8

Financial Fear

Colorado 2010

Several weeks later, I took Devon to get groceries, and for the first time in a long time, I was truly scared. I had $42 in cash and $21 in my bank account. We were out of almost everything, including toilet paper, milk, bread—the necessities. How had I gotten this close to the wire? As we pulled into the City Market parking lot, I told her brightly, “Sweetie, we are only going to grab a few things, okay? So please, let’s just get the things we need, and we’ll come back later for the other stuff. Okay?”

I opened the back of the Element to get the shopping bags, and she grabbed my hand. “Okay, Mommy. I just want to get my gummy vitamins.”

At eighteen bucks a bottle, that would be nearly half our grocery money.

“Sorry, baby, not today, we’ll get them next trip okay?”

“But I’m out. We need to get these.”

I sighed and grabbed her for a hug. “I know, sweetie. Next trip, okay? Can you just come with and help me get the other stuff for now?”

“Okay,” she said, frowning slightly as she took my hand. This was not what I had in mind when I said I wanted to do the best for Devon. My nerves were fried, and I could feel myself becoming short and distracted with her—something I needed to rectify. None of this was her fault.

“Race you?” I challenged her, smiling. We ran across the parking lot, her rain boots stomping through puddles of melting snow, and her infectious giggle made me laugh out loud. My heart pounding, I bent down before we entered the store. I gave her a kiss as I told her, “I love you so so so much.”

“All the way to the moon?” she asked.

“All the way to the moon and back again!” I assured her. “Now, let’s go buy some toilet paper.”

As I stood in the checkout line, I went through my mental survival checklist. I had meetings in Denver this week, important ones with potential donors that I couldn’t miss. I had several projects ready to launch but as of yet hadn’t secured the funding to put them into action. Luckily I had half a tank of gas, so if I conserved, which meant staying close to home this weekend with Devon, I should be good to go.

I’d been here before when I first separated from Pete. I left the marriage with a couple hundred dollars in my bank account. He was not in a mindset to help me with the logistics of separation, and since we had our own accounts, I had no cushion to fall back on to help me break away. He had insisted that if I wanted out, I was free to go, but he wasn’t going to support it or make it easier for me to leave.

So I took out a personal loan using the only possession I could take freely from the marriage until our divorce went through—my car. Leveraging it as collateral, I was able to get a loan for $17,000, enough to help me pay rent and supplement the money I earned teaching Pilates. It also allowed me to focus on launching Mountain2Mountain, to get to Afghanistan in the first place, and survive until our joint assets were divvied up nearly a year later.

The settlement we reached over my half of our house was not insubstantial, albeit a fraction of what I could have asked for under the law. I hadn’t been willing to battle. Something I, at times, look back on with regret. I felt it was more important to coordinate and focus on Devon’s shared schedule than fight over financial issues. I didn’t have the stomach for it, and it may have allowed us the understanding that we have today, where we can raise Devon in tandem with very little drama, and share special occasions and the occasional dinner together as an extended family.

Instead of using the money to give me and Devon the stability of a home, savings for vacations together, and the semblance of security, I used it to build our future in a different, some may say riskier, way. I paid off that initial loan, funded multiple trips to Afghanistan, started several of my smaller projects, and more important, worked sixty hours a week solely to build M2M without taking time from Devon. Each night, after she went to bed, I cranked out a solid five hours. The rest of the work was done when she was at preschool or with her dad. The settlement supported us for the past four years while I worked to build our future and create something both she, and I, could be proud of.

On the flip side, I stopped racing because of the time commitment, entry fees, and focus, and I forewent any vacations other than my trips to Afghanistan. I gave up health insurance, occasionally went without car insurance, and often was a month in arrears with rent.

But this day was especially tough. I went to the PO Box, fingers crossed that there would be some checks I could deposit. Nothing. My eye doctor left me a voice mail that my new contacts were in, but I couldn’t afford to go pick them up. My cell phone bill was due. Rent and Dev’s ballet class tuition were due in three days. I looked down at the silver ring on my right index finger. It was a gift from my father and sister at the beginning of my M2M journey and was engraved with the words of Longfellow: The lowest ebb is at the turn of the tide. My life definitely felt like low tide.

