Lesson Three: Transparency invites scrutiny, and more scrutiny can only be good for the nonprofit sector

When you tell the world about your imperfections, you are naturally going to open yourself up to all sorts of questions, critiques, and feedback. When people see a problem, they want to get to the root of it. With FORGE, we had people pouring over our website, evaluating the quality of our board, and asking a lot of tough questions (Why did they change their funding model? Are they spending too much on salaries? Is there too much emphasis on the founder? What could they be doing better? And so on).

FORGE had to be ready to respond to and engage in such scrutiny calmly, even when it seemed totally off-base. We had to provide the details of how and why we made decisions. And when the comment hit a nerve of something that we needed to improve, we had to say so. Even the feedback that seemed completely inaccurate was valuable, because it pointed us to the ways in which we weren’t adequately communicating our structure, philosophy, or strengths.

 

I think that this kind of engaged scrutiny and feedback loop is extremely helpful for the nonprofit sector. In the same way that students will naturally spend more time on an assignment that will be graded than one that won’t be, the increased scrutiny that comes with transparency creates a higher expectation and incentive for performance in the nonprofit sphere. In order to be comfortable with intense scrutiny, the organization must be confident that they have been responsible in decision-making and can adequately explain themselves to their constituency.
 

If transparency became the norm, I believe that nonprofits would feel more compelled and incentivized to ensure that all of their proverbial ducks are in a row and that they can justify all of their actions and expenses along a clear metric of change. Not everyone will agree with every step they take, but a mutual respect and understanding can be built and a meaningful dialogue can be opened. Isn’t this a huge step in the right direction?

 

 - Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org