Hey, how’s it going? Where are you now? Oh yeah, right. At home. Like the rest of the world.
Me too.
After a month of quarantine and with no live sports to distract me, I have twitchy typing fingers and fledgling ideas.
Global pandemics and an existential threat to the charitable sector have that effect, apparently.
So hello, you.
I used to think up posts based on things I wish I had known when I was starting out in the nonprofit world. I ran out of ideas a few years ago. It happens.
I don’t have any more wisdom to share young-me. But I have another idea.
Many nonprofit colleagues are on the front lines working in hospitals, shelters, nursing homes and providing Covid-19 related services. Others are providing social support services to help people affected by the unprecedented job losses or inform government policies about social distancing, mental health, and economic recovery.
Even nonprofits not directly on the front lines will be feeling the reverberations of this pandemic for years; Imagine Canada says the nonprofit sector will lose something like 180,000 jobs as a result of the pandemic.
I know what I wish other people were saying to me.
I know the words I’d want a calm and reassuring voice advisor to utter. It would be sage advice from someone untouched by the pandemic, someone who has seen what’s on the other side of today’s chaos, and who provides the kind of coaching and cheerleading I need to forge a path through the deep dark forest of life.
I need this voice right now, and thought you might too.