the village, which is only accessible by boat, started to leverage wind energy by building a 900-kilowatt wind turbine—named the St. Mary’s/Pitka’s Point Wind Energy Project. The project now produces about 50 percent of St. Mary’s power and has saved the village over $355,000 in fuel expenses since 2020.

Federal investment is also helping rural America reach its full renewable-energy potential. Earlier this year, the USDA announced that it would put $2.7 billion towards expanding, modernizing, and securing the rural electric grid though the Electric Infrastructure Loan Program, which gives insured loans and loan guarantees to electric cooperatives and other nonprofits for the construction of renewable-energy projects.

However, even though such resources are available, rural Americans are often still left behind. The key lesson that the US can take from Nigeria is the importance of tapping existing community assets, such as liaison officers, and meeting community members where they are in order to grow renewable energy and give communities access to reliable, autonomously generated electricity.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Space is emerging as a frontier for liberation. How often have you heard a struggling mom, when asked what they need, answer that they just need a bit of “space”? Or a friend in crisis, perhaps recently laid off and unsure which direction to take, say that they need “space” to figure out what they want, who they are? We may not always be acutely searching for a path toward liberation when vocalizing our needs for space, but our liberation does necessitate it.

a.k. payne’s (she/they) professional debut play Amani, which closed at Rattlestick Theater in New York City last month, grapples with this very concept. It articulates an inherent need for space in the quest for liberation while playing with what that space looks like. Do we need to reach outer space in our quest for liberation? Or an inner space, deep inside us, which allows us to dream? Or space with one another, to heal and be seen? “Yes,” payne says.

As the playbill describes it,

Amani grows up building a rocket ship with her father, who vows to make it to outer space: where his child can breathe easy, where there are no gangs to take his first love’s life, nor prisons to take Black boys’ best years. As Amani moves into adulthood, she seeks her voice and her own dreams. Will Amani make it to the moon?

I take my seat, the house lights dim, and the prologue begins. Onstage before me stands Amani, a short, curvy Black girl, taking up space with truly embodied presence.

Walking into Rattlestick’s West Village theater, I am immediately invited into an intimate space. The staging, which spreads throughout the house into the seating area, feels akin to walking into the living room of someone who has collected their life’s memories and put them on display. Photos, a space helmet, and other knickknacks line the shelving built into the stage.

I take my seat, the house lights dim, and the prologue begins. Onstage before me stands Amani, a short, curvy Black girl, taking up space with truly embodied presence. She monologues, expressing her fear of returning to some painful memory, some locked-away place, a place that we later learn holds the grief of loss. Beside her stands Kofa (they/them), Amani’s childhood friend. Listening. “Holding space,” as payne writes in the script. We are witnessing a girl’s attempt to heal.

The Search for Outer Space

payne holds this space for their characters in many ways, including in their ordering of events throughout the play. After we see Kofa holding space for Amani onstage, we see Amani’s father, Smith, returning to his family home in an orange jumpsuit. A freed man trying to adjust to the walls of his world suddenly expanding. And then, we are back in time, a few years prior, when Smith was incarcerated. We see Amani speaking with him in prison, still full of that unhindered light from the prologue. And Smith, though clearly beleaguered, prioritizes protecting this light in his daughter. Together, they repeat their mantra: “We come from light and we still light / and where the light shine / wherever we go.”

Then, suddenly, we see Smith being visited by the ghost of his lost love, Dasia, the mother of his child. We don’t know yet who she is. But we are given intimate access to the inner workings of Smith’s memory. Dasia helps Smith set up a workshop in his garden, and then we see Smith and Amani in “present time,” building the rocket ship Smith has named “Amani’s Ship.” We witness Smith shower Amani with the kind of fatherly love that allows a child to become whoever they want to be. As he teaches her how to saw wood to build their space ship, he reminds her who she is, and everything she is capable of. Father and daughter move around the stage with unhindered joy. We are thrust into a truly expansive world of childlike wonder and endless possibility. Suddenly, space ships can be built in backyards by Black families who dream of making it to space. And for me, the most beautiful part of it all is that Amani’s innocence and imagination has clearly been protected and cultivated by her ever-loving father.

Behind the Scenes with the Playwright

I got the chance to sit down with payne after the show, and our conversation colored in my already vibrant experience of this transformative play.

payne says the play did not always begin in this order.