There was only one item in the PO Box: a package from Vail Mountain School, a private school forty-five minutes away. I drove home and once we put the groceries away and Devon was busy building a fort out of our pillows, I opened it. To my surprise, it contained a stack of cards, each of them a thank-you from a child in the fifth grade in a class I’d spoken to a month ago about Afghanistan. They had been reading a book Parvana’s Journey, by Deborah Ellis, about a young girl in Taliban times who disguised herself as a boy. The children had a lot of good questions. I opened the first card. “Dear Ms. Galpin. Thank you so much for telling us all about Afghanistan. It was really cool to put on a burqa.”

I smiled and opened another. “Dear Ms. Galpin. Thank you so much for talking about Afghanistan. I love how so many people like you are trying to change the world one step at a time.”

Another had a picture drawn of a globe shaped like a heart. Most of them mentioned the burqas I’d brought to their classroom and wished me good luck in Afghanistan. Many hoped they could go there when they were older. Others wanted me to say hello to Afghan kids for them. I felt my heart swell. This didn’t put food in my fridge, but it was a lovely reminder of why I was doing this.

“Who are all these cards from, Mommy?” Devon asked, walking over to the kitchen table and opening the various cards to look at the drawings and pictures.

“These are from a group of kids in Vail that I visited to talk about Afghanistan. They sent me these notes to say thank-you.”

“Can you come talk at my school?”

I looked up at her from the pile of cards. “Yes, if you want me to, of course I can. You should help though. What would you like to show the kids in your class?”

“We could show them the Afghan money and the flag!”

“We could do that.… How about a burqa and buzkashi hat?”

“Yeah! And can we show them the picture of you riding a horse!”

“If you want to. Why don’t you pick out some of your favorite photos. I’ll print them, and you can glue them on a piece of foam board. I think I’ve also got a map we can use. Then you can talk about the photos, and I’ll talk about what I do in Afghanistan.”

“Okay, but first can I have a snack?”

“Snack first. Afghanistan second. Deal.”

*   *   *

That conversation sparked the realization that perhaps I was trying too hard to explain myself and Mountain2Mountain through the lens that others used to view me. I was passionate about working as a woman for women in conflict zones where women often didn’t have a voice. But I was also interested in how art and storytelling could amplify those voices and challenge the apathy that so often prevented action on the U.S. side of the equation. I didn’t want to focus on building schools or clinics or infrastructure or vocational training. These were all necessary and vital steps in a country like Afghanistan, but they weren’t my skillset. I didn’t have the education, experience, resources, or financial backing to tackle these large sticks-and-bricks projects. Yet time and time again, this was what advisors or board members clung to as though I should model myself on Greg Mortenson. But I wasn’t him. I didn’t want to be him. I wanted to focus on what women could do with an education. I wanted to focus on projects with the next generation that sparked voices, that inspired change, and that could challenge stereotypes. I wanted to transform the way people viewed women and the way Americans viewed Afghans, and the way the public viewed humanitarian work—a goal much less tangible than building a school, and much harder to rally the masses and raise money for. Creating a computer lab or trying to build a school for the deaf was not where I wanted to put my passions going forward. Supporting graffiti and street art projects, working with female activists, and creating other programs that challenged perceptions and empowered voices were.

I was tired of banging my head against a wall. I was tired of living on a tightrope all by myself. I was tired of feeling the weight of the risk of the choices I had made. Yet other than my immediate family, which now included Christiane, I was reminded daily that I was out on that tightrope by choice, and no one else was going to join me willingly.

The area that caused the most conflict from the beginning was the formation of the board of directors and the subsequent incarnations of it that followed. Good people do strange things when they sit on the board of a nonprofit. I’ve talked to several other founders who led nonprofits and they all say the same thing. Boards are often the most frustrating part of running a nonprofit.

If I could do it all again, I’d consider creating a for-profit entity and steer the profits to the projects I wanted to do. The skewed mentality associated with nonprofits is astounding. Part of the problem is in the name: nonprofit. As if making money is evil. Yet without money, nothing can get done.

