Projecting Perfection

By Aaron Hurst on October 1, 2008 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"If only nonprofits were run like corporations" is a common refrain among nonprofit and business professionals alike. Nonprofit leaders project a romanticized vision of corporations.  Business professionals spend their nights complaining to their significant others about office dysfunction, but they have amnesia when they enter a nonprofit board room.  Suddenly, they only remember what works at the office.


I was reminded of this projection issue when I opened a new bank account at a local bank in my new neighborhood. One week after relocating to Park Slope from San Francisco, I visited the local branch of a national bank. In the course of six weeks they made the following errors:

• Made a typo on one of my checks
• Forgot to complete the forms needed to send an ATM card to my wife
• Withdrew $750 cash out of the Taproot Foundation business account instead of my personal account (the Taproot Foundation once used the same bank)
• Entered a withdraw to open a CD twice, leaving us with a bogus six figure overdraft that froze our account
• Charged us an overdraft fee for their error and demanded that I call back at another time if I wanted the money refunded

If the bank was a nonprofit, I might have thought: This is so typical! If only this organization ran more like a company...