That was one definition of sustainability offered by Margo Flood, Executive Director of the Environmenal Leadership Center and Chief Sustainability Official at the new student plenary at Warren Wilson College last week. (One of our sons transferred there this year).

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that one of my great concerns is the concentration of the resources of the nonprofit sector in the hands of so few organizations. Fewer than 6% of US institutions hold more than 80% of the income and assets of the sector.

I’ve asked the question before “How much is enough? Philanthropic greed”

That’s why Ms. Flood’s definition resonated so strongly with me. What would happen if all philanthropic institutions held themselves to the standard of taking no more than their fair share. Perhaps more philanthropy, bequests, grants and government funding would flow to organizations that are just as worthy (maybe even more so) but without the class connections and fund development capacity that accrue to many of the largest institutions.

In her latest op ed piece in The Nonprofit Quarterly, “Mom and Pop Giving Over to Big Brother?,” editor-in-chief Ruth McCambridge, shares our concern about national trends that overlook the value of “small, locally controlled organizations to civic life.”

She goes on to note that small businesses have disproportionately shed jobs in this recession and cites examples that indicate that this may be the result of government policy directing recovery funds toward the biggest corporations and away from the small guys. Ruth worries whether this will be repeated for nonprofits as this Administration works with “large philanthropic organizations to craft … approaches to ’social  innovation.’”

We have raised the same question in different forms in this blog . See Now I’m Worried – Who decides what is effective and who should be funded or Are nonprofits only safety nets? among other entries.

If we get too caught up in focusing funder attention on “taking programs to scale,” we are destined to overlook the critical community building that can only be done by small, in-the-neighborhood organizations. Or, those scale-ups may overlook the impact of design that is an adaptation to local circumstances that doesn’t scale well or shouldn’t be scaled but should be redesigned for a new locale or new population. Or, even more likely, we may tend to  forget that social change depends on a continuum of organizations, people and actions to finally tip power balances and produce desired improvements.

Thanks to The Nonprofit Quarterly for using its national platform to continue to remind the top of the nonprofit infrastructure that this is a complicated world and that the contributions of the little guys can’t be dismissed or ignored.

“Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.”

Whatever work we do with nonprofits like yours — whether we are helping to rebuild a struggling board, or facilitating a new direction through strategic or fundraising planning — we are constantly pushing  people in organizations like yours not to be afraid of articulating the big idea. For it is that “common purpose” , the great “ambition” of  societal change that really matters. We ask our clients to think deep, to challenge themselves to imagine how they can really make that change happen, not just by continuing what they’ve been been doing, but how, through innovation, partnership, best practices, and insight and courage, this change might come to be.

As our new President reminds, never dismiss the change you envision as a quixotic dream. Make it something that you can feel, taste, smell and hunger for so much that your entire organization pulses to the driving beat of the future you imagine.

If you can see the future in your mind, and you commit to making it happen, you will reignite the passion and belief that has powered progressive social movements for hundreds of years. All it takes next is will and courage.

In my view, the most unexpected of these factors is the success (and recognition) of old- and new-fashioned community organizing. And this, I think, is where nonprofits badly need to pay attention.

In TIME magazine, Joe Klein describes how an Obama volunteer spent six months gettting to know the folks in tiny Algona, Iowa, before his vital and surprising caucus victory in that state. Klein says “Obama’s decision to expend so much effort on a field organization was quietly revolutionary.” Schmitz notes that the Obama campaign refused to choose between online and on-the-ground organizing. It excelled at both, creating many different online and face-to-face niche communities and ways to participate in political action for Obama.

We know the result. The organizing strategy generated more dedicated volunteers, more cash contributions and more votes than anyone could have imagined. Now President Obama stands to? prevail in the political battles ahead.

What’s Obama’s political campaign got to do with nonprofits? These days, far too little. Hundreds of thousands of? nonprofits have become deeply integrated into the systems serving critical needs like health, education and many others. No longer movements, they have become guardian institutions for the status quo.

The imperative to capture resources to pursue already-settled courses of action means that the constituents’ money has far more value than their ideas or energies. These nonprofits spend heavily on direct mail appeals without investing in the back end to activate or educate constituents as volunteers and advocates. The message to donors here is: “Just send us the check – we’ll take it from there.”

But, the donors, like the voters, are fed up with enforced passivity. We don’t want “input.” We want to do something. Check out Paula Poundstone on NPR this morning. With great humor, Paula expresses my sense of anxious frustration as I wait for the Big Thing that President Obama will ask of us. We just want to help fix things.

Obama won our votes and our contributions because he asked for so much more. However, my guess is that President Obama will be far too busy to offer most of us satisfying opportunities to help save the nation. (Besides, he doesn’t actually know how to fix everything – some of this we need to figure out for ourselves.)

But our nonprofits do offer a vast range of ways ordinary people can help make the needed national change. The energy and optimism is out there to be captured, if only we can rediscover our neglected organizing muscles.