Growing While Staying Small

By John Engle and David Diggs

You could feel the excitement growing in the room where we met one day ten years ago. We were trying to get a clearer vision of Beyond Borders’ future. “What do we want Beyond Borders to look like in ten years?” we asked ourselves. “After ten years of ministry, what principles will have guided us?” “How are we structured?” “What impact is our work having?”

Each board and staff member responded to these questions in writing. Then, during a six-month period, in the midst of our normal work, we engaged ourselves in a rigorous process of discernment about our future. After many meetings that generated mounds of flip chart paper, we were pleased by how neatly our individual hopes for Beyond Borders meshed together to form a common vision. This we summed up in a document we call our “Ten Year Vision.”

There was something surprising about this vision that appeared before us. Facing Haiti’s enormous material needs, it would have seemed natural to want Beyond Borders to become a big operation that pumped millions of dollars into the country, building roads and schools and irrigation projects. In fact, our vision was almost the opposite. Building a big institution with a bulging budget might have appealed to our egos but could have actually reduced our effectiveness by limiting our ability to be responsive and flexible.

We did not want to wake up in ten years to find ourselves struggling to keep a large bureaucracy afloat. We had seen how growth could make organizations more distant and less sensitive to the people they tried to serve. We had also noticed a tendency for large international organizations to approach problems by dumping money on hastily conceived projects with little local participation. This approach might alleviate an immediate need, but ultimately leave the community more vulnerable and dependent on outside aid.

There was another reason we were not attracted by the traditional way organizations grow. Getting big would have changed our organizational culture. None of us wanted to work for an organization where we felt like a cog in a big machine. Beyond Borders was small and had a very participatory culture. This allowed us the freedom to hear and follow our call with abandon. We were structured so that everyone shared leadership responsibilities. We had eliminated hierarchy and made our decisions by consensus. This created a cooperative and participative working environment that allowed us to make the most of our talents, dreams, and wisdom.

For us this vision also seemed more consistent with what Jesus taught. Contrary to the message of our culture that “bigger is better,” Jesus valued little things—mustard seeds, little children, and the widow’s tiny offering. Growth we wanted, but growth in depth more than width.

Now, with the ten-year journey we envisioned in 1995 nearly complete, we think we have learned the secret of growing while remaining small. We grow by allowing our model of participatory leadership to infect other organizations we work with. Our growth expresses itself in the growth of the small organizations we nurture and the new leadership we inspire.

For example, we are working with the leaders of the literacy programs we fund to help them get better at attracting and effectively using funds from other organizations. We have helped several literacy centers develop micro-credit programs that not only help the local economy, but produce profits that go to cover teacher salaries and move the centers toward self-sufficiency. All this frees these organizations to continue growing without having to ask Beyond Borders for more money. This, in turn, frees us to help other Haitian organizations. Our new teacher training and leadership development initiatives also let us grow without getting big. By helping Haitian teachers find new teaching tools and Haitian leaders develop new leadership skills, Beyond Borders’ vision becomes reality as our partners are better equipped to help their people make their own visions become reality.