Lessons We’ve Learned

25th Anniversary:
Important Lessons We’ve Learned

The Center turned 25 in 1998. As part of our 25th anniversary year, we included articles in our newsletter about what we’ve learned. We discuss both issue-oriented programmatic topics as well as organizational topics. The articles are collected here.

What we've learned - about challenges that shape the Center’s character

What happens when you speak truth to power, which has been the Center’s habit over the years? You get whooped a lot. And you learn a lot. In 23 years with the Center, and since, I’ve had plenty of occasion to reflect on the challenges that have shaped the Center’s character. Here are a few thoughts about the lessons we’ve learned from facing those challenges.

• The battle is not for the hearts and minds of politicians, but for the hearts and minds of people. Sure, policy change usually has to be voted on by elected officials, but most of them are followers, not leaders, and the law can’t do what the people don’t want done anyway. Truly important change happens only when the people have made up their minds. In its formative years, the Center was under pressure to "make a difference," to produce political victories quickly. But it was our strategy to challenge rural people, to build slowly on rural values, rather than make fast friends with politicians, and it gave the Center a patient character.
• It is as important to understand opposing views as it is your own. There are at least three reasons. First, if you don’t understand the opposing view, you can’t defend your own ideas against your critics. Second, it’s often important to take a stand, even when you have lingering doubts. Otherwise, you may never have the resolve to do so. Just keep an open mind, and welcome your own doubts. They will make you strong, finally. Most people don’t believe that, and so, the third point is this: You should understand the opposing view well enough to know what its partisans themselves don’t really believe about it. Find the cracks in their armor, and relentlessly raise doubts in their ranks. Nothing is more demoralizing than unwelcome doubt. Over the years, this philosophy has moved the Center to do meticulous research, to listen and talk to those with whom it disagrees most, and this has given it a high reputation for intellectual honesty and courage.
• If you are keeping score, you are losing. The Center’s character has always manifested a special kind of resilience against defeat, intimidation, and disappointment. This work is often sacrificial, and the people who do it, as staff or volunteers, are often ridiculed, betrayed, and dismissed. And they are almost never adequately compensated. Those who "keep score," who worry too much about tangible evidence of success, especially popularity, are exhausted by the kind of big issues the Center tries to address. They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, sober and dour, and they cannot endure it for long. Instead, have fun, keep focused on the big picture, don’t expect to see the results of your work (and relish them when you do), and most of all, seek solace in Gandhi’s teaching that there can only be real pleasure where there is real conscience.
• Self-interest is a valuable but insufficient foundation for the common good. When we build public policy only on vested interests, no matter how noble the people who hold those interests are, we lose the meaning of the word "public." There must always be a larger common good for which we jointly make sacrifice and mutual commitments. There have been many times when the Center was challenged to support this or that policy only because it was expedient at the time, and popular among farmers or other rural people. Many times we resisted the temptation to pander to such self-interest when it conflicted with the common good as we understood it. Doing so built a character of integrity.
• Define the issues, don’t become the issue. The Center has long been controversial, but for its ideas, not for its actions. Fortunately, you can usually survive criticism for your ideas, if your conduct is honorable. In this, we have been above reproach. There are many who have wanted –and tried – to make the Center the issue by labeling us radicals or misfits, but their silly accusations have only proven that the Center can’t be bullied. Significantly, we have outlasted most of those name-callers. Challenged to defend ourselves, we have had the courage to remain focused on the real issues, not mislead into ego-satisfying, self-defeating defense of our reputation.
• Hate and fear are poor sources of political energy, because you can muster them easier than you can guide them. Fascists, communists, conspiracy theorists of all sorts, and some populists, have played on hate and fear to build power for themselves, but most of them have not been able to direct this political energy toward useful ends. They’ve been better at rousing than they were at rabbling. Early in its life, the Center was often expected to torment the rich and powerful for its own sake. And we have been outspoken, and at times irreverent. But we have also been precise, accurate, and focused in our criticisms of economic and social injustices, and we always poured energy into productive campaigns that inform people and make them better citizens. This has given the Center its reputation for civility, even among those who disagree with us most.
• Leave the bottle full for others. An old inspirational cowboy song tells about a parched desert traveler who stumbles on a dried up well and a buried bottle of water left by an old-timer named "Desert" Pete. There’s a note, too, admonishing the thirsty man not to give in to the temptation to drink the water, but to prime the pump with it instead. "You’ve got to prime the pump, have faith and believe, you’ve got to give of yourself before you’re worthy to receive," the note says. " Drink all the water you can hold, wash your face and cool your feet … but leave the bottle full for others, thank you kindly, Desert Pete."

