Saving the World On Thirty Dollars a Day: An Activist's Guide to Starting, Organizing and Running a Non-Profit Organization

By Charles Sheehan-Miles

Activist and Author Charles Sheehan-Miles, founder of the National Gulf War Resource Center and former executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, gives hard won practical suggestions and advice to people who want to set out to change the world. In 1993, starting with no money, resources, members or organization behind them, Sheehan-Miles and a small group of war veteran activists set out to change America. By the end of the decade, they had not only secured legislation and research which proved the existence of Gulf War veterans illnesses, but also directed more than six billion dollars in benefits for Gulf War veterans. In this book, Sheehan-Miles shares down to earth experiences useful for social change activists long on ideas and short on resources. A how-to guide covering the basics of starting, organizing and running a nonprofit organization, Saving the World on Thirty Dollars A Day is an indispensable resource for activists forming a small organization for the first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cincinnatus Press
• Release date: Jan 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781632020369

Charles Sheehan-Miles

Charles Sheehan-Miles has been a soldier, computer programmer, short-order cook and non-profit executive. He is the author of several books, including the indie bestsellers Just Remember to Breathe and Republic: A Novel of America's Future.

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Introduction

You Can Change the World

While moving to Boston in the summer of 1994, I read the Senate Banking Committee’s report on Gulf War illnesses and found myself overcome with anger. Why? It contained testimony from various officials sent by the Pentagon claiming, bizarrely enough, that Iraq had no chemical weapons anywhere south of Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War. They all lied.

I knew for a fact they were lying. Buried in my bags was a copy of my battalion’s operations log from the 1991 ground war, including reports that scouts had discovered chemical weapons not far from the Rumayla Oil Fields during one of their missions.

A few days after we arrived in Boston, Veronica laughed at me as I created a fake letterhead on my computer and wrote letters to both Massachusetts senators announcing an organization called Gulf War Veterans of Massachusetts and asking for a meeting as soon as possible.

There was no group. We had no money—in fact, I was barely making $10 an hour in temp jobs at the time. I didn’t even actually know any other Gulf War veterans in Massachusetts (though I soon would). Gulf War Veterans of Massachusetts was a fiction I modeled on Paul Sullivan’s Gulf War Veterans of Georgia, which was only then beginning to take off.

Despite the lack of funding and resources, and opposition in the form of a $130-million Pentagon public relations campaign designed to discredit us, we had one winning factor: a core of dedicated activists willing to get out there and make things happen.

On Memorial Day of 2000—only six years later—I was invited to the White House for the first time to shake hands with President Clinton. I’d testified before Congressional Committees and Presidential Advisory Committees, traveled all over the country working with other vets, and our national organization—the National Gulf War Resource Center—had helped push through legislation that not only recognized the undiagnosed illnesses of Gulf War veterans, but authorized research and medical benefits that would total more than $6 billion. Never once in those six years did the Resource Center budget top $100,000 a year.

Years before my own arrival in Washington, Bobby Muller and John Terzano, two Vietnam veterans, came to Washington with similar motives and launched a national organization of Vietnam Veterans that eventually created both the Vietnam Veterans of America and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. They faced similar long odds, lack of resources, and opposition from the Pentagon and federal government. By 1997, VVAF’s International Campaign to Ban Landmines won the Nobel Peace Prize and more than 100 nations had signed the treaty they worked to pass. By 2000, their organization had programs spanning the globe in both former and currently hot war zones, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

Who This Book is for

Over the years I’ve read a lot of books about how to run nonprofit organizations, with details on obscure topics—things like major donor cultivation, and how to organize a local event—but I’ve found few resource covering the broad nuts and bolts involved in launching a tiny, one- or two-person organization.

The big tomes on fundraising, for example, have great advice, especially if you have a development staff of at least five. But if you’re like I was when we ran the Gulf War Resource Center out of my apartment in the early 1990s, you are simultaneously the communications staff, management, mail-sorter, bill-payer (often out of your own pocket), and envelope-stuffer. It’s a big job, much like launching a small business. And, as statistics tell us, four out of five small businesses fail within the first five years after launch.

So, if you want to change the world, and don’t have a big nonprofit supporting your mission, this book is for you. This book is for the big dreamers with no resources who find that something in their world absolutely must be changed.

If you do work for a large nonprofit, there is also material to be learned here. Too often I’ve seen large organizations with significant resources squander money that could have been put to better use servicing their clients and advancing their mission. Some big nonprofits can take on many of the same characteristics of a big corporation, including slow reaction time and the inability to make decisions without a committee. Growth often comes at the cost of effectiveness.

Be Skeptical

Be skeptical. In this book, I’m going to make a lot of recommendations based on my own 15-year experience as the executive director of three different startup nonprofits and as a former board member and employee of others. Not all of my recommendations will fit your situation, and you should rely on a wide range of resources and experiences to accomplish your mission. If your goal is to make the world a better place, you have to start by keeping an open mind and an ability to recognize your own weaknesses.

Ultimately, despite a long history trying to make a difference, I’m still an amateur in this field. The real professionals—with memberships in organizations like Association of Fundraising Professionals and degrees in Communications and Public Policy—will sneer at much of what I say. That’s okay. After the Army, I never quite finished college and never achieved the credentials that a career nonprofit professional