We're in trouble...

So, conventional wisdom says that a nonprofit should never put all of its cards on the table - that showing your weaknesses is akin to shooting yourself in the foot.  In order to be strong, you must appear strong, or so the saying goes.  If you reveal your vulnerabilities, people won't have faith in you and won't want to invest in you.


Well for FORGE, it's time to send conventional wisdom to hell.  The truth is that though our programs have never been stronger, our bank accounts have never been lower.  We're in trouble… and I can't sit back and act as if everything is okay.  For the first time in 5 years, I'm kept up at night not by how to improve FORGE's impact but by how to avoid laying off 150 of the world's most vulnerable people and shutting our doors.  It terrifies me.

 
Since this economy will be hard on a lot of us, I've decided to share my story of how FORGE is trying (if not yet succeeding) to fight through this.  We've decided to throw discretion to the wind and bring our struggle to the public.  If we're lucky, it will draw more people to the importance of the cause.  If we're not, at least we'll go down swinging.  Either way, we hope that what we learn can help whoever listens.


In the posts to come, I'll be talking about how we got to this unsavory place, what we'd do again, what we did wrong, what we're doing to fix it, and the pain of the actions we have to take to stay alive.  I hope that this will help some people who are going through similar struggles, or help others to avoid them completely.  Nobody said this job was going to be easy...

Until next time,

- Kjerstin Erickson
www.FORGEnow.org