9 Ways that Charities Get Grey-Sky Thinking

So Blue-Sky thinking is being overly optimistic. Grey sky thinking is rather less so. Nonprofits seem to sit on their own hands rather than take a risk with anything having to do with spending money.

How do Charities engage in grey-sky thinking? Let me count the ways.

1. We’ve never had any money, and we can’t afford to hire someone to get us money.

2. The downturn makes it so difficult to raise new money that we should settle for breaking even this year.

3. We can’t hire this talented Executive Director candidate, they are going to want too much money.

4. We can’t hire this talented consultant, they are going to want too much money.

5. We can’t get a database, that would cost too much money.

6. We can’t spare our development/executive director to go work on partnerships, we have already given them enough work for 4 people, they need to be here, to answer the phone.

7. We want new staff to work, on salary, for a paltry sum, and we won’t pay you healthcare because you might have to work 20 hours to 60 hours per week. And Why aren’t we getting any top candidates for this job?

8. We can’t have a nonprofit union because that will make our workers lazy and demand too much. No. This is a “right to work state” and they can take their “at will employment” or we will fire them.

9. We can’t afford new computers so we’ll make do with these ten year old ones that we had donated, that crash every couple of hours. Also, we can’t afford to have an IT person come and fix them.

So those are just nine ways, off the top of my head, that I can think of where nonprofits engage in grey-sky thinking. Can you think of any more? If so, leave a comment. I’d love to get your opinion on how nonprofits sit on their own hands instead of take a risk.