“Look for the helpers.”
In this most trying year, there’s been much talk of helpers and heroes. More than a vaccine or a stimulus bill, our recovery is in their hands.
A few weeks back, my mother-in-law lent me a book about Mr. Rogers. Among many poignant threads, the author recounts that when Fred was young, and troubled by the ills of the world, his mother would comfort and encourage him by suggesting he, “Look for the helpers.” Adding, “You will always find people that are helping.”
She was right. As we head into this year’s home-stretch, with now full awareness that turning the page on 2020 will not mean an end to its trials, pains, and ills, we best “look for the helpers.” They are everywhere.
We’ve lauded them during these long months with balcony sing-alongs, signs in our windows, and GoFundMe campaigns. We added an extra tip to our Door Dash order, gave the grocery clerk a knowing look (because our smile was masked), and Googled “how to donate PPE.” We witnessed helpers on memes that went viral, saw news reports of people being kind — and elected two helpers, people who’ve dedicated their lives to the service of others.
In addition to the essential workers, electeds, healthcare heroes, and people that seem to deliver every conceivable thing to our doorstep, another cadre of helpers needs to be raised up — the 12 million Americans who work for the nation’s 2 million nonprofits.
For them, helping is vocation. It’s avocation. It’s everything.
Next week, on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, we’ll celebrate the 9th annual Giving Tuesday, a global day of generosity that has activated nearly $2 billion in charitable donations in the U.S. alone since 2011. In May, helpers mobilized a second day of giving in response to the pandemic and more than $500 million was raised in a single day.
There are predictions that this year’s #GT haul could be more than $600M, given the pandemic, on-going racial reckoning, and a sense of shared suffering that, for helpers, is even more powerful than shared fear and fatigue.
And let me tell you what, nonprofits need these dollars. Needs are greater, poverty is higher (8 million Americans fell into poverty between May and September), unemployment is rising, businesses are closing. Reliable community institutions are struggling, with lines out the door for food, warm blankets, the chance to see a doctor.
The social contract in America puts the burden of solving our most intractable problems — as well as responding to our most urgent crises — on the shoulders of our nonprofit institutions. That is the backdrop of this year’s drama, and both the hope and the challenge of 2021. Civil society advocate and Independent Sector CEO Daniel Cardinali puts it bluntly, “Without a healthy nonprofit sector, the climb out of 2020 will be nearly impossible.”
Indeed, next year could be even harder, the work more crucial, and the helpers exhausted but undaunted. For while prospects for a vaccine and government action are unpredictable, helpers are not.
But helpers need help too. We ask nonprofits to shoulder this load with no reliable revenue stream aside from the largesse of others.
So, let’s get busy “largessing.”
While Congress debates and delays a new round of COVID relief, food banks are packing boxes and delivering sustenance. Corporations run inspiring ads and tinker with diversity policies, health clinic staff are treating patients wearing single-use masks and gowns that have to last a week (or more). And while many of us bemoan another day on Zoom, America’s helpers show up each day at museums, zoos, and shelters to care for the treasures and beings that need them, regardless of whether there are guests to appreciate them.
Giving Tuesday will be especially important this year because it delivers unrestricted dollars to nonprofits, in contrast to grant awards that often direct dollars into prescriptive activities and specific programs. As danpallotta powerfully soap-boxed in his timeless 2013 TedTalk, when donors begrudge nonprofit spending on “overhead,” they’re penalizing the effective administration, outreach, and strong management that makes the work possible, and the impact scalable, in the first place. Giving Tuesday lets dollars flow where they’re needed.
So, while we wait for Congress to act, for a new President to be sworn in, for a vaccine to arrive. While we wait for schools to reopen, office buildings to fill, and airplanes, cafes, and movie theaters to feel safe again. Remember that work is getting done, problems are getting solved, wounds are being dressed, and tummies are being filled because the vibrant and dynamic nonprofit sector never rests.
“There are always people helping.”
On Giving Tuesday we can all pitch in— by helping the helpers.
