Dealing With Scarcity
Every successful nonprofit manager knows that one organizational pitfall to avoid at all costs is the scarcity syndrome. Really good organizational leaders know how to manage their organizations into and through low resource periods without letting the organizational culture slip into scarcity mode.

In Montana and other rural states with relatively limited philanthropic resources, scarcity can seem ever present. The recent boom to bust cycle among foundations didn't help. Driven by the steep upward trends in the stock market, many foundations found themselves actually looking for ways of meeting their giving obligations. When stock values suddenly nose dived, so did funding. It was hard not to become pessimistic in response. But, if you look around carefully, you'll soon realize that the organizations that flourish do so at least in part by avoiding the scarcity mode. Others that are just getting by often have the look and smell of scarcity throughout their organizational cultures.

Please know, this isn't just another "half-full/half-empty" diatribe against small mindedness among Montana organizations. Seeing the funding pool as half empty might be a part of the problem, but the scarcity syndrome goes much, much deeper than that. It involves fears of failure and related tendencies to be overly conservative. It involves letting assumed scarcity limit vision.

Vision is after all a major driving force behind any organization's successes. A limited vision can very easily result in limited successes. Worse, limiting a once robust vision in the face of scarcity can gut an organization's drive to succeed.

So, what can your organization do to avoid the heartbreak of scarcity mode? The following are a few ideas for steps to take:

1. Identify, protect, and nurture the vision keepers. Typically, only one or two or, at most, a small handful of people involved with an organization actually understand the organizational vision thoroughly. They "get it;" others get only parts of it. They have the passion that it takes to make a visions happen. At founding, very often the vision constitutes the only asset an organization has. As organizations grow, other assists accumulate. Protecting and nurturing the vision keeper(s) should be very high on a mature organization's list of priorities. When difficult times come, the organization's vision and the passion of the vision keepers remain as the single most valuable asset. To protect that asset through good and bad times is essential for long-term success.
2. Know and manage all assets carefully. An organization's assets go well beyond those that are effortlessly quantified in terms of dollars. During financial good times it is easy to loose track of non-dollar assets. They seem less important than they really are. When financial hard times arise and dollars are hard to come by it is often difficult to reclaim sources of the other types of assets. For example, if when dollars are readily available, a pool of excited, involved volunteers is replaced by paid staff, it can be very difficult to reestablish the volunteer labor pool when dollars are harder to come by.
3. Embrace diversity. Remember the lesson of the potato famine. A single crop, no matter how successful, will after years of exploitation ultimately fail. A severely limited gene pool will ultimately succumb to some pressure. An organization must continually reach out and gather to itself new people, new ideas, new visions… in other words, new resources.
4. Own the future. Be more than strategic in your planning. Develop an organizational structure and culture that takes ownership of its future. Which brings the conversation right back to step one above: nurturing and maintaining organizational vision and passion. It is through the vision and passion of its vision keepers that an organization can own its future.

An organization that natures its vision keepers, knows and manages all assets carefully, embraces diversity, and take ownership of its future will never enter scarcity mode.