Tag: non-profits

Carving up your nonprofit

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I wanted to share an excerpt from great post from Adam Thurmon’s Mission Paradox blog (it’s a long excerpt, so it’s pasted in below).

The question Adam was asked was whether it makes sense to have both an Executive Director and an Artistic Director as equal co-leads of an arts organization.

I’ll leave you to read the excerpt and encourage you to read the post as well.  What strikes me is that Adam is pointing out an important (mis)management theme that can pervade the nonprofit sector: the notion that there’s the “real work” (the art, the programs, the care you provide) and the “business stuff” (raising money, working with the Board, keeping the lights on, marketing :), and that somehow these things can and should be separated out.

It’s not about business taking over nonprofits, it’s about recognizing that any organization that has a purpose in the world needs to be integrated both in how it delivers its services and in how it runs its operations. You can’t chop it up and separate it out any more than that.

In today’s world, your brand is every person who talks to anyone outside your organization; your culture is defined by how you treat each person who works for and with you; your message is owned and nurtured mostly by people who are not on your payroll.

And it’s all the important in mission-driven organizations (artistic, humanitarian, religious, you name it) that every person feels like they are part of advancing that mission.

This is why people are showing up to work every day.

Why would you squander that?

Here’s what Adam has to say about this:

“We still have arts orgs running with the simplistic notion that having artistic decisions over here (run by one person) and business decisions over here (run by another) is the most viable way to structure an organization.

Again, this creates an environment where one side can easily place blame for any challenges the org may be having on the other side . . .

“If we were doing better art we could raise more money.”

“We do great art, too bad the business folks don’t know how to sell it.”

Instead of recognizing what most of us who have been in this game for a while clearly see . . .

Artistic decisions ARE business decis ions.

Business decisions ARE artistic decisions.

You know this.

Everyone knows this.

So why are we taking ultimately singular decisions and placing them in the hands of seperate people?

Bankers heading to UK non-profit sector?

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

This just in from Reuters: a positive fallout from the financial crisis?

LONDON (Reuters) – A wave of job cuts in the wake of the financial markets meltdown is causing hundreds of City bankers to turn to UK charities in search of work.

Charities are keen to hire the former star bankers to help them raise funds and are able to pay better salaries than in the past, said forum3, a recruitment agency…

It will be interesting to see how the skills translate.  And what, if anything, this does to the balance of power, and the flow of human and financial capital, between the non-profit and financial sectors.

When will we start to see buyouts in the nonprofit sector?

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

There are a number of tools that exist in the for-profit sector that lead to greater efficiencies.  Some are about raising capital – for example, the more successful a for-profit business gets, the easier it gets to raise capital.  The opposite can be true in the nonprofit sector – where early donors can feel left behind as an organization starts to grow.

Another missing tool is buyouts.  When you buy a for-profit company, you buy their staff, assets, and revenue stream.  On the nonprofit side, when funders are dedicated to a particular organization or its leader, the revenue stream may disappear as a result of the acquisition.

I’m not sure this is the only reason we don’t see buyouts in the nonprofit sector, but it might be part of the reason.

A Revenues Strategy?

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Before coming over to the non-profit sector I worked at IBM and GE, two of the biggest businesses around.  In Big Business, the people who hold the reins – the center of energy and talent – are people who bring in money: the sales guys, the CEO, the big account managers.  That’s where everyone’s bread is buttered, so it’s where the action is.

Surprising, then, how in the nonprofit sector everyone wants to be on the money-spending side of the equation (the “Program” side), and raising capital (a.k.a. fundraising) is mostly seen as a necessary evil.  Need proof?  Check out the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s job page today: 354 “fund raising” [sic] jobs; 102 “Administrative” and 80 “Program.”

The sector is doing itself a major disservice.  Raising money is a barometer of how effective you are at convincing the the most powerful, influential people in your orbit (whether you raise big gifts or have a retail strategy) to care about your mission and support it.  It’s taken as a given that the Obama Campaign’s ability to inspire people and raise money from them is a testament to the power of their message.  When was the last time you heard similar talk about a nonprofit that’s good at raising money?  We rarely if ever think about things like “Revenues” in a really strategic way.

As the meltdown continues in the banking sector, the nonprofit sector in New York (let alone city and state government) runs the risk of a major downturn in funds raised. Hopefully we can all roll up our sleeves and start to think differently about Revenues when the music starts again.