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Copper Nail is not the only example of how to build organizational structure - but it's a good one. 

Copper Nail opened in 2007 as a nonprofit resale shop in Grass Lake with a mission to raise money to support the local community.  There are no paid staff, but the shop is open 5 days a week.  They have donated more than $50,000 (for those of us unfamiliar, that's called profit!) to local Grass Lake causes, purchased a building and have become one of the fastest growing businesses in Grass Lake.  Last year, they experienced 13% growth. 

When they first opened, they had a loose group of volunteers who all just made sure the day to day tasks of running a retail shop got done.  No policies, no procedures, no executive committee, nothing.

As they grew (rapidly), the need for structure became essential.  Their landlord put their building up for sale - and they needed to determine if purchasing the building was a good decision and if they would be able to sustain it (they did end up buying the building).  They needed to think through a governance model that would allow an all volunteer board (who were also running day to day operations) to govern and manage.  They needed financial management policies that would protect them when there were literally many hands in the "till".  They needed volunteer policies that read like a strict employee handbook that outlined customer services expectations, chain of command and duties, but was cognizant that all these people were, well, volunteers.   All along, they were aware they wanted what they were building to be sustainable, and be around for many many years. 

The list of policies, procedures, intense and deep conversations that needed to occur to build their structure was long.  And they will be the first to admit that at times they felt overwhelmed.  Again, they had a store to run, volunteers to recruit and train, donations to sort, and someone to be at the cash register in addition to writing and testing financial protocols.  But I never heard them question the value of the process. 

Nonprofit Network won't take credit for their growth - Copper Nail did all the work - but we helped them think through how they might get from where they were - to where they wanted to be.  We are grateful to have witnessed thier process so that we may testify to the magnitude of what they accomplished. 

They may argue that their growth made their process imperative - I would argue (successfully - but only because I am that persistent) that their attention to their board governance, and developing their process, policies and procedures,  made it possible for them to grow and be successful. 

Some indigenous tribes in North America, especially nomadic tribes, preserve their culture by literally holding on to parts of their history. An elder would be trusted to keep a rock, feather, or other small tokem representing an important moment from a tribe’s history. The elder would keep these items in a pouch—a sacred bundle. When the tribe gathered around the evening campfire, the trusted member would retrieve items from the sacred bundle, telling the story associated with each. Over time, everyone in the tribe came to know the same stories.

Jane Goodall has what she calls a “Sacred Bundle of Hope”. Her mission is to save the gorillas. When someone asks her, “Do you ever give up hope?” She takes out her sacred bundle and pulls from it a feather and says: “There’s a patch of land in Ontario that used to be a nickel mine. After the miners abandoned the mining the land was dead and gray. Environmentalists always believed they could bring the land back. They worked and worked on the land and over time it became green again. This is a feather of a peregrine falcon that lives on that land now.

Then, she takes out some pebbles. When Nelson Mandela was breaking rocks in the yard of the prison where he was held, he saved some of the pebbles. He knew he would be liberated someday and wanted to take something from his experience there. After he was freed, he put some of those pebbles in little bags and gave them to friends as a remembrance of his time and purpose in prison.

The last item is a little plastic change purse. A little girl sent this to her after seeing a TV program about a baby chimp that was put into a glass box at birth and not allowed to see or interact with its parents. They experiment was to see what would happen if a baby chimp was raised in this box for one year, being fed through tubes. After a year the young chimp was banging its head on the glass. The little girl had sent a note saying ‘Dear Dr. Goodall, here’s money to buy a snoopy doll for that chimp so it will have something to hold onto.’

Do I ever lose hope? Sometimes I come close, but I take out these things and they remind me that there is always hope.