Don’t listen to the doubters. If you try to do anything that involves change, you have lots of people who say you can’t do it. Listen to the people who say you can do it. People don’t want to see change; they take it as a criticism of themselves.
As a part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Donald Summers.
Donald Summers, Ed.M., is the Founder and CEO of Altruist Partners LLC, a pioneering social impact advisory firm dedicated to helping mission-driven organizations achieve their most ambitious goals. He has a Master’s Degree in Leadership & Policy from Harvard. Through Altruist Partners, Summers has assisted hundreds of nonprofits and mission-driven organizations globally, guiding them to overcome strategic, fundraising, and organizational challenges and amplify their social impact.
Summers is also the founder and executive director of the Altruist Accelerator, the firm’s nonprofit arm, which delivers the Altruist Growth and Impact Methodology to ambitious nonprofits and NGOs of all sizes and stages. His work has generated hundreds of millions in new revenue and capital; strengthened boards, staff, and volunteer teams; and advanced some of today’s most crucial social change efforts.
An accomplished author, Summers recently released his book, “Scaling Altruism: A Proven Pathway for Accelerating Nonprofit Growth and Impact,” which became the #1 New Nonprofit Release on Amazon. His research and essays have been featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Learn more at altruistpartners.com.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I grew up very suspicious of businesses. Like so many nonprofit types I would come to admire and support later in life, I abhorred what the big, bad companies were doing to people and the planet, and I spent my time immersed in literature and art. After a few brief teaching stints, I landed in an educational leadership program at graduate school that required classes in management and accounting. I walked into them dreading the content, but after the first class I was smitten. It was fascinating stuff. This is how the world works, I thought: What if we could use these tools for good?
On graduation, I was soon able to marry my newfound love for business practice with my altruistic impulses as a non-profit fundraiser. Thanks to the power of the business methodology I learned, within three years of graduationI had designed and executed two multimillion-dollar nonprofit fundraising efforts: one at an independent school and another at a large residential community serving adults with cognitive impairments. Another five years overseeing yet another multimillion-dollar fundraising acceleration for the language and literature division at a large research university cemented my belief in the power of business tools for social good. My doctoral research around social sector entrepreneurship indicated how few nonprofits took advantage of the power of basic business tools: financial projections, key performance indicators, and dashboards — the same instruments used to catalyze my success in raising money and accomplishing goals. I found there was a great gap in the literature on this topic.
After almost 10 years of fundraising, I sought new challenges and landed a gig as a CEO of a small charitable foundation, working for a board full of scientists who had all retired wealthy when their companies were acquired. They set up an environmental philanthropy to take an “innovative systems approach” to environmental challenges.
It quickly became clear that the nonprofit grant seekers needed a lot more help than the money we doled out could provide. The grant applications described nonprofit programs with exciting, world-changing potential, but the applications often lacked clear goals, sound strategy, clear performance indicators, and a means of sustainable financing.
It struck me: This is a waste of time. These are good people with great ideas who needed a lot more than relatively little money doled out after endless hours of grant selection meetings. They needed deep guidance on how to structure and scale their programs, many of which appeared to have real potential. I excitedly pitched my board about how we could use the business toolkit I had been using successfully for years. To my surprise and disappointment, they were uninterested. I later realized they weren’t in it for the impact, despite all the talk of “systems change.” They had made a great deal of money and were following a well-traveled path of setting up a foundation because they needed something to do. Interacting with other philanthropies and attending philanthropic conferences, I saw more of the same: the appearance of investing in social impact, but little substance — and only a fraction of the necessary capital.
Philanthropy like this was clearly not for me, so I left and pitched my services as a consultant to two of the grantees. As I had done with my previous organizations, I catalyzed multimillion-dollar growth and delivered social impact that improved many lives around the world, but now I was doing it for more than one organization at a time.
Success was intoxicating. I had worked hard to develop the methodology with moderate success. And then I had the Treehouse engagement, where we landed a moonshot in the world of social services, creating a level of social and financial acceleration that few thought possible. It was yet another confirmation that I was onto something truly important: the secret to unlocking the untapped potential of the entire social sector.
