Victories Of The Heart Nfp

Victories has many success stories and a devoted, though small following given over 30 years of operation. Covid has now limited it's programs and questions may exist about the future. What will Victories look like post-covid?

Until about 2012, the organization was built according the interests and ideas of the original 4 leaders. These were bright, charismatic men who motivated and inspired men to follow them. Unfortunately, they were not great organizational development folks and seemed to sabotage efforts to improve program development, marketing and the quality of programs. The abject failure of the 2004 Strategic Planning process is, in my opinion, the most glaring example of the failures of these 4 men.

The Strategic planning process focused on the need to develop internal policies and procedures, especially in the areas of new leader selection, training, and program development. The process seemed successful, but looks can be deceiving.

In a few short months, it became clear that the organizational dynamics reverted to the "same ole" of the two founders consolidating their power, claiming resources for themselves, and setting up others and, ultimately, themselves for failure. Specifically, the founders ignored the strategic plan emphasis on developing internal policies and procedures, including the way to select new leaders. Instead, they charged ahead and rapidly selected new Wisdom year leaders to the exclusion of other decision-makers and Board members.

The founders of the organization, followed the mistakes of other talented, charismatic leaders and just went forward in an aggressive, "f... you, if you don't like it" manner. Their ultimate ambition of creating a Wisdom year program that would expand around the country was a fantasy they somehow believed.

It was fast and took some time for me to fully understand the damage being done. Essentially, the potential for organizational unity was lost and the Wisdom year leader selection created two separate competing organizations. It was a terrible blow to the enthusiasm following the strategic planning process.

I remember supporting this effort by traveling to Boston to attend the inaugural Wisdom year "expansion" effort. It was not a great program with serious problems. At the end, one of the founders told me that once he and his partner expanded to other cities, he wanted Kurt and I to follow them and offer Breakthrough weekends. I just looked at him, not having the heart to tell him I didn't see that happening, nor did I have any interest. I also sensed this was the type of 'seduction" effort to get other men to follow them.

In addition to the poor organizational planning issues, these two founders made the incredibly foolish decision to continue pouring tequila down the front pants of participants at the beginning of Wisdom years weekends. Dumb. After I attended the Wisdom years weekend in Boston, I returned to have my leader partner and Board president, Kurt ask me what I thought of the experience. I told him it was fine, but "they did that really dumb thing with tequila." Kurt told me he had been appalled and asked me to help him stop it, which I did. I found this particular action to be an egregious, though maybe unconscious, expression of anger towards men's sexuality. It was like the leaders were determined to shame men by burning their genitalia (it did burn) and making them sit in wet pants all day.

One might legitimately ask why they did this and why no one tried to stop them before Kurt's intervention. Would you refer a man to a program that poured tequila down the pants of participants? I believe they stopped doing this, but without full transparency, one might not know.

The other failing after the Strategic planning process relates to the so-called Shadow weekend. Whereas there are many positive things to say about the Wisdom years and Breakthrough programs, I can not say anything positive about the Shadow weekend. At best, it's a poor copy of the Mankind Project's Warrior Weekend. The two originators of the Shadow weekend were highly influenced by their own Warrior weekend experience and participation in Warrior integration groups. I am guessing it's safe to say everything they tried to do in their Shadow weekend was borrowed in whole o highly influenced by Warrior stuff.

These two men, as I said, very bright, talented and charismatic, created a poor and problematic program which immediately turned people off, like me. I helped them with one of their first weekends and they shocked me the night before the program by saying "we brought marijuana and a white rat...we are going to smoke pot and kill the rat." It even still sounds outlandish and horrible to me after 20+ years. Allegedly, I talked them out of it, but I never saw the rat during the weekend and have never seen a receipt they took the rat back.

These were men I idealized and considered friends. They had to know I was in recovery and abstinent from substances. They certainly knew I was a trauma survivor who would have been severely traumatized by participating in the killing a pet rat, itself a crime in Illinois.

Then the weekend was terribly organized, unsafe, with no concern for the risk of retraumatization for participants and ambiguous nudity for all at the end of the weekend. Imagine being at a closing experience of some weekend for men, standing around listening to the leaders, then they tell you to take off your clothes. There were a bunch of men standing around nude and then trying to find some way to say goodbye to each other.

In short, I judged these leaders were guessing their way through the experience and the nudity at the very end was haphazard and did not seem planned in any way. It was uncomfortable for me and others I spoke to at the time.

Fast forward 20 years, I am on the Board and a leader, still trying to support Victory's programs. A Shadow weekend is held and the leaders of this program sabotage themselves dramatically by having participants of their weekend remain nude and silent for a large part of the experience. Sound unbelievable? Yes, it was. I and every other leader who supported these men and their program were aghast and regretted any support.

To me, it was again dumb ideas that became dangerous. I know there had to be men who were trauma survivors, maybe even sexual abuse survivors. Are we to just assume they would be just fine pressured into nudity and silence for a long duration of time? I don't think so.

And more importantly, how is it effective to anger others you want to make referrals to your program? I'm know there were other therapists and referral sources who were upset. I spoke to some of them and they spoke to others.

These leaders unreasonable anger towards me and others for our concern about the Shadow program was the beginning of the end for me. I now understood I was not dealing with men who could be objective or collaborative. They were deeply entrenched in the game of "mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the absolute best men's leader of all..." Being in a room with men like this sucks out all the oxygen and it's suffocating.

I filed written complaint and resigned. My complaints were ignored and I began to publish my concerns via my blog. I withstood the organization's threats of lawsuits and am still writing. I believed then and still do that the failed Strategic plan set up the current program to fail.

Right now, the organization's leaders have an opportunity to rethink their program. I hope they move to begin offering one simple men's program that all can get behind and stop catering to the personal whims of leaders who long ago gave up their right to garner organizational resources.