logo
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Subscribe
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Complimentary Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

A Different Take on Sustainability (May 07)

The Editors
December 20, 2007
Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print

One of our staff members, Kristin Barrali, had a son two weeks ago — Angelo. She worked right up until Friday before but had been calling me periodically for the last month with her standard joke, “By the way, I just had my baby!” It was never true until Monday morning. She called from the hospital a few hours after giving birth to say, “I won’t make the staff meeting. I just had my baby.” She didn’t even sound tired.

As I count my blessings now including Angelo, I think back on the birth of my own son (almost too long ago to remember). Unbeknownst to me, I brought more than just a baby home from the hospital. A serious staff infection came with us as well and it lurked around literally for years, causing repeated sickness and surgeries for me and for him and eventually for his little sister who, I am afraid, got the worst of it.

Just this past Saturday I read in the Boston Globe that local hospitals are beginning to key their CEO’s salaries to their ability to lower the rates of such infections rather than, or in addition to, the usual stuff like building endowment. I think this is very exciting because it acknowledges the seriousness of the medical profession’s oath to “first, do no harm” and translates that to a priority charge to leadership with salary consequences.

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

In the same issue of the Globe, someone was interviewed about the Northern Ireland accord and he talked about understanding what appears to be evil as being essentially the “absence of good.” To me these two articles went together. How many of us in the organizations we lead fail to actively consider in vivid human terms the harm that we may inadvertently be doing by not scrutinizing our own programs? How many nonprofits key executive salaries primarily to the aggressive pursuit of what is absolutely best for the constituents they serve?

Richard Brewster, the executive director of the National Center for Nonprofit Enterprise discusses this in the linked interview entitled More Than Monitors: the Board Role in Sustainability that will be printed in the summer issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly. He surprised me during the interview with his strong opinions about what must lie at the core of nonprofit economic sustainability. I hope you find his take on the issue as provocative as I did.

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print

Become a member

Support independent journalism and knowledge creation for civil society. Become a member of Nonprofit Quarterly.

Members receive unlimited access to our archived and upcoming digital content. NPQ is the leading journal in the nonprofit sector written by social change experts. Gain access to our exclusive library of online courses led by thought leaders and educators providing contextualized information to help nonprofit practitioners make sense of changing conditions and improve infra-structure in their organizations.

Join Today
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

NPQ_Winter_2022Subscribe Today
You might also like
Hierarchy and Justice
Cyndi Suarez
Salvadoran Foreign Agent Law Threatens Human Rights Movements
Devon Kearney
Charitable Tax Reform: Why Half Measures Won’t Curb Plutocracy
Alan Davis
Healing-Centered Leadership: A Path to Transformation
Shawn A. Ginwright
Into the Fire: Lessons from Movement Conflicts
Ingrid Benedict, Weyam Ghadbian and Jovida Ross
How Nonprofits Can Truly Advance Change
Hildy Gottlieb

NPQ Webinars

April 27th, 2 pm ET

Liberatory Decision-Making

How to Facilitate and Engage in Healthy Decision-making Processes

Register Now
You might also like
Hierarchy and Justice
Cyndi Suarez
Salvadoran Foreign Agent Law Threatens Human Rights...
Devon Kearney
Charitable Tax Reform: Why Half Measures Won’t Curb...
Alan Davis

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Independent & in your mailbox.

Subscribe today and get a full year of NPQ for just $59.

subscribe
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Copyright
  • Careers

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.