After a hard day of selling dental widgets I have no issue walking away and totally disengaging. When I work on things I’m passionate about, like education, there is no putting it down at the end of the day. I walked away from KIPP Charlotte on Tuesday night so frustrated I was physically shaking. I find working on things that impact the community I live in wholly consuming. My foray into the land of dental widgets and work being just work has afforded me the time and emotional energy to pursue other interest and build a life in Charlotte. Dental widget MBA programs also pay pretty well and I’m enjoying not worrying about money for the first time in my life. The decision to work in corporate America is my big post business school experiment and the verdict is still out as to whether it has been a successful one. The world of non-profit moves slowly and I was always left wanting more responsibility and to be more challenged. I also wanted to be around smart, experienced professionals who I could learn from. I am getting all of that in spades in my current role. The looming question is whether my desire to serve and make a positive contribution to society can be fulfilled through extra-curricular activities alone or do I need to dedicate my professional career to it. The answer, which I probably knew going into this, is that I ultimately am not going to be fulfilled working for a company who makes stuff and whose sole purpose is to make money, but until I find a sugar Daddy who will keep me in the lifestyle to which I’m accustomed and so long as I’m still learning, growing and progressing in my current role I can’t see myself making the change.
The reason I was at KIPP on Tuesday night is that I’ve been asked to sit on their development committee. Per pupil funding is $6,000 per year versus $10,000 a year that NC public school pupils receive. The goal of our committee is to raise enough funds to close that gap and the aim of the school is to operate at the same cost as a regular public school. The reason I was so frustrated is there is such a lack of business savvy in the non-profit world – it was like pulling teeth to get a straight answer on what our financial gap actually is and they looked at me like an alien when I asked what the plan or series of actions are to bridge that gap. In the non-profit world there is a real aversion to change – the committee described how they would be doing the same two events that they have done for the past three year (despite the fact that these events haven’t met the necessary financial goals) because those are the two events that they do every year. I also find non-profits frustrating because so many people are doing things in their own time out of the goodness of their hearts that it makes it really hard to have frank conversations and say things like “your idea sucks”. I firmly believe that we should run non-profits like businesses and that we should Executive Directors as accountable for results as we do CEO’s. It was my first meeting so I sat back and listened and played nice, but if you know me at all you know I won’t be playing that role for very long.
KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is network of charter schools that serves communities that are traditionally underserved and marginalized education. They achieve above national average results and get above average percentages of children to and through college. While in business school I had the privilege of working for the KIPP foundation marketing team in NYC and I’m so excited that I’ve found a way to reengage with my KIPP family. I urge you to crank up the volume and watch the video below to learn more about the organization that I am so proud to be a part of:
KSS 2011 Gala Video from KIPP Foundation on Vimeo.
