Author Trista Harris discusses the importance of long term planning for nonprofits
Trista Harris
As the Gregorian New Year begins, we know nonprofits are busy planning the year ahead. Read below for insights about planning for the future from philanthropic futurist Trista Harris, a nonprofit superstar who is nationally known as a passionate advocate for leaders in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. She is also the author of the books How to Become a Nonprofit Rockstar and FutureGood: How to Use Futurism to Save the World. After reading this second book, Zara Zanussi, one of our senior consultants, had the pleasure to interview her. Read below for their insightful conversation!
Q: In these unstable, uncertain times, as a futurist, how do you plan?
A: You have to have a really clear long term future that you’re trying to create. What does the world look like if you fix the problems that you're working on? Then the volatility can actually help you get there a lot faster. I think a lot of nonprofit organizations have only had a picture of their short term future - this year or the next three years - and that’s too short of a time period for transformative change; there’s never time to think about the long term future. When bad things happen, your short term plans can’t happen, so people freeze up like “gosh, we’re never going to make these goals.” There’s a lot of organizations I've worked with in the last few years that have harnessed the volatility of this time to get them much closer to that future that they envisioned. So you need a long enough perspective so that problems can be opportunities if you know about them before they're directly on your doorstep.
Q: Do you have any examples?
A: Yeah, there are organizations that at the beginning of 2020, had long term views that they should be a statewide organization, their staff should be better at remote work, figuring out how to do more webinars or virtual programs. They figured it out in 6 weeks. They may have thought it was going to take them 3-5 years to get to that future, but the outside conditions made it necessary. For some organizations, when the pandemic started, they’re like, we don’t want to invest a ton in technology, let’s wait, because this might only last 2 weeks. Maybe just another 2 weeks. So they just kept kicking the can. For organizations that knew what that future looked like, they were like “we better invest big” because they were going to do it either way, and they’re not going to do it twice, so let's build the infrastructure and capacity that we need at this moment that will also serve us for this long term future.
Q: I signed up for my Google Alerts, you have some really tangible tips!
A: Good! Yes, we are trying to make it super tangible, like what are those little steps to create this huge ripple effect? We don’t have the mental space to consider the future. We don’t even have a second to think, but when you create that space, amazing things happen! The time that I had off between Christmas and New Year’s, I did 10 year business planning, not because I had it written down to do it, but there was the mental space to consider something different. We don’t give ourselves that luxury, but it is the only way the future can be different.
“We don’t have the mental space to consider the future. We don’t even have a second to think, but when you create that space, amazing things happen! ”
Q: So to that point, how do you balance the the thoughtfulness for the future that is required with the urgency of the present, especially thinking back to the time of the murder of George Floyd, when there was direct community aid and all of that?
A: You have to have space for both. I used to co-chair the African American Leadership forum, which has a 50 year vision for the African American Community in the Twin Cities, and really is digging deep in that systemic work. I would often get criticism where people would say how come you are not standing up about this particular issue of the moment? Or how come AALF wasn’t [represented] at the funeral of someone who was murdered? What I would often say is members of the forum are doing that work every single day, our work together is about this long term future. We are making time for the future in our present, it doesn’t mean we stop doing everything else, it means there is this sliver of space that creates possibility, and that's what's going to make sure that these urgent issues that are happening don't continue to happen forever. I encourage people to spend 2 hours a week on the future, really thinking within their calendar “where am I creating space to really think about the longer term future and step away from the million things that are on my desk in this moment?” That’s the only way you’re going to make it different.
Q: So where’s the balance in rigidity versus flexibility?
A: I think the rigidity is around the vision of where we’re going. It should be super clear to everyone around the table that this is what long term success looks like. The way of getting there should be super flexible, because the flexibility allows you to harness opportunities which allows different people to bring their strengths to the process. But that point on the horizon that you’re working towards needs to look exactly the same for everybody, because that's where the diffused effort happens when people are working cross-purpose, which can very easily happen within an organization between board, frontline staff, and leadership staff. There’s lots of places where misalignment can happen on long term vision. It makes it easier for you all to know you’re all rowing in the same direction.
Q: Great insight! What is advice you'd give nonprofit leaders in this era in light of both the social uprising and COVID?
A: I think you have to be really clear about where you’re going and your values surrounding that need to be really strong. I’ve seen some nonprofits in this moment step up and do the best work that they’ve done in the organization's history, and create transformative change. And I’ve seen others really shrink from the pressure and get stuck in perfect being the enemy of the good, like we need to do a thousand more racial justice trainings before we do anything around our internal operations around racial justice. They get really stuck in the perfection of it as opposed to constantly improving. As organizations, nonprofits need to get better at continuously improving and responding to what's happening in the community, and then keeping that momentum moving forward and keeping that progress, even when external pressures disappear. You have to build it into the process so it lasts long after this moment we’re in.
“As organizations, nonprofits need to get better at continuously improving and responding to what’s happening in the community, and then keeping that momentum moving forward and keeping that progress, even when external pressures disappear. You have to build it into the process so it lasts long after this moment we’re in.”
Q: That’s really helpful. The Future Good includes a variety of calls to action for inner and outer transformation. What is the one take away, or more, that you hope people will glean from this book?
A: That it’s our responsibility, everybody that works in the social sector, to both predict and shape what the future looks like. We work in a sector where the purpose is to transform society, so the idea that we sort of sit back and wait to see what happens doesn't make any sense! We need to jump into that responsibility and opportunity to create a more beautiful and more equitable future.
Check out Trista’s new website: http://futuregood.studio! They have a new product called Future Good Studio which is a 12 session learning module for people that work in nonprofits and foundations to learn futurism, and a community of folks that are doing the same thing.