The Center has worked hard these 25 years, having faith and belief in rural America. There have been plenty of times when the Center might have been better off, organizationally speaking, to forget the lessons above and abandon the strategies that have given it its special character. But it hasn’t. Instead, given good values and a strong sense of purpose to work with, the Center has primed the pump of rural America and drawn a lot of good work and renewed commitment to rural values from people all over this country.

Along the way, the Center has learned a lot, had some fun, and done plenty of good. And everyday, it still struggles to leave the work a little further along, the values a little stronger, and hope a little higher. This ethic of hope grounded in hard work may be the most important aspect of the Center’s special character. - Marty Strange

What we’ve learned – about fundraising.

We are continually involved in fundraising; judging from our 25-year track record, we’ve been pretty good at it. Here are some simple truisms we’ve learned.

• Fundraising is a business deal. The fundraiser has a product to sell. The funder wants to make a wise investment. The funder must see the wisdom in your proposal, but also must be confident in the management and accounting of the funds. Likewise, maintaining a relationship with the funder – keeping them up-to-date, notifying them early of any problems – is a businesslike thing to do.
• Do your research before asking for money. You don’t want to waste your time or their time.
• They won’t give if you don’t ask. This is especially important with individuals.
• Funders grant money to people, not projects. The funder must have confidence in the leadership of a project or organization. This is a real challenge for a new or young organization, so taking the time to build a relationship with the funder is vital.
• Diversify. Just like rotating crops, having a mix of many funding sources (foundations, earned income, individuals, corporations) helps weather the bad times.
• Share your knowledge with others. There is huge need for addressing the problems of rural America. Getting funders to support the good work of other non-profit groups is something we’re always glad to help with.
• Good work is rewarded. Probably the most important truism. – Don Ralston

What we’ve learned – from farmers.

Farmers are underrated when it comes to solving problems and fabricating solutions. During the Small Farm Energy Project, we saw farmers adopt new technologies using baling wire and recycled machinery and facilities to reduce energy use. They developed site-specific, self-maintained solutions to farm problems without the need for purchased technologies or gadgets.

The key to the success of this project was education and support. Supplied with the knowledge, farmers understood the problem, accepted the challenge, and developed home-built solutions. Much of the education involved natural cycles and processes overlooked or forgotten. Making the behavioral changes necessary to, "farm with nature instead of in spite of it," and once again put farmers "in control," returned the fun, excitement, and profitability to farming.

Adopting a change in a farm practice involves risk – financial and personal. The financial risk, though real and important, can be overcome with cost-share programs and grants. The greater hurdle to adoption is peer review. To most family farms, especially those handed down for generations, a farm is much more than property. It is a farmer’s identity, her or his reputation and status in the community.

The support of local, like-minded individuals provides the impetus for farmers to take that first step and try something new. The decisions become a group effort that builds confidence and encourages adventure.

Lastly, farmers learned the importance of political awareness and involvement. The impulse of politicians often outweighs the whims of nature and has longer effects. - Martin Kleinschmit

What we’ve learned – about building a strong organization.

Ten years ago we were approaching 20 staff people and a half-million dollar annual budget. The organization’s leadership was still heavily vested in its founders, Marty Strange and Don Ralston. We were a solid organization, but we knew we couldn’t depend on our founders forever. For an entire year we deliberated over reorganizing ourselves to reduce this dependence. The changes we undertook have served us well.

Our staff project leaders were given more responsibility for planning, budgeting, fundraising, project expenditures, supervision and reporting. We set up processes for the staff to share their problems with others. We became a much more "open" organization resulting in a much more knowledgeable staff that understood organizational needs beyond their own project responsibilities.

At the same time our board of directors made a commitment to become more actively involved in organizational activities, especially in the areas of fundraising, evaluating the executive staff, and program and financial planning and evaluation. Our board members devote nearly 150 hours per year just for regular directors’ meetings.

Our individual board and staff members have been strengthened, and, consequently, the organization is more durable. We’ve gone through the departure of one of our founders without much anxiety. Just as the Center’s mission statement speaks of encouraging people to take personal responsibility for their communities, we ask our staff and board to do the same for our organization. – Don Ralston

What We've Learned – about the role of money in creating change.

The power to create change can come from people, money, or information. Though the influence of money has grown, citizens with knowledge remain the most powerful force in democratic societies, when they choose to act.

The growing power of money is readily apparently in elections, Congress, state legislatures, and even the initiative petition process, once the domain of citizen activists. We urgently need reforms that curb the excessive influence of money on the democratic process.