I’ve seen nonprofits, including Mountain2Mountain, which has a tiny budget, barely $100,000 a year on average, held to a completely different set of operating rules than for-profits. For-profits are judged on the work they do. Nonprofits are judged on their frugality. For-profits hire adequate, qualified staff and pay them a competitive salary. Nonprofits often operate on a bare-bones staff, severely underpaid compared to their for-profit counterparts doing the same job. They rely on volunteers and interns to make up the difference. But it’s difficult to expect the same level of competence and expertise from staff who aren’t paid competitive salaries. For-profits can spend money to make money. They can create innovative marketing campaigns in order to make a much larger profit. Nonprofits are criticized if they spend money on marketing or fund-raisers. I see founders of nonprofits get attacked for taking a modest salary, as though running a nonprofit should be a volunteer position done out of goodwill. But that isn’t sustainable for building a solid foundation for goals and accountability.

Dan Pallotta gave a great example in a 2013 TED talk about how nonprofits are judged by their frugality rather than their effectiveness. The limitations put on nonprofits create an inability, or unwillingness, to take risks. If you try and fail with a nonprofit project—even if you learn from it to improve other projects, programs, and approaches for the future—you are judged much more harshly than if you have a failure in a for-profit company. If we are trying to shift paradigms of poverty, abuse, and human rights, we can’t always play it safe. This is exactly the space where we need to think outside the box, where creativity and the ability to take risks are your best assets. Government organizations and large NGOs have too much structure and red tape to be nimble, flexible, and creative with how they tackle issues. But small nonprofits can develop unique and groundbreaking approaches to serious issues. Small organizations, individual risk-takers, and start-ups are in a great position to tackle many of these problems, but the public perceptions and judgments of nonprofit often don’t allow it. Getting work done costs money—end of story. It’s not evil to have operational costs. It’s evil to waste money and not accomplish your goals.

Adding to the dysfunctional nature of nonprofits is the public’s obsession with creating heroes out of humanitarians. There is an unrealistic paradigm of the hero’s journey, based on the mythology that has developed: a nonprofit is deemed worthy only if its founder has significantly martyred him- or herself with extreme financial and personal sacrifice. Does this unhealthy cycle manifest itself in unrealistic expectations that the public holds toward those trying to do good work? Did I make unhealthy choices in my own life, financially and physically, in order to be more worthy? And does that discourage others from putting their drop in the bucket because it seems too small in comparison? That is not the example I want set.

Did Greg Mortenson feel the need to exaggerate, or perhaps even lie, to sell his story and fund his nonprofit, as writer Jon Krakauer and 60 Minutes have suggested when they accused him of repeatedly lying in his memoir, Three Cups of Tea, and mismanaging donors’ funds? Did others feel that need to exaggerate? Would I? Is that the only way to make a small, start-up nonprofit financially viable in today’s social media era? Could Mortenson have created such a successful multimillion dollar organization without embellishing the details of his story? Was he just a climber wanting to do something good for a rural Pakistani village and who got frustrated by the lack of support? Was he a man with a hero complex? Or was he something in between—neither the hero as the public wanted him to be, nor the villain portrayed on 60 Minutes and through Jon Krakauer’s evisceration?

Who knows? But by insisting on making heroes out of those wanting to do good work, do we create an environment much like the current celebrity culture in which those sacrificing for the greater good drink the Kool Aid and start to believe they are heroes—that they are beloved and deserve to be treated as such? A Kardashian in humanitarian clothing? Beyond the ick factor of a celebrity and humanitarian collision, the unholy union creates an unhealthy model for start-ups to base themselves on and for young people to aspire to. You aren’t supposed to want to save the world in order to get famous. Yet in a world where people strive to be famous for fame’s sake, altruism seems to be getting kicked aside for feature stories.

*   *   *

I often found the constant comparison of my work to that of Greg Mortenson frustrating and misleading. I never wanted to be Greg Mortenson. Yet time and time again, the comparison was applied as though the only way to tell my story was to filter it first through him.

One advisor wanted me to be the next Greg Mortenson, or at least get his endorsement to put on our Web site. “You raised over a hundred thousand dollars and a lot of publicity for his organization.”

“I did, and I did that without expecting anything in return. That was a chance to dip my toe in the fund-raising waters and see if we could inspire a community to support another community half the world away.”

