The President’s bipartisan task force on deficit reduction is having a hard time coming to consensus. No wonder.

Aside from the politics there are just no good choices for reducing our nation’s indebtedness. Raise taxes generally and you hurt the recovery.  Raise taxes on the rich and you incur their wrath and mobilize an onslaught of lobbyists. Cut spending and you hurt the recovery plus a lot of people who are in need of government services ranging from unemployment insurance to mental health care.

What’s the President to do?

One approach that is sure to be included in any agreement is to delay implementation until the economy improves. By the time that happens we will be a lot further in debt, but any draconian moves will be less damaging.

Another approach, recommended by economists, is to ignore the debt per se and focus instead on growing the economy so that the debt becomes a smaller percentage of GDP. This is how we have dealt with it in the past. Robust economic growth coupled with modest reforms could do the trick.

Lost in the debate over the deficit is the role our nation’s nonprofits can play in bringing about economic growth. If the engine of employment is small business, most nonprofits are local, community-based employers of anywhere from one to a couple dozen people. Increased funding for essential services such as homeless shelters, food banks, and counseling programs achieves a trifecta of economic benefits.

First, most of many local nonprofits’ budgets are devoted to human resources so any new money coming in is instantly translated into new jobs, and those workers pay taxes.

Second, newly hired nonprofit workers help their fellow Americans deal with the consequences of the poor economy. Whether it is finding a stable living situation or putting food on a family’s table, most nonprofit programs involve helping their clients through increased economic activity. Renting an apartment or providing a service enhances a community’s economic output.

And third, safety net services provided by nonprofits help government at all levels to avoid expenses.  For example, mentoring programs or other support services provided by nonprofits benefit adolescents  – who might have struggled with an unplanned pregnancy or juvenile detention in the absence of those nonprofit services – and save the state tens of thousands of dollars in related health, welfare, and police expenses.

Unspoken in my argument above, but equally important to our country’s well-being, is the alleviation of suffering nonprofits deliver to our society.

The bottom line: added investment in our nation’s nonprofit service providers will yield immediately increased employment and other economic activity plus long term reductions in cost. It is not the total solution to our economic mess but it is a step in the right direction.

I love to use a governance teaching case by Peter Dobkin Hall, called Conflicting Managerial Cultures in a Museum.

In the case, a long-slumbering board hires an entrepreneurial executive director to revitalize their museum. He brings in a small cohort of new board members who are local business leaders. Fundraising increases, and the business board members are highly involved, then they become too involved. They make executive decisions behind the director’s back, move the museum’s banking to the board chair’s bank, buy office equipment from another board member’s company, and tie the museum’s signature event to their businesses.

You can imagine the end of this story. Both the executive director and the board chair submit resignations in frustration and the organization is on the brink of collapse.

When I use this case I ask students, or workshop participants, to first determine what actually happened. Step by step, I want them to understand how the decisions unfolded and the relationships unraveled?

Then I ask them to apportion blame among the various parties – there is plenty to go around. Finally I ask them what could be done now. This usually leads to a lively discussion.

Cases are a powerful learning aid, a realization which brought me the following insight: could a nonprofit experiencing significant internal conflict or lack of clarity benefit from writing its own case?

The idea would be to gather organizational leaders from board and staff and give them a structured writing exercise where they describe the road that has gotten them to their current situation. What key decisions, external circumstances, and relationships were most significant? Maybe do it in small group format so that they can later compare and contrast different versions of the story.

This would lead to an airing of different viewpoints and ultimately, with luck and good facilitation, to a shared understanding of the present situation. With agreement on the “what happened” question, I would ask them to address the causes of their current situation, and then what can be done about it now?

This process follows the model of my big picture view of strategy. It asks: where are we, how did we get here, and what do we do about it?