Nonprofit Harvest

Get More Bang for Your (Volunteer) Buck

Tracking Volunteer Time to Boost Your Bottom Line: A Complete Accounting Guide from Blue Avocado

Tracking volunteer time: sounds like another chore? Actually it can help you meet match requirements, improve your financial statement presentations, and reduce liability.

Read the full article for the whys and how-tos of tracking and reporting volunteer time and get more bang for your (volunteer) buck.

Collaboration

Last week I mentioned the award-wining collaboration between the YMCA and JCC/United Jewish Council of Greater Toledo.  SSIR recently interviewed the Collaboration Prize Co-Winners.

Mission Plus Strategy: What did each agency get from the merger?
Connie: The merger allowed each of our agencies to serve who they serve best, drawing from the strengths of each agency. The YMCA could handle all of the recreation activities, and daycare programs, where we are strong.
Abby: Because the YMCA was handling all the recreation and fitness programs that freed us up to completely focus on Jewish community programming and increase our services from cradle to grave

Read the full interview with Mission Plus Strategy to learn more about how “Two Faith-Based Nonprofits That Trust Each Other and Communicate Honestly Can Do Anything.”

Reconsidering Mission

Responding to the state of the economy and the housing market, Habitat Adds Demolition to Its Mission:

Workers will remove (and resell) reusable housing material rather than send it to landfills, some homeless or unemployed people will be paid to work on the program, and money earned through the demolitions will go toward the organization’s longtime goal of getting poor families into new or rehabbed homes.

“You have to look at the mission; the mission is to make housing more affordable,” said Paul Warriner, the executive director of Saginaw’s Habitat for Humanity affiliate. “And when you think about this, that isn’t too much of a stretch.

Updates from the Cohen Report

The Cohen Report perks up, with a series of new articles.

• Nonprofits Speaking for Themselves: The Impact of the National Economic Tailspin: This article compiles information from a number of surveys, including one by MCN, to gauge how the economy is impacting the nonprofit sector.  The post identifies key trends:
  • Budget deficits
  • Using reserves
  • Funding cuts - including sources of cuts and likely future reductions
  • Personnel cuts
  • Mergers
• How Corporate Giving Will Fare in This Recession 
• Foundation Payout Depends on How You Average

Tips for Your Board

• Board role in crisis from pubTalk
• To Be or Not to Be…High Performing from Greenlights

This Week’s Harvest

• Federal News Update for Your Nonprofit
• Why nonprofits are like so totally out of fashion
• What Social Media Can Teach Us About Sustainability
• Funder/Grantee Relationships: Or, What To Do After You Get That Check
• 25 Random Things that Make the Nonprofit Sector Great

And don’t miss out on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s next live discussion, Managing in Hard Times: How Nonprofit Leaders Can Make the Right Decisions.  Participate Tuesday, March 24th at 11 CT/12 ET or read the transcript.

It may be a coincidence, but on the heels of Lucy Bernholz’s thoughtful piece, It’s not a recession, it’s a restructuring, there has been a lot of discussion about the relationship between nonprofits and money. From unpacking the complexities of nonprofit funding to re-framing the idea of financial markets to everything in between.

Nonprofit Funding: It’s Not One Size Fits All

Ten Nonprofit Funding Models: A Proposed Lexicon

Social Standford Innovation Review points out one of the reasons that nonprofit financial models are more complex than for-profit ones:

When a for-profit business finds a way to create value for a customer, it has generally found its source of revenue; the customer pays for the value. With rare exceptions, that is not true in the nonprofit sector. When a nonprofit finds a way to create value for a beneficiary (for example, integrating a prisoner back into society or saving an endangered species), it has not identified its economic engine. That is a separate step.

The article, Ten Nonprofit Funding Models from the goes on to identify different models, arranged by the dominant type of funder - individuals and/or foundations, government, corporations, and a funding mix.

So, What’s the Best Model for My Organization?

