Thursday 22 March 2012

Profitable Non-Profits

My guest post right now is from Randy Seitz,a 17 year veteran of community and financial development specializing in new sector attraction, local sector development, workforce development, and international trade. Randy at present serves as the President and Chief Operating Officer of the Oil Region Alliance of Small business, Industry & Tourism. Randy is taking the conventional approaches of 'non-profits' and turning them on their ear - challenging status quo in just about every aspect of his operations. I am inspired by Randy's in novative thoughts on turning a non-profit into a self-sustaining entity. This is a fabulous instance of defying Gravity for all of us.

I have not too long ago completed the development of my agencies subsequent 5-year strategic plan. Our two most important objectives were to come to be substantially far more efficient in the way that we obtain our corporate mission and vision, and to come to be financially self sustaining in the subsequent 5-years. The plan's results is going to need that the organization adopt a modify in the way they usually operate and to redefine how they produce and create funds. In other words, we have to challenge the status quo and defy gravity to obtain key results. That is why I have not too long ago purchased, for my whole management team, a new book by Rebel Brown named "Defy Gravity." The book defies the status quo and offers practical advice to assist corporate leaders avoid crash-and-burn techniques of yesterday. I very advocate this book to all CEOs struggling with modify modify in how to implement new and exclusive methods to take organizations to new heights. Rebel sugge sts that the way we've often performed it could possibly be limiting our results and I agree!

Status quo in the nonprofit world is fund development. Conventional fund development is simply the acquisition of resources toadvancethe mission ofan organization. It is the process by which an organization makes use of fundraising to construct capacity and sustainability and it is component of the strategic marketing of a nonprofit organization. Fund development has two sides even though it isnot only concerned with raising income, but also in creating trustworthy sources of revenue that will sustain the organization through the realization of its lengthy-term mission and vision. Thriving fund development demands a strategic plan that relates funding to the purpose and programs of the organization. Having said that, I contend that in these tough financial times nonprofit organizations will have to radically modify its view and take the idea of fund development to a whole new level. They will have to, as Rebel Brown teaches in her book, Defy Gravity challenge the status qu o!

It is my contention, in these tough financial times, that nonprofit organizations are becoming a burden on the company community. It seems that individual businesses are becoming hit more than and more than and more than once more by local nonprofit agencies for donations and memberships in mass numbers. Every person from chambers of commerce to the humane society is asking for compact company support. Now, these are all superb, mission driven organizations that are doing amazing points to improve the excellent of life in their respective communities, but sadly they rely heavily on donations from compact company. As the economic climate weakens there is less and less of this income obtainable by compact company to support these groups and the competition for these dollars amongst all of the nonprofits in a community is at an all time high. There is simply not adequate income to go about and I am afraid that you will see a variety of nonprofits closing their doors more than the subsequent a number of years unless they make a fundamental modify in the way they operate. I think that nonprofits just can't continue to operate applying the identical old model.

The answer to this problem, which I have adopted and I am encouraging other nonprofit CEOs to also take into account, is how we look at social entrepreneurialism. Social entrepreneurialism desires to be looked at in a whole new way. Social entrepreneurialism is typically the use of conventional entrepreneurial strategies to address a social problem or result in. I want to challenge the status quo, defy gravity, by looking at social entrepreneurialism as a way for nonprofit organizations to create new funding sources through for-profit means. I want social entrepreneurialism to be defined as a nonprofit organization developing and operating a separate for-profit venture to support their nonprofit mission. In other words, any profit from the new venture would go to support the lengthy-term mission and vision of the nonprofit. So, the nonprofit would need less income in private contributions. For instance, the humane society can market place and sell a private-label brand of dog food in grocery retailers nationally. The YMCA could market place and sell workout videos in the United States. An financial development group could create and sell commercial and residential actual estate. By adopting a new way of operating, there would be the prospective to produce millions of dollars in income for these groups that could go towards the lengthy-term financial sustainability of the nonprofit.

The organization that I serve, serves the whole community through the creation of new jobs and investment in the region and the promotion of the area's assets to attract tourists that devote income with local merchants. For the most component, we are regarded a member-based organization. The funds that we raise come mainly from amongst the members themselves and are implemented for the purpose of sustaining the organization's desires. For instance, the income needed for our programs and operations is collected in the form of charges paid to belong to the organization, or in the form of donations. There is a high degree of correlation even though in between the economic climate and membership. So, if the economic climate is bad, we can anticipate membership to be lower. Merely, the organization demands funding to maintain its service to the community year just after year. So, there is no way that we can rely completely on membership dollars and still survive lengthy into th e future.

In addition to membership dollars, we will have to also rely on a compact base of government support for certain tourism and heritage preservation programs. And, the truth of the matter is, that normally we will have to raise funds from a variety of sources just to maintain our budget. That is why I feel it is so valuable and crucial to create a fund development approach that makes it possible for the organization to produce new income through for-profit means. You can see how, as an organization, it would make sense for us to create and sell commercial actual estate as a way to produce new income. The far more income we can produce on our personal, the less income we will need from the community. This is a new and radical way to look at nonprofit fund development, as nicely as, social entrepreneurialism, and is absolutely not the status quo, but is, none the less, needed if the nonprofit desires to survive in this new economic climate. This is a way for the nonprofit to t ake their destiny into their personal hands to come to be less of a burden on society, and to gain lengthy-term sustainability in tough financial times.

Thank you Rebel for confirming our approach and giving us the tools we want to execute this plan and move our agency forward far into the future!


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