From Sandbags to Bridges

In a recent conversation with my father about the challenges of independent school leadership, he made a simple, yet profound comment. “Well, of course it is hard, you’re filling and piling sandbags, constantly, to keep your school above water." As I reflect on his outside perspective on my work, I realize he was right. Nearly all of our work in non-profit leadership is about filling and piling sandbags to keep our organizations from succumbing to the rising waters of budget challenges, enrollment issues, hiring, attrition, donor relations, and the countless other pressures challenging our business models.

The sandbags we each pile look different, but they all serve the same underlying purpose: they attempt to sustain our wonderful little communities amidst very real flood waters rising around us. Likewise, the rising water appears differently for each of our organizations. For some it may materialize in hiring and attrition of employees. For others it may appear through complex misconduct investigations, a reduction in grant funding, or hesitant donors during economic uncertainty. For many independent schools, the rising water comes in the form of enrollment pressures, rising expenses, and increased pressure to discount tuition). Regardless of how the water looks, its impact is the same on organizational leaders.

We spend our time solving the problems right in front of us because there is always an immediate need. As leaders, we know this is inherently part of our work; our organizations are usually underfunded with challenging, human-centered business models that would not be sustainable in the for-profit sector. And yet we were drawn to this work because we are helpers. We believe in our missions. We thrive when we are solving problems, being useful, preserving the communities that we have seen impact generations of learners or community members. We cling to the impact we have seen, to the business model that worked in the past, and, in turn, we put our heads down and continue to do the hard work of preserving our organizations in their current state. We pick up the shovel and start piling sandbags higher and higher, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the flood waters will start to recede on their own.

There is an unintended consequence to our sandbag piling proficiency. While we are busy working countless hours to keep the flood at bay, we neglect to spend adequate time, energy, and resources looking at the overall environment around us to identify that it might be time to build a bridge over the flood waters.

Organizational leaders who are able to focus a significant portion of their team’s energy on building bridges will find themselves far more equipped to handle the inevitable shift that is happening in the landscape around our organizations. Building a bridge takes time, planning, resources, and vision. It requires a connection from your organization to others in different industries that might not be experiencing the same rising waters that you are facing. It requires us to think outside the box and to challenge the underlying assumptions that have always driven our business model.

The hardest part about shifting our attention to building a bridge, however, is that we have to be willing to stop piling sandbags. We have to be ready to hear our colleagues and peers question our commitment to our organization. We have to be willing to hear the question, “Why have you stopped shoveling with us? Have you given up on us?”

Many nonprofit and independent school leaders will not be willing to face these internal dissent. They will turn around, pick up their shovel, and get back to being a sandbag warrior. I don’t want to be that type of leader. Nonprofits and independent schools need bridge builders, not sandbag specialists.