But even more important is the persistence of citizens in working for what they believe. The most dangerous influence of money is in convincing citizens that they can no longer make a difference, creating cynicism and inaction.

That is a mistake. An informed and activated citizenry still trumps money. Look at recent trends in big money issue campaigns. They buy citizen activists – paid petition circulators or lists of citizens who might be willing to call Congress on their behalf.

Their money only buys them what concerned citizens have in themselves.

The third critical leg of the power stool is information. An active citizenry without information and understanding cannot effectively assert its values in a democracy. As society becomes more complex, the power of information grows.

Our formula at the Center has been to develop information, share it with concerned citizens, and alert them of opportunities to act. We need and use money too. But rather than using it to manipulate citizens or take their place, we use modest amounts to inform and support their efforts to create a future for rural America that reflects the best of its values. - Chuck Hassebrook

What We've Learned - about surviving the early years

The early years of the Center were tenuous, to say the least. It wasn’t just a matter of survival, of course. Could the Center speak truth to power and survive with principle? During those early years we took steps crucial to passing that test. Among them:

• Gather a committed board of directors – respected people with the integrity to protect the Center from powerful detractors. They not only stood up to power, but often did so against their own self-interest. Our expose of irresponsible irrigation was led by a committee of three irrigators. Our study of the decline of independent banking was chaired by a banker.
• Keep track of the money. From the beginning, we placed a lot of emphasis on sound and honest accounting. When an angry politician tried to suggest we were using funds improperly, we publicly invited him to bring his accountant and do his own audit, provided he publish the results. He shut up. More important, good accounting has always helped make good decisions.
• Hire good people and give them honest work they can do. We asked Lynn Spivak, with no experience as an agricultural researcher, to find out whether corporations were contracting to produce hogs, and six months later she came back with Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow?, the first analysis of large-scale confinement hog technology and the public policies that nourished it. It was 20 years ahead of its time.
• Ask people to support the work. We published our first newsletter almost as soon as we opened the doors, and we asked for donations to support it. They did, generously. Some of you have been doing so for 25 years. Thanks to all of you. – Marty Strange, Don Ralston

What We’ve Learned – about our most important asset.

The Center considers its staff to be an asset. Duh! That may seem obvious to you. Indeed, over 60¢ of every dollar we spend is on staff compensation (wages and benefits). But some organizations consider their staff a cost that is expendable – to be cut and trimmed to improve the bottom line.

The Center has been blessed with low staff turnover. We’ve tried to treat our staff well in terms of compensation, challenging work, a comfortable and efficient workplace (you won’t find unanimous agreement on this; we use every square inch of our 80-year-old remodeled hotel building), and an organizational culture that is creative, supportive, participatory, and friendly.

Our salaries range from $18,100 to $39,500 per year – high for main street Walthill, but comparatively low on the top end for a $1.7 million organization. The ratio of our highest-to-lowest salary is 2.2, well under our stated policy of keeping the ratio under 3.0. Our fringe benefits are generous: full family medical coverage and contributions to a retirement fund. The Center’s excellent compensation package reflects the priorities of our board of directors.

Many of our board and staff members refer to themselves as a family. Our quarterly board meetings brim with both board and staff. Our organizational culture is open, supportive and friendly; friendly to the point that we’ve had four inter-staff marriages – all going strong. - Don Ralston

What We’ve Learned – about having many tools in the tool kit.

We all like to do what we do best and what we enjoy. So it’s not surprising that 25 years ago, the Center reflected the style and temperament of its organizers and early directors: advocates, organizers, and policy nerds. We took aim at evil and fired, daily: industrialization of pork production, irrigation development in the fragile Great Plains, ownership and control of banking. We were pretty good at defining big issues long before they became fashionable.

But one tool doesn’t do every job. You have to go wherever your analysis takes you. If the energy crisis created an income opportunity for small farms through appropriate technology, better go to real farms and help discover how: Small Farm Energy Project. If small towns need help with infrastructure, better offer technical assistance: Midwest Assistance Program. If the key to rural development lies in building on the entrepreneurial assets of rural people, better organize communities to support those entrepreneurs: Rural Enterprise Assistance Project. If economic opportunity is bottled up in land held by retiring farmers, better link those farmers with beginners through a licensed farm management company: Land Link.

In short, do what has to be done, even if you don’t know exactly how. Learn how. Make it work. In 1976 we were critics of bankers and farm managers. By 1996 we were bankers and farm managers of a different kind.

