“Perhaps of all the virtues hope is the most fragile, the most fleeting, the least concrete. Don’t forget that the Greek gods, at the very bottom of Pandora’s box of ills and troubles, placed hope. Hope it is that allows us to cope with the rest of life. Nonprofit organizations more than any other groups in our world build hope, restore hope, exemplify hope. Nonprofit groups begin by building hope for the world and thereby build it for themselves. How can we quantify the hope created by the Peace Corps or the Red Cross or the Salvation Army? After all the money has been spent, the classes taught, the help given, the medicines distributed — isn’t it hope that remains and grows?
Max De Pree, business leader, churchman, philanthropist, and trustee extraordinaire, in Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community (Jossey-Bass, 1997)