What We Can Learn From Idealist

At the risk of going against the crowd, I’d like to add my perspective to the Idealist crisis.  Idealist.org is a job site for nonprofit organizations that has been around for 10 years.  It’s a great site that brings nonprofit organizations and aspiring nonprofit job seekers together.  It has launched many a great career, including that of Rosetta Thurman, nonprofit consultant and Gen Y leader who is a huge supporter of the site.

Earlier this week Ami Dar, Executive Director of Idealist, sent out an emergency appeal for funding to Idealist supporters.  It seems that the recession has taken a serious toll on the nonprofit organization, and they are desperate for funding to stay afloat.  Ami’s impassioned appeal has made its way around social media sites and raised quite a stir. They are hoping it will bring in some serious donations.  And it seems to be doing that–you can see the running tally of recent donations on their homepage.

I admire what Idealist does and think they serve a real need, but with this campaign they are making a mistake that nonprofits sometimes make when they hit a crisis like this.  An appeal for emergency funding can raise quite a bit of money, for a time, but then what?  What is the long-term plan? How will Idealist overcome the obstacles that got them to this place so that they can emerge stronger, more effective and more financial sustainable in the future?

In his appeal, Ami says that the weak economy got them to this place because of a significant decrease in job posting revenue over the past 16 months.  That is completely understandable.  But over those past 16 months what has Idealist done to diversify their funding model?  What has been the result of those changes?  And what are their plans for the future?  Ami is fairly vague on these points:

Very briefly, here’s what happened. Over the past ten years, most of our funding has come from the small fees we charge organizations for posting their jobs on Idealist. By September 2008, after years of steady growth, these little drops were covering 70% of our budget. Then, in October of that year, the financial crisis exploded, many organizations understandably froze their hiring, and from one week to the next our earned income was cut almost in half, leaving us with a hole of more than $100,000 each month. That was 16 months ago, and since then we’ve survived on faith and fumes, by cutting expenses, and by getting a few large gifts from new and old friends. But now we are about to hit a wall, and this is why I am reaching out to you.

I understand why they are in this position. But what I don’t understand is how they are going to get out of this position after the emergency funds that they are attempting to raise dry up.  According to Ami, their plans for the future are:

If in the next week or two we can reach everyone who’d give us a hand if they knew we are in trouble, I believe we’ll come out of this crisis even stronger than before. I believe this because while this has been a tough stretch, I’ve never been more optimistic about the future. The content on Idealist has never been richer, our traffic is surging, we are building a whole new Idealist.org that will be released later this year, and the potential for connecting people, ideas, and resources around the world has never been more urgent or more exciting. Your contribution will allow us to maintain all our services…and it will also give us some time to diversify our funding. Being able to breathe, recover, and plan ahead for a few months will be an incredible blessing.

If Idealist hasn’t been able to figure out financial sustainability in the last 16 months, why should I think that they will be able to do it in “a few months”?  And scarier still is the fact that economist are predicting that the jobless economic recovery will continue for the foreseeable future.  So I’m not sure “a few months” is really going to change things all that much.

What I would like to see from Idealist is a bold plan for action, a revamped business model that will allow them to continue to provide needed services to the nonprofit community in a financially viable way.  Emergency funding is great, but only if it is a stop gap measure that will get an organization through a very specific, finite period of time and that on the other side of the crisis is a new business model for a viable way forward.

I think the nonprofit sector can learn something from Idealist’s crisis.  There are many other nonprofits in this same position.  And many who are contemplating or have launched an emergency appeal.  But keep in mind, you can only cry wolf once.  So while you are working to stay afloat, you also need to be taking a hard look at how to radically change your approach, your business model, your funding streams. And you need to put those changes into a comprehensive plan and communicate that plan to your funders. In that way, you all will know that you won’t be back here again.

UPDATE: The Tactical Philanthropy Blog hosted a debate between Nell Edgington and Rich Polt from Louder Than Words about the Idealist appeal.  You can read the debate and comments here.  

Tags: Ami Dar, Idealist.org, Rosetta Thurman

Let’s Take a Step Back in the Outcomes Debate

There is a growing discussion among social impact organizations and those who fund them about how to measure impact.  It is indeed a very slippery endeavor.