In first previews, right before we opened at Rattlestick, I added the prologue of the play. The play for years had begun with Smith and Amani in prison. We didn’t have the prologue moment, which is when Amani sort of creates the space. . . .We saw the first full run of everything, and it felt like Amani was getting swallowed up in the space as opposed to Amani guiding us through the story. It was kind of like the entire space was imploding on this person. So, we tried to make some really intentional shifts to better center her and just allow her to be. . . .I was thinking about letting Amani be a child, letting Amani be imagined, and holding the complexity of what allowed her to come to be.

And with just a bit of space to be, Amani blossoms onstage. This transformation payne witnessed after making this change in the story suggests that perhaps space is all we need, to start. Space to be. To imagine. To define ourselves.

payne also affords Smith space.

My hope is to allow us to see Smith. To see Smith in his full complexity, to see Smith as this father, as this dreamer, as this genius before we see him as a person who has committed a crime. . . .We know he’s been incarcerated, but we don’t know the why, which I connect to a lot because I have a lot of family who have been incarcerated. . . .There are these questions that I really want to get to the core of around, how do we hold space for the person who’s been incarcerated? How do we hold space for the person who has been a child, who has been a father, who has been a person in their community?

A quest for healing marked the start of payne’s personal journey creating Amani, as well as the journey she maps for Amani throughout the play. She explains,

When I started writing this play, I’d just moved into my first own apartment, and I was thinking about healing, peace, and community, and what those things look like. I was thinking about how to tell a story that was inspired by freedom dreams and dreaming futures. . . .I think that this play is about the role of healing in liberation. I think that processing and engaging the past and its relationship to the present and also being really present with community is part of liberation too. That’s something I really care about.

As act 1 closes, Amani is 18, and her first love, Davion, has broken her heart and shattered the self-assurance her father helped her build. For the first time, we see Amani grieve and experience pain. No memory. No fatherly protection. Just pain. A mark of adulthood for a young Black girl, of innocence and confidence falling away.

This space Amani declares is gone is twofold—outer space, as the site for her and Smith’s liberation, and the inner space within her, full of light, that she and her father cultivated and kept alive—a decolonized, radical space in which she could dream (as is the meaning of her name) and imagine.

Davion tells Amani that not only is she nobody, but her father’s dreams of outer space are ludicrous. Perhaps in need of healing himself, Davion hates the way Amani “hold[s] [her]self up / like god.” So he tears her down. And it works. Amani comes home to her father, hating herself, and hating Smith for making her believe in herself. “You’ve filled me up with all these lies, all these stupid fucking lies,” she tells him, “I am not great. I am not infinite. What is a dream to a world like this?”

Amani demands that Smith make the space ship fly, and when he insists they have to wait until dawn, that the ship needs sunlight to fly, Amani’s fear is confirmed—Davion was right. This space ship was a foolish dream. Amani screams, “Fuck the light. We got no light. There is no light.” She takes a hammer to the space ship, splintering it to pieces, exclaiming, “There is no space! There. Is. No. Space!”

This space Amani declares is gone is twofold—outer space, as the site for her own and Smith’s liberation; and the inner space within her, full of light, that she and her father cultivated and kept alive—a decolonized, radical space in which she could dream (as is the meaning of her name) and imagine. For Amani, Davion’s words and her father’s hesitance to fly the ship are proof that these spaces never really existed.

A Search for Inner Space

Act 2 begins with Dasia entering the space, young and alive. We see her luminous smile, and then her death—dead at the hands of a rival gang, killed for wearing blue in a sea of red. Then we see Smith. Three years after Dasia’s death, he finds Dasia’s murderer and beats him to the brink of death. He is sentenced to six years for aggravated assault.

Finally, we understand what has come to pass, what has created the Amani who stands before us. Perhaps we are getting this information now because she is finally confronting this trauma. In the play, time bends like memory, and it feels as if we learn details about Amani’s life only as she wants us to know them.

Now Amani is messy. She has come undone, her trauma unwound and facing her in real time. She sleeps with a series of disrespectful men, all while her mother’s spirit tries desperately to call out to her, “Your hair dry. You have not tended. . .”

Dasia’s poetic warning is a reminder to Amani that she has not tended to her inner garden. She has let men enter it and vandalize its grounds.

And then, finally, Amani shares the stage with the spirit of her mother. Dasia tends to her daughter’s hair as she guides her, “Breathe / with me and / imagine / what are / the colors in / your outer space?” With Dasia as her guide, Amani recreates her outer space. She speaks into existence all that it encompasses. Softly, she begins, “In my outer space / i want / pictures upon pictures / of you and dad / when you were living / want them lined across the sky.”

