Page 242 - The Drucker Lectures

Managing the Nonprofit Organization [ 223

whole circulatory system.” There was an enormous fight, because
it diluted the activities. And the Lung Association looks at the
lung. And the Mental Health Association isn’t going to look at
anything but mental health. They wouldn’t dream of touching
anything to do with the kidney. Probably most of them don’t re-
ally quite know where the kidney is, and couldn’t care less. That
has brought tremendous success. They concentrate—because
then you get results.
Sure, there has to be a need; otherwise there’s no point. And,
okay, the only result you may see is to alleviate immediate suf-
fering. Here is that poor woman with two small children on the
street. And the soup kitchen gives her a meal for herself and the
two kids, and a place to ride out the night, out of the rain, and
that’s all. And the next day she’s back on the street again, what-
ever the underlying cause. It may be that she’s an addict. Maybe
bad luck. Maybe she’s mentally ill. But at least tonight that poor
woman and her two kids have enough to eat not to go to bed
hungry. And that’s relieving suffering, not changing lives. And
maybe that’s all that’s needed. But increasingly, we are shifting
to where we expect to see long-term results.
Around 1960 is when the American Heart Association really
reformulated its goals. It set results in terms of 10, 20, 30, 40 years,
and it exceeded every one of them. But these were very concrete,
measurable, quantifiable results. And there are critics who say this
is not really in line with the spirit of giving. And there has to be
a balance. But fundamentally, whether you like it or not, we have
changed our emphasis to defining and meeting results.
Take the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, two very large or-
ganizations. Now they are very different in one fundamental re-
spect—and it’s not that one is for girls and the other is for boys.
The Boy Scouts see the main results in terms of the children, the
boys. For the Girl Scouts, the volunteer mothers are the main
constituency. Very different.