Of course, we didn’t exactly drop the advocacy. We refined and expanded it. Go to the legislature or to Congress when you can: Tax Reform Act of 1986. Limited resource loans. Conservation Reserve. Property tax and school finance reform. Go to the people when you must: Initiative 300. Go to court when that’s necessary: Friends of the Constitution. Don’t go it alone. Invest years in building coalitions: Sustainable Agriculture Working Group. Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture.

And by all means, learn the truth as best you can and speak it plainly. Publish policy reports on conservation, taxes, agricultural research policy, credit reform, free trade.

Or, when corporate power crushes open markets, invent new markets built on cooperation and initiative: Marketing Alliances. Loans for beginning farmers who practice sustainable agriculture: Stewardship Investment Finance Fund.

The Center has picked up nearly every tool in the toolbox of non-profit organizations. The richness and diversity of this program is formidable. - Marty Strange

What We’ve Learned – about having a long range vision.

The Center for Rural Affairs was born as a spin-off of a Walthill, Nebraska, poverty agency funded mostly by the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity (the main vehicle for the Kennedy/Johnson War on Poverty). When we started the Center, we kept the "opportunity" notion; it is part of all our programs and projects 25 years later.

In the early 70s, the Nebraska landscape was visibly changing from the introduction of hog confinement structures and center pivot irrigation systems. These developments foretold obvious environmental impacts, but as important to us, a loss of opportunity for future generations of young farmers who could not afford these expensive technologies. To make matters worse, public policies (in the form of tax policy and taxpayer-funded research) were encouraging and subsidizing these developments. Our response was to do our homework (resulting in the reports, Who Will Sit Up With the Corporate Sow?, and Wheels of Fortune) and to launch two long-range efforts in tax policy and Federal agricultural research policy.

What may be good for today’s established farmers is often at the expense of future generations. The Center has opted to make sure the interests of that future farmer are represented in public policy debates. There will always be conflicts between the self-interest of different generations. Our constant challenge and the challenge of policymakers is to find the best balance. - Don Ralston

What We’ve Learned - about who makes the critical difference.

It is rural people -- farmers and non farmers -- who will ultimately decide the shape of agriculture and rural America.

This conclusion is based on decades of experience in efforts to reshape farm policy to support family farms and resource stewardship. While we often lament that farmers are becoming too few to shape farm policy, our experience is that the dominant farm interests are responsible for the public policy bias toward bigness in American agriculture contributing to the demise of family farming and family farm communities.

It has not been non farmers, but rather some farm organizations and commodity groups, that supported tax policies that favor the giants. They blocked efforts to target farm program benefits to family farms and stood silently while federal laws prohibiting discriminatory pricing by packers against modest-size family farms went unenforced.

The good news is at times the dominant groups have taken a different more pro family farm stand, and, when they have, it has changed public policy. We saw that in the federal tax reforms of the late 1980s that reduced tax sheltering opportunities in farming. Today we again see the beginning of a shift in some commodity organizations toward more concern for family farms.

The support for tax reform among farm and commodity groups in the 1980s was a direct result of the efforts by family farmers. Likewise today, family farmers and rural people hold the key. Real change will only occur when they get involved and demand that the organizations that ostensibly represent them really do so. - Chuck Hassebrook

What We’ve Learned – about working from a rural community.

We are frequently asked, "Why are you located in Walthill, Nebraska?" The Center for Rural Affairs grew out of a Walthill-based anti-poverty agency, the Goldenrod Hills Community Action Council (GHCAC). The Goldenrod Hills agency was established because of the high incidence of poverty here on the Omaha Indian Reservation. There are good reasons why we’ve remained here.

Living and working in a small rural community has resulted in a dedicated staff with low turnover. When interviewing prospective job candidates we are brutally honest about what they can expect living in a small town and what they will not have immediately available to them.

A low cost of living (especially housing) in a small rural community allows our modest staff salaries to stretch farther. When Center co-founder Marty Strange relocated to Vermont, he estimated he would need twice the salary he made here to maintain an equivalent life style – he says his estimate was correct.

When we shop, go to church, drink a beer, or engage in a coffee shop discussion, we’re rubbing elbows with our rural constituency. Our neighbors provide a good sounding board and a good opportunity for listening about the issues we work on every day.

While our up-to-date office communication tools (e-mail, etc.) keep us in touch with the urban world, we’re not as tempted or distracted by the hustle and bustle of big-city politics and meetings, meetings, meetings. Admittedly, we miss some worthwhile meetings. We’re proud to advertise "Walthill, Nebraska – population 900" on our letterhead stationery. - Don Ralston