Welcome to the Bear Pit

Welcome to a blog which will hopefully help dispel the myth that nonprofits are just chock full of easily offended, soft, ineffective people who all have political leanings further left than the 'E' on a fuel gauge.  Don't get me wrong, we have more than our fair share of those but we have plenty of folks who fall towards the middle of the political spectrum (including myself) or maybe lean a little to right.  It frustrates those of us who are not polarized liberals to have to deal with the more recalcitrant ones.  For the polarized folks who might be reading this, you know how you feel like blood is going to shoot out your nose when dealing with someone who is at the opposite end?  Those of us in the middle feel that way about dealing with folks at both ends of the spectrum.

That also should not be taken as an across the board condemnation of those with more liberal viewpoints.  A reasonable and intelligent person often learns more from those they do not agree with than he does from those with whom they march in lock step.  Some of the best and brightest folks in the nonprofit world- people I hold in extremely high regard like Vu Le of Nonprofit with Balls - make me want to pound my head against my desk anytime a remotely political topic comes up.  If you cannot respect an otherwise good person simply because you disagree with them on something (within reason), you have failed as a human being.  Full stop.  Do not pass 'go', do not to get an unrestricted grant for $200.

A little background on me so that you know where I am coming from with this.  I am one of the founders of a new nonprofit startup geared towards research and forensic support efforts.  My experience is in a weirdly odd mix of military (Air Force enlisted medical who never left the country during his service except on vacation), emergency medical services, fire departments, a forensics agency, research labs, a chain of funeral homes and a hog farm among others  You ever want to make negotiations easier? Point out that your first paid job was castrating pigs.  The number of people willing to argue decreases significantly.

I found myself in the nonprofit sector completely on a lark.  Our mission grew rather randomly out of a debate between myself and a trauma surgeon almost ten years ago.  Literally, our nonprofit can trace its origins back to what amounts to a bar bet.   I never planned a career as an executive director and given a lack of business education the learning curve associated with this job has been steeper than nearly anything else I have ever dealt with.  Like every other promotion I have ever received this was one of those "Congratulations! We took a vote and you lost!  You're the new _______!".  I have learned that I have to be careful making that joke around younger nonprofit professionals because it gets me some serious side eye from the ones who want a position like mine but have yet to earn it .  Bit of advice: no matter how much you want to be an executive director I cannot in good faith recommend a startup as a way to achieve that.

Few other things to keep in mind:

-Along with the rest of our board,  we are staunchly pro-law enforcement, pro-law and order (both in the sense of the criminal justice system and the television series; Lenny Briscoe and I have a very similar sense of humor), pro-veterans (hence why I am using a picture from Ranger Up Apparel as my profile picture; hopefully they don't mind), reasonably patriotic, etc etc.
-I may demographically be a millennial but I cannot stand the attitudes of a lot of my nominative peers.  If you have seen the CBS series "The Great Indoors", my dealing with millennials is very similar to that of the character of Jack. 

-If you cannot laugh at yourself, chances are we are not going to see eye-to-eye.