Speech: The Value of Non Profits

Remarks delivered to the Cultivating Communities Forum
by Crook County Judge Scott R. Cooper
Prineville, Oregon, April 20, 2002


Good morning, and welcome to the Cultivating Communities Forum. I am Crook County Judge Scott Cooper and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this wonderful event where we will spend the day learning how to achieve great things with big ideas and few resources.

I am a great believer in the power of the nonprofit sector to change the world. My own career, prior to embarking on a temporary bout of insanity with a political job, has been as a nonprofit executive. Since my freshman year in college, I have been working with nonprofit organizations. As a staff member, a board member and a volunteer I have been privileged to lobby and fundraise for many, many causes near and dear to me. In paid positions, I have argued for rights of cattlemen, college fraternities and Prineville businessmen. I have raised funds and served as a nonprofit director for a childcare center, a children’s choir, a service club, a juvenile drug and alcohol treatment center and my local church. I have volunteered my time and money in the service of Boys and Girls Clubs, an international refugee aid society, the local library and the Republican Party.

Each nonprofit with which I have worked has helped me grow, intellectually, emotionally and personally. Some experiences have been rewarding. Some have simply been educational. Some experiences I wish I could just put behind me. For example, my wife never lets me forget that the only job interview of her life that failed to result in her receiving a job offer was in the mid-1980s when I refused to hire her to work for me in a nonprofit organization. As I said, nonprofit experience can be very educational.

Through all my experiences with nonprofit organizations, I have come to have enormous respect for the volunteers and staff who make these organizations successful. These are people like you. They sacrifice opportunities for personal wealth, time with family and social positions so that they can do something they truly believe in. But the most important characteristic of all of successful leaders of nonprofit organizations is this: They Think Big.

Franklin Thomas of the Ford Foundation once called philanthropy “the research and development arm of society.” Unlike corporations, non-profits are not burdened by shareholders who demand quarterly profits. Unlike governments, nonprofits can boldly experiment without fear of severe electoral retribution when things don’t come out as promised. Nonprofits, more than any other segment of our society, enjoy the freedom to innovate, assume risk and above all, occasionally FAIL because their investors are not motivated by profits but rather by deeply held values and personal beliefs which allow them to recognize that adversity is often a prerequisite for progress.

As we all know, we tend to learn more from our mistakes than we ever do from our successes. How many of you remember which questions you got right on your drivers last test? Does anyone remember which ones you got wrong? That’s why the nonprofit sector, the place where we can try out new ideas, approach the world with a fresh point of view and float theories to see if anyone else thinks like we do is a vital component of the cycle of continuous improvement which drives the American social engine.

Our nation’s history is replete with examples of how small, dedicated groups of people brought about large-scale, societal change, the reverberations of which are still felt today.

Consider a few examples.

The concept of democracy and liberty in 1776 was not the brilliant concept of a bunch of politicians gathered in Philadelphia. Rather, it began much earlier on the shores of New England, the brainchild of a loosely organized confederation of citizens known as the Sons of Liberty. These citizens, few of whom were the most prominent members of society in their day, had the audacity to board English ships in broad daylight and toss no less than 342 big chests of tea into Boston Harbor. Some called them patriots. Some called the rebels. Today, we call their descendants “tax activists,” and we continue to confront their influential status in society, for better or worse, every two years when we have to decide once again whether to give our consent to another set of tax-reform initiatives on the ballot.

I’m sure that of us learned in elementary school that Abraham Lincoln was the President who ended slavery in the United States. What we forget, or perhaps never learned, was that the emancipation proclamation was the culmination of a long period of social acitivism and agitation. We forget that 30 years before Abe Lincoln got top billing in the abolitionist movement, a nonprofit antislavery society attempting to form in Utica, New York, was broken up by a band of community notables including a congressman and a judge. Despite the apparent hopelessness of their cause, they labored on in the face of public outcry and outrage. They fought and occasionally died for their cause because they believed that a portion of our society--voiceless and physically oppressed--deserved justice. They continued their efforts not for money, not for press and not for personal gain but for the sake of principle. Today, their descendants still rattle our consciences each time they appeal to us on behalf of social justice, human rights and the anti-poverty campaign.

The role of nonprofits in American today is no less important than it was one, two or three centuries ago.

Think about it: To nonprofits, we entrust those things we hold most dear: the education of our minds, the uplifting of our spirits, the well-being of our children, the preservation of our health and our personal protection and safety.

Looking out over this audience, I recognize many faces which I can associate with specific organizations doing great work in my community. I cannot emphasize enough the value of your participation today, not to you personally, but to your community. Your willingness to step up to the plate and make a difference.

Thank you for coming. Thank you, Oregon Community Foundation and Shelk Family Fund, for making this possible. Thank you Deb Krause and Brenda Comini and Linda Shelk for making today possible.

I leave you with one final thought that I think sums up the greater purpose of your participation in this event today. It’s a quote from the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote:

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Have a great conference. I look forward to wonderful things from all of you.

