Supersize it.

The bigger, the better. Higher numbers = higher impact. When we are looking at the capacity of an organization we often ask -- TOO often ask -- how big is your budget? How many people do you serve? How many staff do you have? Somehow we equate BIGNESS with GOODNESS. Somehow bigger is more blessed, more capable, more worthy than smaller......but is it?

The numbers game is a tough one for those of us in socially-minded businesses and nonprofits. It's how we are wired to think but not often how we are wired to act. We often feel too small, too unimportant, too insignificant. We apologize for our lack of numbers as if they are indicative of our lack of capacity. We think low numbers represent low impact so we are caught in this paradox of shooting for significance in numbers yet serving the one in front of us.

I suggest perhaps we're getting it wrong. Perhaps it's time for a paradigm shift. Quality over quantity. What if we measured time well spent? What if the time and resources spent changing the one life in front of us were seen as just as valuable as time spent helping many? What if we looked at metrics that didn't discount the value of the effort or diminish the capacity of the work or workers based on an objective output? I don't have it all figured out but I know that the value of an organization is not represented fairly in a numbers game.

#DoUntoOthers requires time, resources, and energy. How about we replace the verbiage of 'how many do you serve' with 'how do you serve?' How about we replace the conversation about the SIZE of budget with the responsible USE of resources. Authentic metrics of value and capacity are tricky but we can do better than equating supersized numbers with supersized impact. Let's start a conversation about shifting the paradigm to quality over quantity. Who's in?

-Mindy Muller, CFRE, President/CEO of CDP