President Julie Roger's 2006 Exponent Awards Address
Thank you all so much.
The Meyer Foundation is so happy you have all joined us tonight to celebrate five astonishing leaders. We are also here to celebrate the many outstanding nominees and all the nonprofit executives with us tonight—the heart and soul of our community—who feed, shelter, educate and inspire thousands of people in Greater Washington. We are deeply grateful for your work all day, every day on behalf of those who call our region home.
For over 60 years Meyer has invested in visionary and talented nonprofit leaders with deep respect. As we watch and listen to you we are grateful for your achievements, your deep personal and spiritual commitment to service, and your able management of complex organizations dealing with stark human need. You are passionate, creative and courageous.
But as we listen, we also see your struggles. We admire and deeply respect the personal sacrifices you make, but watch you flirt with burn-out. We see you raise the money—usually all the money—starting from zero every year. Sometimes you agonize about whether you can meet payroll due to cash flow issues. And we watch you struggle to achieve some semblance of work-life balance and raise your families.We are reminded, time and again, that each of you is a precious asset to this community. And so we decided we had to step up and do more. The Meyer Foundation's national survey of 2,000 executive directors, Daring to Lead, pointed to the nature of the problems and to some real solutions.
Meyer's new three year initiative, Rewarding Leadership, is designed to strengthen and stabilize nonprofit leadership, make more coaches and training available and increase your visibility. The study reminded us that multi-year grants would be an enormous help, and I'm happy to announce tonight that our board has approved a new policy to make more grants for multi-year periods. And we developed the first award program in Meyer's history—the Exponent Award—to shine a light on five extraordinary leaders, offering $100,000 in flexible money to support them, focus on their well-being, extend their tenures and lift their visibility.
I want to assure you tonight that we are deeply committed to this work. We are still in the early stages of this journey with all of you. We are learning a lot, but we need to know more about what attracts talented & skilled leaders and keeps them in the field, and we will need to rally funding partners to have a meaningful impact as we move forward.
But imagine with me for a moment tonight a different world:
A world in which all executive directors have adequate compensation and fully-funded retirement plans
In which young leaders enthusiastically choose to enter and stay in our sector
In which your student loans are forgiven in return for your service
In which the right board members would be easily recruited and truly raise the money
In which your organizations have adequate working capital, operating reserves and healthy endowments
In which the good people of the Greater Washington region, who, according to the new study by Boston College, are expected to give $460 billion to charitable causes in the next 50 years, will know without question what to do – to give it to you, our terrific, effective community-based organizations
We won't stop until the world looks more like this vision. We believe that you are precious assets; that your leadership matters, that you deserve to be fully supported; that you deserve to be visible; that your voices on behalf of the voiceless people you serve are critical to the health of our region and desperately need to be heard.
We won't stop because the work you all do holds the compassion, the equity, and the justice that heals the world. We want it to be said that—as a community—we grabbed these ideas with such force that they became a reality.
And so, let me close with the ancient, familiar wisdom of Rabbi Hillel:
If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us?
If we are not for others, what are we?
And if not now, when?