"Nobody can do this as good as I can"

There's a corollary to "turf." If we say that "turf" is "stay off my property, don't tread on me," then the corollary to that is "My methods are the best; nobody can do this as well as I can." The level of self-investment by the founder/executive is a source of "founder-it is" down the road. For this reason: if you're convinced and invested in the belief that you're the only one who can do what your organization is doing, then any message – whether from donors, regulators or consultants – that there should be coordination, collaboration or merger with another existing charity – is going to fall on reluctant ears.

It may be the case that any given founder's methods really are "the best." Such methods may be recognized by those who are experts in the field; ot the measurement of "best" may be in terms of the results being obtained by these methods. I was once asked to serve as consultant to a nonprofit whose work with child literacy was simply outstanding. Year after year, their numbers were stellar; they could teach kids to read at incredible rates in unbelievably short times. That's what gave them an outstanding case for support.

But because the founder had developed this method, which involved enhancing the self-esteem of her students along with teaching them to think about what it was they were reading, that founder was reluctant to become involved with any of the six or seven other literacy charities in the area. She had an issue with the public schools locally, and it was a crusade with her. So much so that as funding dried up, it was impossible to move her to consider a wider geographic area or coordinating or combining with other literacy groups so that service could be delivered to more people in a more efficient way, and in a way that would involve and motivate more donors.

This meant that the organization's sphere of influence stayed the same and the number of students coming to the agency shrank, while its per-pupil expenditure each year increased. So the strength of the case for support as found in the results she could obtain with herpupils was diminished by the high cost and the limited number of illiterate children in the community she was able to reach each year. Not only did this founder/executive have a "turf" problem, she also had a "my way or the highway" attitude that impeded chances of enhancing and enlarging this nonprofit's base of funders. That provided trouble down the road in the form of limited fundraising capacity.

We'll delve more into this corollary to "turf" issues tomorrow, with another example.