Nonprofit problem-solving, getting to the "rat" of the issue.

Just before Thanksgiving, my dishwasher stopped working. Well, to be precise, it stopped stopping. One evening I set it, it ran past the scheduled hour and overnight and into the morning. I only noticed when I woke up that it was still running and had been running for the past 11 hours.

Being the DIY-type I tried to troubleshoot myself. I pushed all the buttons on and off, I pushed the reset button at the bottom of the machine, I cleaned the filters, and I drained the water out of the back as was recommended in the “how to fix your dishwasher video”, all to no avail.

The dishwasher simply would not function.

With an 12-person turkey dinner on the horizon, I was eager to have a functioning dishwasher, so I finally gave in to calling an expert. To the dishwasher mechanic’s credit, he arrived the next day and promptly began to remove the panels of the dishwasher.

It was at this point that we discovered the true root of the problem. Or should I say the true “rat” of the problem.

Quite literally.

Because behind that panel, staring right at us, was a furry, round-eared, eight-inch rat. It had set up its home between the internal compartment and the external casing and had eaten through the sensor wires.

A rat in the dishwasher. It was the very last thing I expected to be the cause of my troubles.

I’m starting my first blog of 2025 with this anecdote because it serves as a good reminder, as we take on the new challenges of 2025, that we should be careful to avoid assuming that we are certain about what the root of our challenges may be.

There are over 70,000 nonprofits in Los Angeles. A percentage of them will likely face significant obstacles and possibly even closure in 2025.

As nonprofit professionals, we often assume that the failure originates from a lack of funding, so we work to raise more funds, write more grants, and encourage more donations. In some cases, however, the lack of funds is a symptom of the problems and not the root cause – it is the broken dishwasher and not the rat.

According to nonprofit consulting expert Tracy S. Ebarb, writing for the National Association of Nonprofit Organizations and Executives in 2019, six of the top seven reasons nonprofits fail are

1.    A lack of strategic and realistic planning

2.    A lack of core values guiding the way business is done

3.    Blindness to external changes and potential competition

4.    A lack of innovation and resistance to new technologies

5.    Mission creep

6.    Ignoring data when making decisions.    

In some overlap, Greg McRay, CEO of the Foundation Group, listed in 2024 his top five reasons nonprofits fail: 

1.    A lack of a plan

2.    Unrealistic expectations

3.    A lack of leadership

4.    A lack of funds

5.    A failure to adapt.

In a nuanced world, nonprofit challenges can’t be whittled down to a simple top-five list. Nevertheless, both of these lists suggest that attention to structural, foundational, cultural, and core value components of the work can help fortify nonprofits and secure their success. 

Last month, I wrote about the uncertainty ahead. While we can’t predict the challenges that 2025 may have in store, taking the time to identify and troubleshoot the true causes of our obstacles may ensure we navigate them more effectively.

Some obstacles we might be able to DIY ourselves and some may require us to bring in the expertise of specialists.

Either way, we will know how to root out the right rat.