Candidates Are People, Too

By Scott Cooper, Crook County Judge
Published in the Central Oregonian , September

Sitting where I do, I hear a lot from candidates for elected public office. I hear and read their formal statements at candidate debates and in the newspaper, just like you do. But I also hear from candidates “behind the scenes,” and I occupy a wonderful position from which to watch the evolution of these men and women over the course of a year-long campaign.

Frankly, they’re all a little weird about now.

The closest the majority of the public ever gets to the inner workings of a run for public office is when they cast their ballots at the primary and general elections. Few people get to see the slow, steady process of wearing down that necessarily accompanies any campaign and that leaves candidates and their families emotionally exhausted at the end of the process.

Too, often, we forget that candidates—both those in office and those who aren’t yet in office—still have private lives. They still have to put food on the table for their families. They still have spouses, children and sometimes extended families that require attention that has nothing to do with campaigns. They usually are heavily engaged in community activities or hold other appointed or elected offices, which are an important part of preparing them for the office they now seek. Since those activities and offices often provide the “yardstick” by which their candidacies will be judged, they can’t disengage to focus full time on election campaigns.

As if they didn’t have enough to do, on top of all these activities, they add another layer of activity: The Campaign.

A lot of people see running for public office as just a matter of making an announcement, showing up at a few forums, buying a placement in the voter’s pamphlet (in case you wondered, it’s not free) and depending on the goodwill of one’s supporters to spread the word about why one candidate is better than another.

There’s a lot more to it.

A candidate for public office essentially assumes another full-time job. Think about it. How comfortable you would be if faced with the unpleasant choice of either raking $5,000 out of your own bank account or pestering 200 family, friends and neighbors to give you $25? How would you feel about getting up every Saturday morning knowing that instead of mowing the yard, catching up at the office, checking on Mom or fixing that leaky faucet you were going to spend every weekend for the next three months walking door to door, braving a gauntlet of Rottweilers, German Shepherds and Dobermans, all so you could knock on the door of someone who really doesn’t want to talk to you anyway?

And then there are the sign wars. Do I have enough? Is the print big enough? Do my signs look too flashy for my community? Have I covered all the major intersections? Where does my opponent have? Are they all standing upright? Did the nails hold? Who’s tearing my signs down? Why are people I thought were my friends displaying yard signs for my opponent?

And there’s no break. When you’re running for public office, it’s a 7-day a week, 24-hour a day job. Be careful who you eat lunch with. Someone might get the wrong idea. Don’t get sick. Someone might question the status of your health. Don’t get behind at the office. Someone might suggest you’re not up to the job. Make sure you stay up to date on current events and stay tuned to the community grapevine. You need to know where the next question’s coming from. But keep in mind that every minute you’re reading the paper or talking to the neighbors, you’re not putting up signs, you’re not formulating your campaign speech and you’re neglecting your family, your business affairs and your health.

Oh yeah. The process of asking people for their support is real treat. No wonder most would-be elected officials at this point in a campaign are starting to ask themselves whether it’s really worth it.

The answer, of course, is that it is worth it. Otherwise nobody would do it. Despite the personal stress, despite the relatively low compensation, despite the fact that if you win and if you do your job right, you’re probably going to spend the next four years making choices that will leave some people happy and some people mad, you do it because you know that you will make a difference. You know that you will make your community a better place for your kids or your grandkids. You know that you will protect your family from criminals, or improve the quality of schools, or create better jobs that will benefit everyone or whatever your passion is.

Thank goodness somebody sees it that way. Our political system can’t function if someone doesn’t step up to the plate and put themselves in the hot seat. Yes, taxes are unpopular and tax structure is boring, but essential services have to be paid for, so somebody’s got to do it. Deciding whether to charge a person with a Measure 11 crime or something less can make one very unpopular, but somebody has to protect us. Deciding whether building a youth camp up Mill Creek violates land use laws might make you unpopular in some circles. But would you rather leave the decision up to people in Salem who have never even seen Crook County?

Here’s an idea. The next time you attend a candidate’s forum or a wannabe public official shows up at your door, by all means, ask your question. You need answers to make up your mind about who to vote for. By all means vote for the candidate whose views are closest to yours, not just the one in your party.

But after you ask your question and before you sit down or before you say goodbye to the candidate at your doorstep, take a minute to say, “Thank you. I really appreciate your willingness to put yourself on the line.”

Candidates are people, too. They and their families are not immune to the constant barrage of negatives that newspapers, detractors and gossips delight spreading through the course of any campaign. Too often, elections are not about getting the candidate we support into office but instead become focused on keeping the candidate we don’t support out of office.

The essence of a democracy is the right to choose among competing alternatives. Each candidate who agrees to put himself or herself and his or her family and friends through a campaign with all its accompanying stresses, represents one of those alternatives. If we want to ensure that we continue to have plenty of alternatives from which to choose, a little kindness and understanding and an occasional heartfelt “thank you” will go a long way.