Mario Marino, Chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners (a venture philanthropy fund in Washington D.C. that makes growth capital investments in nonprofits) has been encouraging nonprofits to measure outcomes for years.  Indeed one of the fundamental characteristics of venture philanthropy is a reliance on metrics and outcomes for investment to happen.  He recently wrote a post arguing that he is “increasingly worried that the vast majority of funders and nonprofits are achieving, at best, marginal benefit from their efforts to implement outcomes thinking.”  He argues that in an zealous pursuit of metrics we have left common sense and “softer” impact behind and encouraged nonprofits to move away from the impact they were working towards.

To add further confusion to the outcome measurement discussion, the Gates Foundation’s Melinda Tuan studied 8 approaches to measuring cost vs. social impact, or the value that nonprofit organizations create versus the cost of their activities.  The results of the study were disheartening; none of the approaches they studied was a magic bullet, all had significant drawbacks, which led them to conclude: “Integrated cost approaches to measuring and/or estimating social value are still in the nascent stages of development due to the lack of maturity in the field of social program evaluation.”

And there are other camps working towards outcome measurement, like those debating about whether randomized control trials (a research methodology where a random group of program participants is tracked and compared to a random group of cohorts who did not participate in the program) are feasible for nonprofits. And on the social business side, the GIIN (Global Impact Investing Network) is developing standards for measuring and communicating the social impact of investments known as The Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS).  And that’s just a start.

This whole social impact measurement endeavor is incredibly important because if we can figure out a way to measure which social change efforts work, and which don’t, we can allocate resources accordingly and, in theory, get closer to solutions to social problems.

But I think we need to first take a step back.  As is so often the case in efforts to build nonprofit capacity, effectiveness and infrastructure (including, in this case, the ability of nonprofits to evaluate their work) the focus is on the largest, most resourced nonprofit organizations.  Let’s remember that more than 80% of nonprofit organizations have budgets under $1 million (see the Nonprofit Almanac).  Budgets that small leave very little room for funds to support randomized control trials or other kinds of outcome measurements.

But an even bigger roadblock is the fact that many nonprofit organizations have not articulated their theory of change, or their logic model.  Many nonprofit organizations are doing good work, but they don’t necessarily have an articulated strategy around that good work.  A logic model helps an organization understand and articulate how they believe that they translate resources (inputs) into social impact, or change in a community.  This understanding allows the organization to better articulate (to potential funders, volunteers, supporters, partners), and create strategy around, their work.  A potential logic model for an English as a Second Language after-school program could be as follows:

One of the first steps Social Velocity undertakes with clients who want to increase organization capacity, sustainability, revenue, growth, or really any kind of progress, is to create a logic model with the organization.  The majority of nonprofits that I encounter don’t have an articulated logic model or theory of change.  It may seem like an academic exercise, but I would argue that it is absolutely critical to just about anything a nonprofit does.  In order to understand their place in the community, the value that their work adds, how additional inputs (like funding) can increase impact, and their strategy for delivering services, they need to articulate this process.

But the larger debate about outcome measurement ignores the fact that the majority of nonprofit organizations have not completed step 1 in outcome measurement: articulating a strategy for using resources to create outcomes.  Once this is articulated, we can talk about how to measure whether that strategy is actually coming to fruition.

Tags: Gates Foundation, GIIN, IRIS, logic model, Mario Marino, Melinda Tuan, Nonprofit Almanac, outcomes, randomized control trials, social impact, Social Velocity, theory of change, Venture Philanthropy, Venture Philanthropy Partners

Financing not Fundraising

As we approach the end of a pretty difficult year for nonprofit fundraisers, and look towards the start of what could be an equally difficult one, I’d like to outline a new vision for how the nonprofit sector gets funded.  Fundraising in its current form just doesn’t work anymore.  Indeed, traditional fundraising is holding the sector back by keeping nonprofits in the starvation cycle of trying to do more and more with less and less.