Amani begins to return to herself. It is a return to a space she always contained, a space to foster liberation within in order to manifest it “out there,” out in space. Her father gave her the tools to cultivate this inner space, to tend to her garden, and so on some level, she knows the way back to herself.

A Search for Loving Space

Still, there is one final space Amani needs. The space to be loved romantically and seen fully as she is. Afraid of the loneliness of reaching outer space on her own, Amani asks Dasia, “Is there a love that’s free?”

And then, Kofa returns, Amani’s childhood friend. Though Amani is still unsure if she still believes in outer space, Kofa appears, stating, “I’m getting my phd in astrophysics / i wanna be an astronaut / one day i wanna go to outer space.” Amani cannot believe it. Still speaking half to Dasia, Amani says, “Mama, i’ve never felt more seen.” Emboldened by her and Kofa’s shared dream, Amani speaks her outer space into existence more passionately, coloring in its every crevice, envisioning it with striking clarity. She speaks her right to be loved, truly loved. And Dasia blesses Amani’s desires, saying, “All that / which / you name / echo gainst / universe / & bounce back / ’pon / you.”

We witness Amani and Kofa joining together in what payne calls “the Audre Lorde sequence.”

In my mind, that’s what it reminds me of, Audre Lorde’s essay “The Erotic as Power.” I remember that sequence of movement, when Amani and Kofa go under the sheets and they’re pretending to be on the moon, the play and the joy in that, it just reminds me of that essay. The joy. . .and the erotic being something that is both sexual, both intimate, but also about just pleasure and joy and feeling and being seen.

Amani and Kofa are having sex, but it is so much more than that. At times they seem to merge as one, infinitely more beautiful than when they stood on their own. They heal each other, they tend to one another, they see the other exactly as they are, for all are, and all they have the capacity to be. As Audre Lorde writes in “The Erotic as Power,”

When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual’s. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

This is the transformation that Kofa and Amani undergo onstage. Their erotic experience with one another allows Amani to heal that space of the inner self which was wounded. She is able to move forward with a whole and aligned self that recognizes its need for and right to liberation.

payne says,

When Amani is sitting with Kofa in Act Three, there’s this real presence that is all about, ‘if we were able to sit with each other and really be with each other in the world, what would that bring into fruition around the possibilities of liberation?’

For Amani and Kofa, it brings into fruition liberation itself. Amani and Kofa pledge to love each other fully, promising to “love each other in all the ways.” And from this love, they work through grief together as Smith passes away, and Amani is left picking up pieces of memories from the garden where she and Smith worked on their space ship. Kofa finds Smith’s ship blueprints and tells Amani, “I think / it would have flown.” Together, Amani and Kofa rebuild the ship. And, with full conviction, they prepare for takeoff. Smith and Dasia join them, ethereal, sending them off with a beautiful rendition of Robert Glasper’s “Afro Blue,” which has underscored the show. “Shades of delight / cocoa hue / rich as the night / afro blue.” And they’re off.

Long after the stage lights dimmed and the time came to pack up my things, I remained transfixed by the questions raised in this play. What would happen if we were all granted this kind of space? Space to dream, space to imagine, space to be seen?

With a cultivated inner space, a fully imagined outer space, and a loving communal space with Kofa, Amani and her lover reach liberation.

And on a larger level, payne’s artful framing of Amani’s story—beginning with dreaming rather than trauma, and ending with liberation—definitely holds space for Amani to “be,” to chart her path to outer space.

And does it have to be arduous, this search for liberatory space? Amani’s outer space was always accessible. Her father’s blueprints lay unused for years. And while it took her years to come to full consciousness and believe in liberation, her eventual transformation with the help of her mother and Kofa was near instant.

Long after the stage lights dimmed and the time came to pack up my things, I remained transfixed by the questions raised in this play. What would happen if we were all granted this kind of space? Space to dream, space to imagine, space to be seen?

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Editors’ note: This article is from NPQ’s spring 2023 issue, “The Space Beyond: Building the Way.”

Click here to download this article as it appears in the magazine, with accompanying artwork.

In today’s tumultuous climate—global political turmoil; emboldened White supremacists; mass gun violence; environmental degradation; pandemics; lack of access to quality, affordable healthcare; and counting—we need leadership that can grapple with the challenges. Nonprofits play a critical role in organizing communities and advocating for better policies to face these crises, and we must now assess what we are looking for in our colleagues and ourselves. If we are to move the needle on changing systems, structures, and policies to benefit all people and the planet, we need the right people in the right organizations building mass movements for change.

