My husband has a subscription to Smart Money magazine, a Wall Street Journal publication. While I'll admit I don't read it cover to cover, I do glance at a few articles now and again. The September 2011 issue had a little ditty that caught my eye; The Perils of the Feel-Good Job, by Reshma Kapadia. As you might guess, the article is about baby-boomer corporate types taking jobs with non-profits both as a transition from working to retirement, and in search of personal fulfillment.
As expected, life of an executive at a non-profit is very different from that of a CEO in a for profit corporation. At non-profits consensus building is a norm, potential donors must be considered and the expense account virtually non-existent. Executives at non-profits often find themselves rolling up their sleeves and pitching in to get things done, even if it involves metering some mail to get a project out on deadline. It occurs to me that corporate CEO's might consider doing this too.
But what got me in the article was this, " At many non-profits, progress is measured by squishier metrics." This said in contrast to corporate folks thinking about profits and shareholders. Really, squishier? I think not. Most non-profits are quite results based, but money isn't necessarily the goal. A housing non-profit might measure success in the number of families housed, folks working with the homeless look at how many people they get off the streets, animal rescues measure how many animals they place in a certain time period, health clinics measure now many patients served or immunizations given, or lives saved, and so on.
Perhaps this could have been better stated as something like CEOs finding they need to adjust to success measurements other than the bottom line. But "squishier", I found that a bit offensive.
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