WHY AND HOW TO GIVE YOUR NGO or BUSINESS LIFE OF ITS OWN

It is common to hear people speaking as follows about their business organizations or non profit organizations:

My business/NGO has 5 years now

My business has a profit of …..

I invested a lot of money in this business/NGO etc

All the above statements and others of such type make it possible to understand that businesses/NGOs are separate ‘creatures’ from their founders or owners.

But in practice, when running such businesses/NGO most of us do not see this fact or we are just slow to adopt this fact in everything. Examples of situation where we fail to recognize that our businesses or NGOs are ‘creatures’ of their own are as follows:

• When we spend resources of our businesses/NGOs for our own uses without taking into account the effect it has to the operation, strength and growth of such businesses /NGOs. We simply see ourselves we deserve to spend such resources like money just because the businesses/NGOs are ours.

• When we fail to arrange separately affairs of the businesses/NGOs and our personal affairs in such a way that there are conflicts of use of resources such as time. We find ourselves giving less resources than required to our businesses/NGOs telling ourselves other daily activities or plans are better than businesses/NGOs. 

Possible reason why we find ourselves in the situations as mentioned above, because we don’t recognize that business/NGO needs to have its own ‘life’. It needs its own resources- it needs its own time, its own connections, its own operations, and when it comes to this don’t interfere. If you interfere, make sure that you do this responsibly – knowing the effects of your actions to the business/NGO and how you can moderate negative impacts of your interference to the life of your business/NGO.

It is sad to find a business/NGO is not moving forward just because the founder or founders are not giving it ‘life’ of its own.  Founders of such type would normally have the habit of saying they are very busy with other stuff – say they also employed somewhere else, so they don’t get much time for their own businesses/NGOs. Or they have multiple businesses that fight for the same resources.

It should be noted that it is wise to separate your business/NGO from yourself and from any other businesses or NGOs that you personally own.  This way, your businesses/NGOs which are also ‘creatures’ of their own can grow just like human beings do.

As creatures, NGOs and businesses face challenges in their lives, and in cases they succeed, you have to remember success is a process not a destination, because such organizations have an unidentified life span just like me and you – we don’t really know when we are going to die.