Movement work is not simply intersectional—it’s chockablock. External crises are stacked on top of internal crises, and for many in the movement space, the work feels unrelenting.

But at Movement Talent, a nonprofit recruitment organization that works with a majority of BIPOC and other individuals from underrepresented communities, we are seeing that, post-COVID, position-vacancy rates continue to be an issue for the organizations we represent. Organizations, like society at large, are facing fundamental paradigm shifts. In the wake of the multiple external crises, some are trying hard to come to grips with changing expectations in the workplace—as evidenced, for example, by the proliferation of nonprofit staff unions. Efforts have been made to address DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) practices, improve compensation and benefits, incorporate wellness, and make more space for all staff to share their opinions on organizational matters—but in a number of cases, such efforts have been shallow, and many organizations have become fraught with (more-often-than-not hidden) internal conflicts. In such a climate, job seekers are, understandably, hesitant to make a move.

Movement work is not simply intersectional—it’s chockablock. External crises are stacked on top of internal crises, and for many in the movement space, the work feels unrelenting and lacking in the psychic rewards that may have kept some motivated prior to the last few years of tumult. The issues we are collectively combating aren’t just present in our organizing and advocacy work 9 to 5—we are often experiencing them acutely and personally at home, within our families and communities. Over the past three years, more than one million Americans each month have called in sick.¹ On top of that, there is the increased isolation of many people, with once in-person organizations now going remote-first. It’s caused a tidal wave of new problems in the workplace around coordination, solidarity, and effective teamwork—and not many guide maps exist around how to deal with it all.

Trends and Observations

At Movement Talent, we have supported more than fifty organizations (from grassroots organizing groups and unions to PACs, philanthropic institutions, and more) with key hires—mostly mid- and senior-level roles. What we have observed over the past three years is that the climate has fundamentally changed people’s interactions and motivations within the workplace as well as the types of individuals looking for roles. We are seeing many more applicants than usual wanting to switch sectors and transition to doing social justice work, and we are seeing many more applicants than usual looking first and foremost for the roles that provide the most flexibility. Some key observations:

People are dealing with—and attending to—multiple forms of trauma, depression, and anxiety. There is more acceptance now for people to share the challenges they are facing—whether personal, mental, physical, or emotional—and that sharing often crosses over into the workplace. So, whether the levels and types of trauma (for example, workplace trauma) have always been there yet have never been spoken about freely or whether trauma is on the rise in real numbers is something we are examining. What is clear, via self-disclosure, is that we are interacting with many individuals who have experienced high levels of trauma.

It is an honor for us to work with so many people from so many different backgrounds, and we are here to support individuals in their professional journeys. We present this observation as a way to prepare and encourage organizations, too, to develop ways to accept, embrace, and support people on their healing journeys. These healing journeys don’t need to be organization-provided experiences; however, it must be acknowledged that some individuals will need to undertake healing processes while working at your organization.² Organizations must also be mindful not to create additional trauma, which can happen when our workplaces lack clear communication about roles, responsibilities, expectations, and boundaries.

People are more and more looking for remote work. There is a tug-of-war going on between remote work and every other kind of work.³ In particular, there is resistance from staff and prospective applicants about in-field or in-office requirements for roles that do not in fact need a staff member to be in the field or in the office. Some organizations are losing out on applicants due to their having requirements for staff to be in the office at least some of the time (hybrid, limited- remote) or 100 percent of the time. On average, when we are asked to recruit for two similar roles (similar experience, qualifications, salary)—but one remote, the other not—we get double the number of applicants for the remote position, no matter how much or little in-person time is required (limited/hybrid basis, and so on).

If given the choice between more or less flexibility for roughly the same type of job, most applicants will choose the option with more flexibility. Some very talented folks, seemingly great fits for the in-person roles, are looking elsewhere. This disadvantages direct-organizing and region-specific roles while being advantageous for remote national roles and remote operational and administrative roles.⁴ And for some unions, there is a solidarity principle at play: “If our members are expected to show up at their jobs, why should we have different expectations for ourselves?”