Really, what the sector needs is a financing strategy, not a fundraising strategy.  By that I mean that nonprofits have to break out of the narrow view that traditional FUNDRAISING (individual donor appeals, events, foundation grants) will completely fund all of their activities.  Instead, nonprofits must work to create a broader approach to securing the overall FINANCING necessary to create social change.

What does this new approach to financing the nonprofit sector look like?  It looks like this:

1. Nonprofits understand that funding programs and general operating expenses is not enough to survive and thrive.  All activities that bring money in the door (individual donors, foundation grants, earned income, government contracts, loans etc) are integrated and part of a larger financing strategy that supports the short AND long term goals, as well as the programs AND infrastructure of the organization.




2. Nonprofits no longer segregate fundraising from their other activities (programming, administration).  All elements of a nonprofit’s operations, including the money-making ones, are fully integrated and moving forward together.




3. Individuals, who make up 80%+ of the private money entering the sector, become a greater focus of fundraising efforts, rather than corporate or foundation philanthropy (which make up 5% and 12%, respectively, of the private money entering the sector).




4. Fundraising messaging moves from an emphasis on the tin-cup mentality and donor benefit, to an emphasis on the social impact a  nonprofit is creating.




5. Money is raised to support not only the direct services that a nonprofit provides, but also the infrastructure (staff, technology, systems, evaluation, training) of the organization.  Nonprofits understand that they will only get better at delivering impact if they have an effective organization behind their work.




6. Other types of capital vehicles (like loans, equity) are added into a nonprofit’s financing mix.




7. Earned-income opportunities are evaluated and, if appropriate, launched.  Earned income is not right for every nonprofit, but it is worth exploring and analyzing opportunities as they come and understanding and being open to the revenue-generation possibilities.




8. The net revenue of every money-making activity a nonprofit engages in (events, individual fundraising appeals, corporate sponsorships, earned income, etc.) is calculated and evaluated.  Low net revenue activities are replaced with higher net endeavors.




9. Nonprofits move away from “push” fundraising and marketing efforts that force their message on innocent bystanders (like direct mail appeals) and towards “pull” fundraising and marketing efforts that bring interested donors/prospects to the organization (like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, friend-raising events, etc.)

There really is a better way.  Nonprofits don’t have to wear out their fundraisers, their donors, their staff and their message.  By working towards financing their efforts as opposed to fundraising for them, they can get a lot closer to social impact.

Tags: direct mail, Financing, Fundraising, nonprofit, Philanthropy, social change

Building a Stronger Organization

We all know the nonprofit sector is really struggling.  Particularly in the midst of a deep recession it can be difficult to figure out how to get out of a vicious cycle of increasing demand for services, relentless fundraising, diminishing capacity and so on.

But there is hope.  In order to break free of the starvation cycle of trying to do more and more with less and less, nonprofits need to make big change.  And in order to do that they need to figure out what is holding their organization back.

Most consultants offer nonprofits what they call an Organizational Assessment.  But I hate the term, and I don’t hold much stock in the results. The solutions they offer to what’s holding a nonprofit back tend to be rooted in what the nonprofit sector has been doing wrong for too long.  Most Organizational Assessments are not bold enough, they don’t push nonprofits to understand and articulate their own theory of change, look at entirely new revenue streams, get rid of non-performing board members, completely revamp their mission, focus their marketing efforts, create a real strategic plan, and so on.

What nonprofits need is an Organization Building Plan. It can transform a nonprofit, give them an understanding of where they stand currently and what it will take to really strengthen the organization and their ability to make social change.  An Organization Building Plan gives a nonprofit a clear, executable road map for making their organization work better, smarter, more effectively, more sustainably.  It demonstrates how to integrate better all aspects of the organization (program, funding, marketing, operations, board, etc), make the organization more sustainable, expand the net of supporters (funders, volunteers, board members, friends), deliver programs in a way that increases social impact, and increase the strengths of the organization, while addressing the weaknesses.

If a nonprofit can strengthen their organization, they can deliver more social impact. Indeed, I would love to see every nonprofit organization with a well executed Organization Building Plan.  So what does a good one look like?