It took years of trial and error, the help of supportive colleagues, and the input of hundreds of nonprofit executives and board members, but I eventually landed on a comprehensive, step-by-step process that consistently accelerated nonprofit growth and impact. The boutique consulting firm I founded to deliver this methodology, Altruist Partners, works today with a small set of ambitious clients around the United States and internationally. We have also set up a nonprofit arm, the Altruist Nonprofit Accelerator, to teach the methodology to cohorts of nonprofits, and my book “Scaling Altruism” serves as the backbone of the curriculum. Early deployments in nonprofits around the world are encouraging.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
I was a precocious reader as a young person. I got into Russian literature when I was barely a teenager. The most influential book that I read would probably be The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. And Tolstoy — he was more than an author; he was a moral teacher. He explored the heart of the human condition. He was probably my first teacher about how to be an altruist. From these authors, I learned how to grapple with the hardest issues of existence and what we should do about them. I also read a lot of John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. I was influenced by the writings of John Wesley in high school. These works that influenced me are all works of 18th century philosophy about how to make the world a better place..
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
My funniest mistake as a student was when I confused the word etymology with entomology in an English paper. My advisor laughed out loud at me, an English major, and said I was writing about bugs, not the meaning of the word. The lesson I learned from that was to be more careful. Details matter.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
It’s giving away intellectual property that we developed over 20 years about how to accelerate nonprofit social impact. The nonprofit sector is a story of have and have-nots. You have very successful, highly impactful hospitals, universities, and legacy institutions like museums. They’re wealthy, multi-billion dollar corporations. They control 85% of the resources. 95% of the people in the nonprofit sector work for small and midsize organizations. And they’re largely in crisis. Donations are going down. According to the National Council of Nonprofits, they have waiting lists longer than a month. They have vacancies they can’t fill. According to the Better Business Bureau, only one in five Americans trust small to midsize nonprofits to use their donations well. The staff and executive directors are burned out. They need help.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
I think the most interesting one is a story of the courage of Janice Avery, the CEO of Treehouse, who set a goal to eliminate the graduation gap between foster youth and their peers in high school. No other organization was able to move the needle by more than a couple percentage points. She had the courage to say, “We’re going to increase graduation rates from 40% to over 80%.” After the first year of deploying a new program, the progress indicators were still not positive. She held the line, which was another incredible display of courage, effectively saying, “We’re going to set a goal to solve this problem, not nibble around the edges, and we’re going to persevere. We’re going to persist even if the early indications aren’t what we want to see.” She pushed through all the doubters, all the people who said she was crazy, all the people who said she was going to look bad. Within 18 months she started making progress ¸ — and five years later she eliminated the graduation gap for every foster youth in a major metropolitan area. I think my favorite story in the entire book is her courage. We have many other social impact leaders with that courage. They just need the tools. And that’s what we’re trying to provide — the toolkit for the leaders with the courage to actually set a big goal.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
It was after we catalyzed nonprofit growth and transformation for the 15th or 20th time. Treehouse was not our first success, but it was the biggest early success. It encouraged us that we don’t have to settle for incremental wins. We can actually go for full organizational transformation just like the big tech companies like Reddit or Airbnb or Uber, which start as an idea and get really, really big. We can do the same thing with our social solutions. And creating consistent results of scaling up social solutions encouraged us to document the methodology and share it with the world, because there didn’t appear to be another integrated management platform that was delivering those types of results.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
I have dozens of client stories about executive directors and program leaders who were burned out and ready to quit before they worked with us. Just yesterday I got a note from a CEO of a major early childhood therapy group who said “This was incredibly difficult, but your book and the process sparked a fire across our organization.” So it’s not just one. It’s consistent results with executives and board members who are finding traction and fulfilling their dreams with an actionable process and turning despair into hope and poverty into plentitude. It’s stories like that that keep us pushing hard, year after year.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Nonprofits need a hand up, not a handout. I think the biggest thing that I’d like to see the community do is stop reinforcing the myth of uniqueness. Nonprofits are organizations just like every other type of organization. They’re a group of people trying to accomplish a goal. Nonprofits need access to capital and top talent. They need teamwork and technology. It’s not a unique species. And yet we keep treating small to midsize nonprofits like they’re this mythical special creature. They’re not. They don’t need a separate language. They don’t need special care. They’re startups. Small to midsize nonprofits are startups that should set big goals and try to be every bit as aggressive as a tech startup. Philanthropy loves to come up with trendy ideas about how to help the social sector. I believe they’re not helping if they propagate myths that nonprofits are somehow unique. It’s just a group of people trying to accomplish a goal. So the same set of management tools applies to them as it does to every other type of every other organization.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
Working with hundreds and hundreds of leaders, I’ve found that the most effective ones are courageously optimistic. Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t — you’re right.” Leaders think they can, and that type of optimism is infectious. And when leaders gather around them people who also think they can, you get a self-reinforcing dynamic courage and optimism. That’s the fundamental strain of leadership.
