Are you running your non-profit like a business to secure funding ...

?

If you aren?t, then you better be.

The reason why I was hired for my last role in non-profit was because of my background in business and funding.

Understanding that my board had a specific direction that they wanted me to take the organisation in, I sought to canvas our stakeholders for their views on some of the new business practices I was implementing. The responses were very similar as there was a widely held view that allocating budgets to areas like technology upgrades, staff training and outsourced answer services is money taken away from the cause. Yet these were the very same stakeholders that would complain if staff were too busy to answer phones, or were unable to extract historical reports because the data was hidden somewhere amongst thousands of spreadsheets. So despite stakeholder views, I made the unpopular decision to follow the maxim ? you?ve got to spend money to make money.

I am not suggesting that nonprofits compromise their passion for their missions or values. In fact, it?s that very passion and focus on helping people that is the driving force behind non-profit organisations.

In today?s climate volunteers, donors and funders want to sure that their time and money investment is sound. So what does that mean?

For nonprofits, attracting volunteers and financial funding means:

??Being transparent and accountable
??Tracking, measuring and reporting results
??Professionalising marketing and development efforts
??Having web presence
??Active brand promotion

Yes you have to spend money in order to make the above changes, but it?s money well spent if spent wisely.

Would you personally invest heavily in a business you couldn?t find out much about? Neither do funders ?as a minimum they get to see financial records but the anecdotal evidence suggests that the non-profits who are also able to show that they follow a succesful business model that illustrates the above key points have a far greater hit-rate for funding and grants. ??

Image from: http://www.atlascorps.org/blog/?p=1134

Source: https://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmtechnical/b/magnetism/archive/2012/08/26/are-you-running-your-non-profit-like-a-business-to-secure-funding.aspx

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