The Other Rules for Scrabble and Nonprofits

By Tom Peterson on May 19, 2013 in Nonprofit How-to

In managing organizations, there are official rules and there are the other rules. The official rules that come in the Scrabble game box tell you how many tiles to draw, that play passes to the left, what “triple letter score” means. How the game works. Without them you couldn’t play. Likewise, nonprofits have official rules. For finance, they tell us how to behave with regard to 501(c)(3) status, payroll taxes, budgets. HR has rules, as do boards of directors, and so on. As with Scrabble, without following these rules, an organization would find itself in chaos and in trouble. (The Foundation Group has a great list of the Dirty (half) Dozen Nonprofit No-Nos.)

The “other rules” are situational. Created to make life more civil for the players, based on what’s going on. Games with my former in-laws are always a blast. Any time the group gathers at the beach or for Christmas a Scrabble board appears. The games are spirited, with passionate people who really want to win. While there are dull moments, dreadfully long dull moments waiting for certain people to play, there are never dull games. One time, my sister-in-law, Lois, felt it might add a bit of civility if she just wrote some rules for us to follow as the situations came up. So, based on her observations, she created a list of Other Rules of Scrabble. Here are some:

No flat out lying about whether a word is in the dictionary
No sarcasm used on children
No intimidating guests so they’ll agree with you
No asking for the pen in an ugly tone of voice
No demeaning someone who makes only a few points just because it took a long time to play
No shaking your finger and saying “I hate you!” to other players
No droning on and on about how many points you could have gotten
No acting resentful when you have to lose your turn because you challenged someone who told you it was a word
Having a lung disease and whatever other sickness doesn’t mean you get your way
No throwing the scrabble book outside

So, in a like manner, we may consider some other rules for nonprofits. Here are a few suggestions to get the conversation going:

No using interns as vassals
No using big-eyed children to guilt people to donate
No using big-eyed puppies to guilt people to donate
No telling people they can solve an intractable problem by “liking” something on Facebook
No telling people they can solve an intractable problem by buying more stuff
No jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch
You are not God, not the Guiding Light, so no pretending your work is the direct work of The Almighty—unless you do so humbly
No partnering with Evil Empires or others destroying the world just to get their funds
No telling the staff to double the income
No telling staff to make a really viral video
No encouraging children to break curfew and vandalize city property
No squeezing out smaller do-good groups to “increase market share”
No more logos with hands, hearts, stars or figures with their arms extended in the air
No public relations campaigns involving Disney princesses