The other part of leadership that I’ve really come to appreciate is that it’s not just courage and optimism. It’s the ability to execute. We have so many big ideas for making the world a better space. Ideas are cheap; execution is hard — actually creating progress on the ground and moving the needle in a way that’s clear and compelling and concrete. Leaders make that happen first. They make sure they don’t back off. They don’t stop at ambiguities or slogans. They have very, very clear commitment to making an obvious difference.
And finally, leaders don’t stop at partial results. There’s a big challenge with people celebrating, and all social impact is important. Let me be clear: anytime if you help one person, that’s very, very important. And we should celebrate helping one person or one animal, or planting one tree or, or creating justice and equality for one marginalized person. That’s important. But more important is doing that for everybody. So leaders also don’t stop until they solve all of the problem. They appreciate marginal impact, but they never settle for it. They say marginal impact is great, and yes, we celebrate it, but it’s a step on the way to all the impact that’s required to solve the problem.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?
1. Surround yourself with people who are smarter and more capable than you are who believe in the same goal. It’s what Jim Collins calls getting the right people on the bus. If you’re going to build a team, you have to have people who have strengths that you don’t have and then let them do their best work. I think that’s the most important part of leadership wisdom from anybody who’s tried to build a team.
2. Don’t listen to the doubters. If you try to do anything that involves change, you have lots of people who say you can’t do it. Listen to the people who say you can do it. People don’t want to see change; they take it as a criticism of themselves.
3. Don’t underestimate resistance to change. Change is hard for anyone. Even organizations and people in a lot of pain and dysfunction become comfortable and familiar with that pain. It’s sort of like an organizational Stockholm syndrome, and dysfunction then becomes oddly its own source of comfort. You’d be surprised at how many people don’t want to break out of a current dynamic even though it’s not healthy or productive.
4. Make sure you’re working with people that truly do want to change, that don’t just use it as a slogan and then resist. Surround yourself with people who have the courage to speak the truth.
5. Determination and grit trumps brilliance every time. Grit and tenacity are far more important than brilliance or even skill or knowledge. Those are the people that are successful. They stick with it despite the challenges.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are probably right.” That’s Henry Ford — not a nice person, but he knew a thing or two about building organizations that scale.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
I’d like to have a private breakfast with the CEO of any major charitable foundation, any major philanthropist, to tell them that nonprofits shouldn’t have to write grant applications or grant reports. You can tell a capable nonprofit by reading their plan and looking at their statements of impact. That’s all you need. Stop putting nonprofits through the wringer. Just like private investors pitch VCs with decks and financials, use that same process with nonprofits. Show me your business plan. Show me your pitch deck. Show me your financial statements, and show me your results when in whatever format that you want. Let the nonprofits express themselves however they want, and then pick the ones that are most credible. If you let the nonprofits express themselves authentically, you will find the ones that deserve your funding. I’d like to give that message to every head of all 100,000 private foundations in the United States, to scrap wasteful grant programs, reduce unnecessary staffing, and just give out funding based on the merits of a nonprofit’s published plan and published results. That one change alone would probably transform philanthropy in the United States.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I teach social impact leaders how to scale their work; I don’t spend time posting about it. Nonprofit leaders can sign up to join my community by visiting www.altruist accelerator.org. Otherwise, I hang out fairly consistently on LinkedIn.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Donald Summers Of Altruist Partners Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.