“Yes, but a note from him on the Web site could really help legitimize what you are doing.”

“But he doesn’t know what I’m doing. He’s doing his thing, and I’m doing mine. I started M2M to develop my own approach. It’s not about me replicating what he’s doing. It’s about tackling the issues that others aren’t or won’t, or that they are addressing in different ways.” The suggestion that I should essentially ride his coattails because he was famous and I had once raised money for his organization seemed absurd and insulting to both of us. Mortenson owed me nothing, nor did he owe anyone else who donated to his organization or spearheaded fund-raisers. That would be like donating money for building a school and insisting to have a plaque with your name on it.

Yet articles, news stories, and magazine features would continue to describe my work with at least one reference to Mortenson, despite my insistence to writers that I shouldn’t be compared to him. I wasn’t building schools. I wasn’t focused solely on girls’ education, and I wasn’t a climber. There are other humanitarians and activists I was probably more similar to, but Three Cups of Tea was a phenomenon and Mortenson was a household name. I worked in Afghanistan; he worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’d raised money for his organization. We both lived in mountain towns. Educating women and girls was at the heart of our organizations, although we had completely different approaches to how we wanted to tackle the issue. My goals were starting to define themselves with artists, activists, and athletes. The more time I spent in Afghanistan, the more I evolved my goals; as my network expanded, I got more exposure to the emerging group of young Afghans. These were young people growing up with Facebook and Twitter, and embracing the opportunities that the post-Taliban era allowed.

At every one of my speaking events, at least one audience member asked me about Mortenson. I fielded the questions diplomatically. I wanted to create a voice, combat apathy, and build a virtual army of women who could tackle the issues of women’s rights, gender violence, and inequity as women and in culturally sustainable ways. I wanted to focus on changing and inspiring individuals, not just building things. I didn’t want to create more international aid dependence. I didn’t want to model the “great white hope” approach to aid work that in many ways caused more harm than good. I wanted to use my gender to challenge gender barriers in unique ways, even if it created only a ripple.

The irony was that, years later—when Mortenson’s star fell unexpectedly and publicly—I and many others felt the backlash of public distrust. Here I was, having never taken a penny from Mortenson and yet having to answer questions about him and his organization. News reporters called me to ask questions. But neither myself nor Mountain2Mountain had any relationship with him or his organization beyond the initial fund-raiser before we became an independent 501c3 nonprofit. But the public lost a hero. It felt betrayed and foolish, and wanted answers.

It was interesting to look back and see lessons emerging. I learned that nonprofits needed to be as open about mistakes as about successes. Founders had to build strong teams of people smarter and more experienced than they were, and trust them for advice and knowledge. Founders had to let go of control of the organization, especially financial control, to ensure transparency and public trust.

I have always worked for myself, and as an entrepreneur, I have different skills.

I can imagine, conceptualize, and implement projects half a world away, even in a war zone. I am one half of an effective organization, but in order to be successful, I know I need to find the yin to my yang, a business-minded, financially savvy manager to take over the operations for Mountain2Mountain. The trick is to find a person who has a mutual trust in my abilities to continue to create and inspire and evolve without putting a harness on me—and who I can in turn trust to lead my organization onto a solid foundation of financial stability that will allow me to do what I do best.

With the lessons learned and the search begun, I continued to operate my one-woman show and focus on what I believed in. I lived on the tightrope, believing that people would rally behind ideas like mine—behind creativity, activism, risk taking, individual voices, and the changing of perceptions, not just traditional humanitarian models.

*   *   *

It took five years of work and exploration until a lightbulb went off. I was talking to my friend and Mountain2Mountain advisor Heidi Volpe on the phone. She was describing the guilt one can feel after returning from war zones or impoverished countries—paying $4 for a latte at Starbucks after meeting people who earn $1 a day. How do you reconcile that?

Another woman at a fund-raiser had told me how difficult she thought it would be to leave all those orphaned children behind; she’d want to scoop them all up and bring them home.

