030. Reinventing social change by overcoming self-limiting belief systems: Nell Edgington

SummaryNell Edgington, a well known American consultant who serves US domestic nonprofits  is of the opinion that nonprofit leaders maintain too many self-limiting beliefs and mindsets.In her new book 'Reinventing social change: Embracing abundance to create a healthier and more equitable world'  she explains how these self-limiting beliefs have seeped into the collective mindset and DNA of the nonprofit sector. In the book, Nell strongly advocates for abundance thinking -- instead of scarcity thinking, one of those dominant self-limiting beliefs.In this podcast episode, I discuss with Nell the central arguments of her book. Nell’s Bio   President of consulting practice Social Velocity: Social Velocity helps nonprofit and philanthropic leaders create more effective social change.   Fellow Leap of Reason Ambassador -- an invitation-based network of nonprofit leaders, funders, government regulators and consultants and academics who all are motivated to make the nonprofit sector more performance-focused  Former senior-level leader at a US public broadcasting TV station (Austin, Texas) We discuss:  Scarcity mindset: the mindset that nonprofits never are enough nor have enough: not enough money, not enough good board members, etc. – in other words, the ethos of 'never enough'. She observes such a scarcity mindset in individual leaders, boards and funders, but also at the sector level   Why Nell agrees with Dan Palotta’s well known, though contentious TED talk that the market should decide what salary to pay nonprofit CEOs, or how much money to invest in fundraising, or how big of a financial reserve to build; and that nonprofits should not accept self-imposed restrictions  The problem with the 'helper syndrome': if we 'over-give', we deplete ourselves -- something  quite distinct  from  giving generously  Why historically, charities (perpetually in need of money) have been run by women while men  have worked in the private sector where money was made. This created a very gendered makeup of the sector  Why nonprofits can reframe their relationship to funders and maintain more agency that way: funders have money they want to invest in social change, while nonprofits have solutions to offer -- and thus they can be seen as equal partners  Why if you ask each board member individually what unique assets they can give this will drive more board engagement and greater efficacy Quotes“Let’s pull back the curtain on how the sector is broken”“We need to fix and heal ourselves first before we can work on social change externally”Resources:LinkedInWebsiteBook link Click here to subscribe to be alerted when new podcast episodes come out or when Tosca produces other thought leadership pieces.Or email Tosca at [email protected] if you want to talk about your social sector organization’s needs, challenges, and opportunities.You can find Tosca’s content by following her on her social media channels: Twitter LinkedIn Faceboo