Lessons from less. How to focus, adapt and endure.
There’s a calmness that comes from looking at art. Hours spent in museums and galleries eventually drew me to painting, and the impact of that time has never diminished. That’s why I’m always grateful for the moment of exhale and perspective that comes with an email from one of the art orgs I follow. The Jerald Melberg Gallery’s “Highlight of the Week” recently featured the work of the women of Gee’s Bend.
These artists, generations of Black women in rural Alabama, created quilts from recycled household materials. Their improvisational, or “my way” quilts as they are known locally, are now celebrated in major museums around the world.
As it always does, art made me think — this time about scarcity. Scarcity is the center of gravity for those we serve. Our work exists because of lack. Lack of food, housing, safety, financial resources, medical care, etc. The struggles it creates are unfair and at times, tragic. But sometimes, the conditions give way to resurgence.
Scarcity’s Mental Toll and Insight
Behavioral economists, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, posited that scarcity affects us all in similar ways. Be it time, money, food, or social connection, scarcity impacts our focus, judgment and prioritization in both productive and counter-productive ways. I believe that this hypothesis is now more important than ever.
Present legislation and executive orders are going to increase demand for the services we provide. Meanwhile, many of us helping those facing scarcity are feeling its effects directly.
As we confront shrinking budgets and heightened pressure, understanding how scarcity affects behavior in three critical areas can help us better serve others and remain grounded in what matters most.
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Tunneling: Focus at a Cost
One of scarcity’s immediate effects is tunneling, an intense mental focus on one’s most pressing problem.
This narrowed attention can make us efficient in emergencies, but blind to long-term needs. In one study,
shoppers at a New Jersey mall were given hypothetical financial dilemmas. Respondents were asked how to
pay for a car repair. For some participants, the repair cost was relatively low ($150), while for others,
it was much higher ($1,500). Low-income participants performed significantly worse on subsequent cognitive
tests when confronted with the high-cost scenario.
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Bandwidth Tax: The Case for Pre-DecidingScarcity doesn’t just shift focus; it shrinks our mental bandwidth. It becomes harder to reason, regulate emotions, or solve problems. In another experiment, Indian sugarcane farmers were given cognitive tests when money was tight, before their harvest, and when it was more abundant, after their harvest. They performed far better with more financial security. Poverty isn’t a result of bad decisions; it’s a condition that makes bad decisions more likely.Nonprofit leaders working under financial duress must be aware of this trap. That’s why it’s so important to make strategic decisions before situations become more acute. Pre-committing to specific cost-saving measures, organizational pivots, or communication strategies ensures decisions are made with clarity, not panic. Once more, Gee’s Bend’s tradition offers insight. Quilts were a solution to the problem of unheated houses. Yet the art was sustained through shared knowledge. Since the nineteenth century, skills have been passed down through generations, ensuring continuity even in the face of hardship. |
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Scarcity Traps: Breaking the CycleScarcity often becomes self-perpetuating. The stress it creates leads to short-term fixes like payday loans, deferring maintenance and staff burnout. These outcomes deepen the original problem, creating a scarcity trap. Escaping it requires not only more resources, but also the implementation structures that reduce cognitive burden, anticipate shortfalls, and make it easier to choose long-term stability over short-term relief.One study found that simply offering reminders and financial planning tools significantly improved repayment behavior among low-income borrowers. The intervention didn’t increase their income or eliminate debt, but it did reduce the mental strain of remembering due dates and choosing between urgent expenses. Modest prompts can help people make better decisions by changing the environment in which they are deciding. Nonprofits can do this by using pre-mortems and decision templates. For example, if we lose 10 percent of our funding, then we pause X or Y service. The women of Gee’s Bend knew this intuitively. Rather than adopt cheaper modern fabrics, they continued to make quilts from recycled materials. They evaluated their trade-offs carefully, which preserved not just quality, but identity. We can emulate this by weighing the cost of compromises to avoid "cheap wins" that erode our missions over time. |
Scarcity isn’t unique to the poor. It’s a condition that reshapes how all of us think and behave when resources tighten. It’s also critical to remember that a scarcity mindset is involuntary. That’s what makes understanding it so powerful.
The quilts of Gee’s Bend are a testament to what emerges when people create both in spite and because of limitations. Their improvisational styles are now treasured as modern art because they were never bound by the rules of it.
As we navigate difficult times, let’s do so not only with empathy for those we serve but with humility about what we ourselves are learning under constraint. We might be surprised by the strength and beauty that emerges.
In solidarity,
Kevin
