Sometimes the hardest thing about being the director is maintaining hope in the face of what seems like overwhelming odds. I feel as though it is my job to encourage and motivate my staff and board to do what is necessary. But what about when one feels not-so-hopeful himself? It is hard to be the motivator when it seems like all the news you are getting that will affect your ability to operate the agency is dark. State funding cuts, individual donations down, corporations not giving, demand for services tripled, staff stretched thin, foundation giving decreased or not at all. The numbers are maddening. You can only have a contingency plan for so much, but when everything goes south it becomes a real challenge. The state budget issue is the most frustrating. The uncertainty and the promise of late or non-payment is totally disruptive. I know that if we decided not to pay our staff or our creditors they would leave or cancel our account. And it is all about maintaining political power for those who were elected by the people. Yet, what they don’t realize is that the people are the ones who are going to suffer and are suffering. The people with money will have to deal with it as well. We have created in our society the idea that we all “should” the haves, so when people are the have nots, they will do whatever it takes to become one who has.
Sometimes I think that businesses can lay off staff and produce less “stuff” and then rebound when people are spending again and they can then rehire staff. In social services we are facing all those people who have been let go, and we all know that the low man on the totem pole is always the one who gets the ax first. As I have said before, we are trying to do this with fewer dollars and fewer resources. So, we end up with a lot of unskilled, undereducated and working poor who are now the unemployed poor – soon to be homeless. People really are hanging on by a thread. So are we.
I am proud of the people I work with, my staff, because they work REALLY hard and are dedicated to helping people turn their lives around and attain stability. So, the one thing giving me hope right now, that lets me be a leader who motivates, is the people we serve and their will to overcome.
