Six years ago, Michelle Brown met with the lead funder of her literacy nonprofit. She hoped they’d renew the scholarship, but there was no reason why they couldn’t. But as the meeting began, she realized in slow motion that all the pieces was about to change. In her imagination, she saw thousands and thousands of dollars flying away like a flock of geese to warmer waters.
She considered William, a seventh-grader from a small, struggling town in Mississippi who was seriously behind in reading and who inspired Brown to start his nonprofit organization called WspólneLit. Her memories flashed through years of grantmaking and charming donors. Tens of 1000’s of teachers use the program for free. Measurable improvement in children. But now its major benefactor had dropped out because, so far as she could tell, the philanthropists had moved on to some shinier, more fashionable cause. Brown left that meeting knowing her budget would soon evaporate and wondering how she would support her staff of about 20 and encourage her students to read. “When I started a public charity, especially for something as basic as literacy,” she says, “I never thought that philanthropy wouldn’t work.”
So Brown did something that had long been frowned upon in the charity world: she began pondering like a business.
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