An Organization of Professional Volunteers

We have been spending the past couple of weeks in Greenwood, Indiana, at the “world headquarters” of OMS International. On Tuesday, Laura and I were invited to president David Long’s house for dinner, so I took the opportunity to sharpen my understanding of the unique challenges faced by this organization.

OMS considers itself a “faith-based” organization. What they mean in plain language is that nobody draws a salary from the organization (imagine the low overhead costs!). Each employee – of which there are over 200 in several dozen countries around the world, plus another perhaps 30 or 40 at headquarters – is responsible for raising his or her own salary through donations. This applies to everyone from the president to the mailroom clerks.

Imagine your employer approaching you and asking that, in addition to all of your job responsibilities, you are also required to knock on doors asking people to donate your salary year in and year out.

I asked Mr Long how he motivates and directs employees, given that their paycheques don’t come from their employer. He told me that he and his board of directors must treat the organization’s employees as if they were volunteers.

Imagine the dilemma that Mr Long would face if he were required to dismiss an employee for underperformance, since recruiting replacements is so challenging: an employee performing half his duties is better than the position sitting vacant for the months or years required to recruit someone willing to fundraise their own salary.

An Employee’s Perspective

The night after our visit with Mr Long, we were invited to dinner with an employee, so I asked him his thoughts about needing to raise his own money.

He understood why I was questioning the strategy, but didn’t mind it himself. He came to the organization with a sales background -– he was formerly a sales executive with IBM -– so he was used to asking people for money (and used to being rejected).

A member of the Canadian board of directors likened the mentality of the employee to an investment broker: donors will purchase “shares” in the employee, who is in turn responsible for “investing” the donors’ money in the development of people’s lives overseas. In that sense, the organization’s accountability to donors is more direct than in an organization that fundraises centrally.

Most employees accept this as a way of life; as we have discovered, it is not uncommon for people to spend their entire career with OMS International. On the other hand, Laura and I know of one person who recently resigned because he was unable to find enough people to contribute towards his living expenses year in and year out.

At first glance, it would seem that such an organization would be forced to take whatever recruits walked in the door, and to some extent that’s true – but only highly-motivated people want a job so much that they are willing to fundraise their own salary.

...but does it work?

When I examine organizations, I do so with an eye towards determining what I would do if I were in charge. I draw easy parallels between OMS and World Vision: the latter being a Christian organization with remarkably similar roots, but which has grown to be a US$1.5 billion organization with over 22,000 employees worldwide, thanks in part to its strategy of central fundraising.

There are certainly both benefits and costs to OMS International’s unique approach to fundraising. For me, the jury is still out on this one.

* * * * *

The kind folks at OMS have put us up in an apartment shown in the photo to the left. It's more than adequate for our needs -- and is a short walk to the main headquarters building where we've been having our training (more on that in the next posting).

The only issue that we've needed to work around is Internet access. Since the only access is in the main headquarters building, which is locked off-hours, we had trouble accessing it for the first couple of days. We've resolved that problem by purchasing a cheap wireless card for our laptop. Now we can access the Internet whenever we want -- by sitting on the sidewalk behind the headquarters building, where I am right now. Good thing it's summer.