04 Sep 2024
Doing good work in the midst of failure
Benefits Data Trust (BDT), the organization I’ve worked at for almost 9 years, is shutting down. It’s a long story how it got to this point, but the shortest possible version is that BDT did a lot of good work to connect people with public benefits, got recognized for it in the form of huge cash donations, and then grew to a point that couldn’t be sustained when the money stopped flowing as freely.
Most (all?) of my colleagues are understandably shocked and upset that this is happening. They are looking for someone to blame and in the absence of full transparency by the current and recently-departed leaders of BDT, many half-imagined narratives have emerged about what “really” happened.
I mostly just see the irony. In the pursuit of “solving” poverty, BDT lost sight of what it takes to actually make a big impact on an intractable problem: staying in the game long enough and with enough flexibility to fail enough times to finally succeed.
Not that BDT is alone. Every place I’ve worked for has rarely been able to step back from the pressures of right now in order to see the bigger picture. And when they do zoom out, they often get so lost in their utopic vision that they lose all contact with what enabled them to veer into fantasy in the first place.
And there is everyone else - companies, politicians, celebrities, people we “follow”, our friends, our family. Us. Me. We are all so frustrating. We can’t see the top of our nose sometimes. Maybe most of the time. We are caught up pursuing all manner of goals without understanding of the key thing that will help us get there. Or worse, we achieve everything we dreamed of without any clue about how it affects other people or ourselves. Or even worse we conquer the world while actively denying all the harm we do along the way.
Pretty bleak.
Or is it?
We still manage to make plenty of beautiful things in spite of ourselves. We still fight for what is right. We still try to work things out. Every moment alive is an expression of hope that we’ll be able to overcome our blindness and see ourselves and each for who we really are.
So maybe we could focus a little more on what each other can see and a little less on what we can’t.
BDT has helped thousands of people in the time I’ve worked there. I’ve been a part of that. I helped people. The people I worked with helped each other and other people. And now this organization will cease to exist in any legal form. I may never know exactly why it is ceasing to exist. I may never be able to understand how folks leading the organization could let this happen. That is heartbreaking and liberating all at the same time. I can remember the good that we did and learn from it in whatever comes next.
I mean, that’s what I hope to do for myself when I fail. I believe the more I’m able to forgive myself for not seeing everything and the more I’m able to let myself focus on what I can see, the more I’ll be able to truly see other people and care for them too.
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