When trying to figure out your organization’s funding mix, it’s important to remember that there is no one right answer.  Blue Avocado elaborates in Just Tell Me: What’s the Best Way to Raise Money? Choosing the Right Revenue Strategy:

The decisions you make about your revenue strategy – that is, who should be supporting your work and how to go about soliciting that support – should be based not only on who is most likely to give you money or pay for your services, but what makes the most sense in terms of who you are, what kind of change you’re trying to make in your community and how your funding sources can help you get there.

And Is Profit Important?

Not-For-Profit Accounting addresses a frequently asked question, Why Nonprofits Have Profit

In order for an organization to do its work and carry out its mission on an ongoing basis it must generate more income than the expenses it incurs. It must make a profit. Any organization, either a for-profit or a nonprofit, that does not take in more money than it spends will fail in the end.

Fresh from the Farmer’s Market: This Week’s Harvest

• A Social Capital (Farmer’s?) Market from Tactical Philanthropy

• Resetting the Capital Approach from Social Velocity

• A Social Solution, Without Going the Nonprofit Route from the New York Times

• Increasing Service Opportunities Would Revive Nonprofit Finances, Report Says from the Chronicle of Philanthropy

• Academic Endowments: The Curse of Hoarded Treasure from Business Week

Focus on Excellence

At this time of year, there are many blog posts on resolutions (mine, Kate’s) and strategies about how to achieve our goals.  PhilanTopic has one that stood out, More Good Advice for Nonprofits.

I suggest you read the entire post, but my favorite suggestion is:

2. Grow your mission. Many nonprofit organizations that were founded between 1929 and 1935 are still in existence. Focus your attention on growing your mission. If you focus on excellence, money will follow. If you focus on money, excellence never happens. As in the best of times, let your mission dictate management decisions.

Grow as in nurture, not grow as in expand.  At a time when we are all fighting the urge to do more with less, let your mission and core competencies be your guide.

Outlook for 2009

This week, the Chronicle of Philanthropy hosted an online discussion, Outlook for 2009: What the Recession Will Mean for Your Organization.

This was a particularly useful and timely discussion.  In the risk of overdoing it, the topic of mission creep came up here as well:

What would be the top five things you would recommend in either assessment/ evaluation or strategic implementation for 2009?

The response?

1. Making sure mission and program [and budget] are aligned. If not, why not?

2. Make sure that core competencies of the org - including staff, facilities, etc are aligned with #1. In good times, orgs sometimes add all sorts of people and programs, and suddenly find that there is an imbalance between what is being done with core mission. Has you mission in fact changed? Ask the hard questions.

If I seem preoccupied with mission creep, it is because we see how it impacts organizations.  An expanded mission may not create a stronger organization. Often it dilutes the services, goals, and focus — which we cannot afford right now.

Check out the rest of the transcript for more information on how the recession may impact your organization’s bottom line.

Giving in Minnesota

For local organizations looking for additional insights, MCF has released its 2009 Outlook Report, which projects foundation and corporate giving for the year.  According to their findings, we should anticipate a decrease in overall giving as compared to 2008:

Overall, grantmakers anticipate giving will drop about four percent in 2009, as compared to 2008. For grantmakers in the sample who give $10 million or more annually, giving is expected to decrease only 1 to 2 percent.

MCF President Bill King also issues a reminder: “This is, of course, a snapshot in time. The giving picture may change with the economy throughout the year.”

• Read the press release

•  2009 Outlook Report

The upcoming Giving Forum will include additional analysis and recommendations.

This Week’s Harvest

• Climate Change on SSIR (Hat tip: Rosetta Thurman)

• Briefing on the Economy and Charitable Giving: December 2008 from the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University

• Fiscal Sponsors Directory:  Connecting Community Projects with Fiscal Sponsors (Hat tip: PhilanTopic)

• How Small Foundations Can Protect Themselves From a Madoff-Style Scandal

• NEA study: Theaters vulnerable during recession