In both instances, I understood, but I didn’t feel that way. I chalked it up to being well suited for the job. I could separate my realities and my emotions, and comfortably cross over time and time again between two worlds. But after the call with Heidi, I realized that I wasn’t just right for the job per se; rather, I recognized how lucky I was to be born in this country and era. Through no choice of my own, I was born to a middle-class family in the 1970s in the United States. That gave me more opportunities and basic human rights than women born in Afghanistan. By dumb luck, I’d been issued a geographic passport to a country that allowed me a myriad of expectations and opportunities. This passport shouldn’t be wasted. My life shouldn’t be spent suffering or sacrificing at the expense of experiencing joy, following my passions, and exploring the world. My desire to create change, to put my drop in the bucket in hopes of starting a ripple, shouldn’t overshadow the opportunities I’d received in the lottery of life. That night I wrote these thoughts while I was in bed. I spent days pondering the choices I was making.

Why did I feel guilty at the idea of planning a vacation? Why was making no money and working insane hours more important than mountain biking on my lunch break and taking a paycheck as the director of a nonprofit? Why was a bleeding ulcer just an inevitable side effect of the stress and pace I was keeping? How would this affect Devon as she became more aware? Is this the example I wanted to set?

The decade I had spent living in Europe, traveling, exploring, experiencing new tastes, new smells, and new cultures in my twenties had been replaced with sacrifice and guilt. I knew a happy medium was possible. Balance was needed: joy in daily boosts, more laughter, more 7:00 A.M. dance parties with Devon, more midnight hikes, and space for a real relationship with an amazing man. It felt like an insult to the women I met around the world who didn’t have the opportunities I did to just throw them away or bury them under a giant to-do list that would never be completed. I am so lucky and blessed to have this life, and I should be setting the example to Devon to make every day count. I can’t waste what I was given because I am outraged by the injustices I see in the world. Be outraged. Fight. But don’t forget to play. Make time for friends, family, and love. Remember what is important.

The significance of the bike re-emerged. It had been my source of play and of strength, a metaphor for how I lived. With a single-speed, I had to embrace the suffering. There were no gears. I sat, stood, or walked. That was all I got. But I loved its simplicity. I may not love the suffering, but I do love the challenge. I embrace the suffering for the return I get back in spades. Mountain biking requires some blood and skin donation beyond the expected sweat and tears. If I wanted to become a stronger rider, it wasn’t just a matter of muscle and lungs. It was about confidence alongside trial and error. I fell, a lot. I bruised. I hoped there was nothing worse, but it was always possible. Yet, despite that knowledge, the expectation even, that I would be hurt, I continued to ride. Why?

Because of the joy I felt on two wheels—dirt in my face, my teeth, mud on my legs, the wind in my face making me feel alive. The exhilaration of bombing down singletrack or the challenge of riding up a steep, rocky climb are the epitome of conquering fear and building mental and physical strength. I couldn’t be indecisive. Indecision on a mountain bike—should I go over the rock or around the rock?—would draw blood. I had to let go of the brakes, ride through the rock garden, or I would get stuck. It was all there—life lessons in cheesy, two-wheeled metaphors. The bike was freedom of movement, of individual choice. Nothing was more important than that.

Maria Ward, the author of Bicycling for Ladies, published in 1896, stated it best: “Riding the wheel, our powers are revealed to us.” That gets to the heart of how I feel every time I ride. It’s why I have a ridiculous grin on my face when I ride through mud puddles and why I seek out exploration of new places on dirt trails and back roads. Riding a bike, I’m strong, I’m free, and I’m filled with joy.

What if I could harness that joy and that strength with other women? Could I encourage women who have survived the worst of gender violence—rape, sexual trafficking, and domestic abuse—to get involved in the fight for women worldwide? People seem to put women like this in a box labeled “victim.” This label can completely disempower them, as though by being victimized, they are weak. I know different. Survivors are stronger than people think. I believe one woman can make a difference—that one voice matters. I wouldn’t have set off on this journey if I didn’t believe change was possible with the voice and willpower of a single individual. But I also believe that our strength is in our numbers. If I could inspire more women to use their voice, to stand up for those that are voiceless, I could create more than a ripple. I could create a tsunami of change that couldn’t be ignored.

I needed to separate Shannon Galpin, the individual, from Mountain2Mountain, the organization. I had no idea how to accomplish that with zero money in the bank, but I knew that realizing the need for separation and the search for more balance in my life was a first step.