Comments for Balancing the Mission Checkbook

Comment on Making Your Business Model Work: Applying a Break-Even Analysis by What Does Nonprofit Fiscal Fitness Mean? | The Paul Clarke Nonprofit Resource Center Blog

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:53:43 +0000

[...] Nonprofit Assistance Fund’s “Making Your Business Model Work: Applying a Break-Even Analysis“ [...]

Comment on Making Your Business Model Work: Applying a Break-Even Analysis by Michael Anderson

Michael Anderson — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:02:37 +0000

Thanks, Kim! I’m glad you found our Coffee Break Webinars. Please feel free to share them. We love when people take advantage of our free resources.

Comment on Making Your Business Model Work: Applying a Break-Even Analysis by Kim

Kim — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:54:38 +0000

Great financial resource! First time on the site and listened to a “coffee break” webinar. kim

Comment on Goodbye to 2011 and some hopes for 2012 by What Are Experts Thinking About in the New Year? | Porpoise

What Are Experts Thinking About in the New Year? | Porpoise — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 02:46:20 +0000

[...] Bar of Minnesota’s own Non-Profit Assistance Fund reviews five challenges of 2011 and find a silver lining in [...]

Comment on What Makes a Great Board Treasurer? by Joel Chong

Joel Chong — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:35:19 +0000

Christine, I think you should look hard at the various written policies that you have – Board manuals, Articles of associations, Memorandum of associations, etc. that would outline the procedure for such pledges or donations. Simply, inform the particular person that he/she cannot claim the pledge due to insufficient instructions given by the donor – which is a requirement by Board policy. Get the person to chase after the donor for clearer instruction. Release the money only when the donor came back with clearer instructions.

As for your Board, always fall back to policies and procedures that are already there to guide the Board. Never ever allow the Board to overstep its boundaries. Remind the Board constantly and amicably of their roles and your role as the CE. Done correctly, I am confident that the Board will relent and fall back into their own place. Good luck.

Comment on Goodbye to 2011 and some hopes for 2012 by James V. Toscano

James V. Toscano — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:29:25 +0000

Amen!

Comment on Talk the Talk: Financial narrative advice from a funder by Jeff Prauer

Jeff Prauer — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:28:07 +0000

Great advice! I’m reminded of the recent newspaper coverage of the Minnesota Orchestra and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra annual meetings, in which the financial situations of both organizations had apparently been presented openly, clearly and succinctly. The result was that while the information was cause for some concern about their financial positions, the reader was left with confidence that the organizations had things under control. That’s the power of a good financial narrative.

Comment on Disruptive forces for collective impact by Daniel Bassill

Daniel Bassill — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:38:13 +0000

In the Collective Impact article posted on the Stanford Social Innovation review the STRIVE program was described. This program operates on about $1.5 million each year and struggles to keep that funding in place.

I’ve followed the Collective Impact articles and don’t see a lot of focus on the process of “community building” that has to take place before organizations have the trust and convergence on common goals needed to build formal collaborations. In the “which comes first” discussion we need to add research about “where the funding will come from” for community organizers with a vision for collective action to find the money to do their role.

This concept map shows work I’ve done since 1993 to build community information about non-school tutor/mentor programs in Chicago and to build a strategy that would lead to more consistent support for the operation of constantly improving non-school tutor/mentor programs in high poverty neighborhoods. http://tinyurl.com/Timeline1993

Not being a high profile leader, or blessed with wealth or powerful support from philanthropic leaders, this network-building and information aggregation process has been exceedingly difficult. Yet there may be much to learn from people like myself who have been trying to do this for a decade or more.

When I started doing this work the Internet was not even on my radar. Now we can share ideas on forums like this, post our own ideas on web sites we manage, and connect with people who want to work together from places throughout the world. That offers great potential for connecting the resources to the organizers needed at each stage of this process.

Comment on What Makes a Great Board Treasurer? by Christine

Christine — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:53:39 +0000

I am an Executive Director and have what I would call a fairly dysfunctional Board from the Chair down. I have 25 staff members, one of which is a qualified bookkeeper. We had a very intensive external audit by a reputable outside firm which came back clean. Lately the Treasurer and other audit member came to the office and reviewed payroll, bank reconciliations and other operational activities. Now they want the full listing of pledges with names of all donors for a fund raising activity. This same person is claiming a donation as a pledge to him from the event but when we received the cheque and accompaning letter there was no mention of this individual or the event.

What can I do to get these people operating in a more helpful way?

Comment on Shared leadership might trump succession plans by Kate Barr

Kate Barr — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:24:30 +0000

Bill,
I agree with you that if the motivation for implementing shared leadership matters. If it’s external, such as a consultant or funders, nonprofits will have a harder time with the approach. Authentic shared leadership often develops over time and by building on the very unique internal assets and leadershp capacity at an organization. The term is broad and every single version of shared leadership is different.