Consolidation Over Competition

David Bulter – Co-Executive Director of Cahaba River Coalition & Staff Riverkeeper

I’ve always loved competition. Growing up with two brothers and a sister, we competed in everything, except maybe keeping the cleanest room. Our sister always won that one. Healthy competition among children builds character; in business it drives innovation and efficiency. In the world of environmental nonprofits, however, direct competition is a distraction.

For more than twenty years, I have worked on the Cahaba River, with more than a decade of experience at Cahaba Riverkeeper. We had a competitor: Cahaba River Society. The competition rarely benefited the river. Now as a newly merged organization: Cahaba River Coalition, I am certain consolidation is better.

In my time at Cahaba Riverkeeper, I served at every level of the organization: volunteer, board member, Riverkeeper, Staff Attorney and Executive Director. Cahaba River Society was a well-established organization, founded more than two decades before Cahaba Riverkeeper and had consistent and dedicated support. Cahaba Riverkeeper was founded in 2009 by my mentor and I was the first paid employee. We wanted to catch up.

At first, the competition was fun. I didn’t know much about the work, the river, or the challenges we’d need to overcome if both organizations were to truly serve our missions. I talked to a lot of people, and listened. I was humbled quickly.

The first thing I learned, which I’m still absorbing, is that the Cahaba River is a special river in a state full of special rivers. And like those other rivers, the Cahaba River is facing enormous challenges. In order to protect it, we’d need to find partners. We rarely looked to Cahaba River Society—and they rarely looked to us. It resulted in missed opportunities.

The second lesson I learned, quite quickly, is that nonprofit organizations are businesses despite their charitable purpose. In order to grow our impact, we’d need to raise money and in many cases, we’d need to ask the same foundations and donors as Cahaba River Society. It was confusing to donors, and often resulted in an uncomfortable question: Why should we support one over the other? Neither of our organizations ever suggested donors split their support.

According to the Public Research Council of Alabama, there are more than 6,000 active, registered nonprofits in Alabama and they generate more than $16 billion annually. All water-focused organizations account for a marginal percentage, about $19 million. Total. And the gaps between data needs and research funding are enormous.

Despite ranking 4th nationally for biodiversity and 1st nationally for freshwater biodiversity, Alabama consistently ranks near the bottom in state funding for environmental protection, during both Republican and Democratic administrations. Whatever advantage existed with two organizations was lost when our competing priorities muddied the water.

And finally, I learned that our greatest strength is the number of people we can inspire to support our work. Both Cahaba Riverkeeper and Cahaba River Society worked to protect the Cahaba. Both were based in Birmingham, so naturally we spoke to the same people often. And often confused them.

No matter how hard we both worked to distinguish ourselves from the other, the similarity of our names made it harder. We were intentionally different, choosing to work in very different ways, often in different communities and it still didn’t seem to matter.

Over the years, there were countless times a donor would stop to share their support for our work, only for me to realize they had supported the Society, not Riverkeeper. Family and friends purchased a “Save the Cahaba” license plate, not understanding that it funded our competitor. Cahaba River Society frequently fielded questions about Swim Guide, Cahaba Riverkeeper’s most public program.

Once I realized the complexity in preserving the Cahaba River, the competition to earn scarce funding, and the momentum we lost by dividing our audience, I knew something had to change. We had outgrown the value of competition and needed to consider an alternative.

So we merged, eliminating the competition and confusion while consolidating our resources and unifying our mission. After all, we shared a similar vision: preserving the priceless treasures of the Cahaba River for future generations.

The benefits have been undeniable. With a firm commitment from both organizations to focus on what was best for the river, we accepted that consolidation over competition was the answer. Our combined staff is larger and more efficient. Our message to supporters is cleaner and we’re better positioned to maximize every dollar for protection of the river. It’s also easier to inspire the necessary collaboration among partners when we now actually work together.