I first fell across Robert Egger last year, he was part of a network that I had joined a while back, I had reached out to him and asked him for some help for a person who I knew and he wrote back, it was quite funny as I was exchanging messages with him he thought i was a guy, which amused me no end, I have a lot of respect for Robert for what he has done with DC Kitchens.
Robert Egger founded the DC Central Kitchen in Washington in 1989, now a national model of charity and efficiency in two ways: first, the staff collects surplus, unserved food that would be otherwise discarded; the food is donated by the community (hotels, restaurants, corporate cafeterias). Second, homeless people, ex-cons and others prepare 4,000 meals a day for the needy. They are enrolled in a 12-week job-training program and work with chefs.
Egger has just written Begging for Change (with Howard Yoon) (Harper Business, 240 pages), which delivers this basic message: Non-profits must stop chasing money and start focusing on the true work at hand. The beauty of Egger’s book is that he doesn’t merely toss out platitudes or high-minded notions; he ties his ideas with practical experiences he’s seen or enacted at DC Central Kitchen.
Egger, an iconoclast who was also interim director of United Way when it was reeling from self-inflicted wounds, argues rather passionately and persuasively that non-profits must change or die.
The non-profit sector in the USA is a vast mélange of service-oriented entities, including churches, soup kitchens, hospitals, colleges and museums, that has ballooned into a $700 billion industry, employing about 11 million people.
Egger, a D.C. native, says most non-profits have veered away from their original missions and now are caught up in a maddening cycle of chasing after and begging for money instead of fomenting changes that could radically transform communities.
He is deeply critical of those in the non-profit sector who are more interested in the status quo than in “tearing down walls, break(ing) routines and look(ing) for more efficient ways of running service organizations.”
We are entering one of our most critical junctures in the non-profit section and the nation’s history, he says. Millions of boomers are approaching retirement age, and there is little in the way of infrastructure or resources in health care, food support or financial security to support them. Since the 1960s, a number of social and governmental initiatives have failed to create wealth or equality. And then there are the national worries: The Sept. 11 attacks have ratcheted up anxiety about potential attacks on U.S. soil; people are also concerned about the rise of globalism, a funky economy, the loss of jobs, and many question and have lost faith in a number of this country’s institutions.
There’s a lot of work to do, Egger says, and now is the time for people to mobilize.
“This is not about building cathedrals; this is about smashing stereotypes and challenging once-hallowed institutions,” he said. “This is about killing sacred cows.”
The positions that Egger defends come from his years in the trenches, seeing ideas work beautifully or backfire, he says. Despite any number of setbacks, however, he still is solidly behind the idea that people must rely on their entrepreneurial spirit and take that wherever it leads without fear or reservation.
Egger highlights organizations he says have gotten it right, such as The March of Dimes, Rising Tide, Delancey Street and Emerge Memphis; and he uses examples of some of his predecessors at the United Way, among others, to illustrate complacency, greed and lack of foresight and vision.
He is, above all, practical. At DC Central Kitchen, participants learn how to prepare food and work in the kitchen. Egger also makes sure that trainees learn and discover the process of change on their own, which, in turn, instills feelings of pride, accomplishment and confidence — the building blocks for individual success, he says.
Young people, always a valued resource for possessing energy, impatience and eagerness, can’t do it alone.
Egger says each person desiring change has to embrace the nerve, bravery, vision and devotion of Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and other change makers who “walked the talk.”
The author leaves readers with two potent messages at the end of his book:
• “Everybody can give, everybody has a role.”
• “Believe in the impossible. We have the power to make this an amazing society ... if we work together. Be a part of it. Make waves.”