At Movement Talent, we see this kind of principle across the board as a unique recruitment opportunity (not just for unions but also, for example, for a rooted community-based organization that feels that its physical presence in the community is essential to its mission, and sees that as being in solidarity with the members it represents). And we believe that clarity is key—it allows the organization to attract individuals with that same kind of orientation and helps those who differ to look elsewhere.

The unique recruitment opportunity lies in the ability of the organization to articulate those values aloud, even up front in a job announcement. Listing a position as “In-office M–F required” reads differently from “In solidarity with the members we represent—the majority of whom are retail, service, and airport workers going to work every day to provide essential services—our staff work out of our three offices located in the largest counties in the state.” That said, solidarity comes in all shapes and forms, and for people who, for example, are immunocompromised, solidarity may mean keeping as many people at home as possible!

People are pushing back against working beyond their salaried hours. Workers, regardless of generation, have increasingly drawn boundaries that more clearly and cleanly separate work and their personal and family lives. We’ve noticed this trend at all age levels as workers collectively argue, “Good boundaries do not mean I lack a work ethic—I work my ass off.” They are looking realistically at the cost of living, noting when a posted salary range is just not going to cut it, and declaring that they are not going to work day and night or weekends without additional compensation. What we hear from employers in response to the pushback is, “The issues we work on are not 9 to 5. We need people to understand that reality.” So, we encourage organizations to outline this carefully in their job descriptions (with real and accurate estimates) so as to make clear from the outset what is expected of staff. The nonprofit sector has spent a lot of time and energy over the years talking about burnout and ways to avoid burnout among staff—and both the older and the younger generations are trying to take this advice!

Just as we heard about folks coming out of the pandemic thriving in new and unexpected ways…we are seeing a crop of leaders who started new roles within the last three years and seem to be thriving, notwithstanding the challenges.

People still want to maintain culture and camaraderie. For many organizations, the move to remote-first or online versus in-person engagement has put a strain on culture building. The ability of people to gather in person, create bonds, and develop friendships has been dramatically impacted due to the pandemic and its ensuing restrictions. What we are left with is trying to figure out ways to build culture over Zoom. Some groups have made tremendous strides in this arena, but overall it has left some people feeling isolated, not “part of something larger than myself,” and needing real-time connection. And for organizations seeking to build movement—whether for policy/systems change or to grow a great idea—the lack of in-person connection can be very challenging.

Bright Spots

As we take stock of what the moment is bringing us and the inherent challenges the realities present, we reflect too on who is meeting the moment in ways that can provide some inspiration for many of us still trying to gain a footing in this new world.

Just as we heard about folks coming out of the pandemic thriving in new and unexpected ways—newly attending to their health, developing more meaningful relationships with family members, learning a new craft—we are seeing a crop of leaders who started new roles within the last three years and seem to be thriving, notwithstanding the challenges. From our observation, backed by one-on-one interviews with individuals, we’ve gleaned some key characteristics that successful leaders in this moment all seem to possess:

1. A high sense of self-awareness. Self-awareness is a concept often brought up in interview settings (whether directly, in the interview, or as an evaluative point after an interview: “How self-aware do you think this person is?”). Why is self-awareness important in a job? We see this as a trait that almost all employers look for, because they seek colleagues who can regulate how they work with others, who can determine when collaboration would be beneficial or not, and who are able to be realistic—about possibilities, volume of work, and assessing talent, to name a few The individuals we see doing well in this time are self-aware and understand what role they play in an ecosystem. (A great tool for those interested in learning more about this is Deepa Iyer’s “social change ecosystem framework,” which helps to “clarify values, [and] identify roles.”⁵)
2. The ability to hold infinite complexities. Last year, we read Maurice Mitchell’s seminal piece on building resilient organizations, which includes terrific guidance for progressive organizations and the people who work with and for them.⁶ The tendencies Mitchell points out that hold us back, and the orientations we require in order to get back on the path together, are all examples of the need to hold infinite complexities. We see this ability in the leaders who are navigating this moment well—they are challenged by multiple truths, by the human tendencies of contradiction and hypocrisy—and they hold all those truths and contradictions when making decisions or taking actions. One leader I’ve observed doing this extremely well, recently described a situation in which a colleague was not performing at the expected level. The leader explained the ways in which this was impacting the leader’s own work and the direct consequences it was having, or would have, on the community they served, while at the same time straightforwardly and with genuine empathy discussed the challenges the colleague was facing. It is a tricky and often fraught dynamic, this holding of empathy while also demanding that our efforts produce change.
3. Internal fountains of motivation. The personal stories of these successful leaders share some common themes, including events that, and people who, have made huge positive impacts on their lives and provide them with great sources of motivation. A number of these individuals recounted powerful stories involving family members and mentors who influenced them with their hard work and words of wisdom and guidance. This kind of motivation strikes me as different from that of a new staff member in a new position hoping for internal recognition and/or power; instead, the motivation is rooted in stories that themselves are rooted in hope, compassion, strength, difficulty, struggle, and real change.
4. A lack of concern vis-à-vis external validators or detractors. Another major prevailing characteristic includes minimal concern about what others might be saying about them—whether positive or negative—and more focus on their work responsibilities. This is, admittedly, difficult in today’s world, where feedback and input are placed on a pedestal and public scrutiny is high (and Twitter fingers are loose). Being in senior-level, high-profile roles, such individuals will likely be used to a plethora of both critiques and accolades. The ability to be unbothered by the noise speaks to focus—and it also speaks to a balanced ego.
5. Ease in situations of conflict. This finding was harder to tease out, as there was not a definitive connecting point in approaches to conflict or even perspectives around healthy versus unhealthy conflict. What we would point to are the diverse work experiences and backgrounds of these individuals, many of whom, in addition to work in the movement space, had had the opportunity to work in different fields/sectors—including early-in-life jobs that involved manual labor, work in service industries, work in corporations, work in government, and work with people of varying educational attainment and incomes. This kind of diverse experience has proven useful in dealing with situations of conflict today. When asked to talk about working through a conflict, all interviewees brought up examples from different fields they had worked in and described a tendency to take an inquisitive approach to conflict and an intention of understanding. There was recognition of the vastness of perspectives as well as demonstration of their own ability to bring parts of what they learned from other sectors into the movement space.

Offering for Us All

As we continue to find our bearings in these trying times, we find hope and inspiration in the fact that there are people both holding it down and advancing the work—tremendously—on behalf of and with our communities. And we meet more of these folks every day.

For individuals seeking new roles and wondering whether what they bring to the table matches what is needed in many organizations in this moment, we close out with some questions that can help to spark self-examination.

If you are someone looking for a new role, what do you want to convey to organizations about yourself to help them see how your background will support their mission? Questions to ask yourself that will help you get to your answer:

• Have you done full and expansive work in thinking about what role you want to play?
• Does your vision align with the role you are suited to play?
• Have you done exhaustive self-interrogation about your motivations for pursuing this work—and are those motivations enough to sustain you over the long-term?
• Have you explored what practices you need to integrate into your work, whether spiritual/religious, wellness-centered, healing-centered, or community-building-centered? 

If you are building a staff team, have you thought about how important EQ (emotional quotient) is to the role? Questions to ask yourself that will help you get to your answer: 

• How might you weigh EQ with the core responsibilities of the position?
• Are the questions you are asking in the vetting process allowing you to make a good assessment of the attributes you care about most?
• Which aspects of lived experience are ones you want to home in on specifically, and are there ways you can be respectfully inquisitive about lived experience with potential future staff?

We appreciate everyone’s efforts on behalf of justice, equity, and peace, and continue to look to you for good models and examples of leadership.

Notes

1. Melody Schreiber, “Absence from work at record high as Americans feel strain from Covid,” The Guardian, January 29, 2023, theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/29/covid-absence-workforce-health-long-covid.
2. See Prentis Hemphill, “Transforming Our Systems, Transforming Ourselves: The Pivotal Role of Healing in Social Change Work,” Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine 29, no. 4 (Winter 2022): 114–19.
3. The following report—not nonprofit-specific—notes that there are about 120 percent more applicants for remote This tracks with our own experience at Movement Talent: Datapeople, Hiring in a Distributed World (New York: Datapeople, 2022).
4. Direct organizing roles, which might necessitate staff to interact with community members in person—in meeting halls, at places of faith, before the city council, on the streets—are In our work, region-specific/local-level roles are more likely to be in-person as well—and not just for organizers. The national groups that once had headquarters and fewer people directly in the field on a regular basis make up the overwhelming majority of organizations going remote-first.
5. Deepa Iyer, “Frequently Asked Questions,” The Social Change Map, accessed February 22, 2023, socialchangemap.com/framework.
6. Maurice Mitchell, “Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis,” NPQ, The Forge, and Convergence, November 29, 2022, nonprofitquarterly.org/building-resilient-organizations-toward-joy-and-durable-power-in-a-time-of-crisis/.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.