An outsider (it must be an outsider, because, as we all know, someone close to the organization won’t have the heart or the vision to see what is really wrong and how to fix it) interviews board, staff and funders, reviews organization processes, policies, procedures, documents. They then analyze and create detailed recommendations for improvement in the eight key areas of a nonprofit organization:

1. Mission and Vision: How these basic pillars of the nonprofit galvanize internal and external people to create change.
2. Strategy: How the organization comes up with and executes on a plan for the work of the organization.
3. Program delivery and impact: How the organization delivers social change.
4. Governance and leadership: How the board and key staff drives the organization forward.
5. Finances and revenue generation: How financially strong and sustainable the organization is.
6. External relationships: How strong and effective important collaborations and partnerships are in the work of the organization.
7. Marketing and communications: How well the organization gets in front of the right audiences in a compelling way that drives action.
8. Operations, systems and infrastructure: How well the organization makes use of resources.

Doing Organization Building Plans is one of my favorite services we offer at Social Velocity.  When I deliver the results to a client’s board and staff it is thrilling to look around the room and see the mix of shock, awe, relief, excitement, energy, innovation.  Finally someone has taken a hard look inside the organization and come up with a new direction that opens a whole new world to the organization.  Ideas start flying around the room “We could do this…”, “What if we did that…”  It serves as a rallying cry to begin to build the organization.

At Social Velocity we are all about big, not incremental, change.  An Organizational Assessment can make a nonprofit incrementally better.  An Organization Building Plan can transform how an organization works, dramatically increasing productivity, sustainability, and ultimately, social impact.

Tags: Fundraising, mission, nonprofit starvation cycle, organizational assessment, vision

Determining Best Use of Resources for Sustainable Social Impact

There is a very useful and widely used matrix in the business world called the “BCG Matrix” that helps a company analyze their product lines to determine which to further invest in, which to liquidate, which to expand, etc.  This is where the term “cash cow,” a product whose positive cash flows pay for the other products of a company, comes from.  Each product line is placed in the matrix, which measures the relative position of the product line in the market (low to high market share) against the rate of growth of the business (low to high).  Depending on where the product line falls along those two matrices, you can determine what strategy to take with the product (invest further, liquidate, etc.).

Back in the early 1980s Robert Gruber and Mary Mohr (“Strategic Management for Multiprogram Nonprofit Organizations”) adapted this matrix for nonprofits to enable them to plot their programs according to social and financial returns.  This allowed a nonprofit organization to take a hard look at their programs to determine a strategy for each.

I would argue that the tool could be used by social entrepreneurs (both for profit and nonprofit) to analyze their programs/activities/products/services to see which are worth investing and growing, which are worth sustaining, which should be divested from, etc.  The matrix looks like this:

A social entrepreneur could plot their activities in the matrix according to each activity’s social impact (low to high) and financial return (low to high).  So, let’s take a fictitious K-12 education nonprofit that has four main activities:

1. An after-school program during the school year for low-income kids
2. A summer camp for a broad cross section of kids on a sliding scale fee
3. A book store for the general public
4. A backpack program where donations from local stores are gathered, assembled and given to children in the program.

The after-school program for at-risk kids has a high social impact (their results are great) but it is very expensive to the organization.  This would be a “Worthwhile” program in the matrix.  The summer school is “Beneficial” because they make some money off of it, and it has social impact.  The book store would be a “Sustaining” program because it provides them a high financial return, but little social impact.  Finally, the backpack program, which provides each child a couple of notebooks and some pens and pencils, has little social impact and no financial return, is a “Detrimental” program.

Once each program is plotted on the matrix, the organization can make some difficult decisions.  The strategy, according to the matrix, would be to “carefully nurture” the after-school program, “cautiously expand” the summer school program, “sustain” the book store, and “cut” the backpack program.

However, there are always shades of gray, and any good tool needs to allow for that. Perhaps the summer school program provides some social impact, but not enough because it is a 50-50 mix of at-risk and low-risk kids.  So an expansion of that model might detract from the overall social impact of the organization.  The organization might want to grow the social impact side of the program (enroll more at-risk kids) while growing the book store revenues or increasing the price for low-risk kids to subsidize that growth.  The point is that by analyzing each program/activity/product/service of a social enterprise the organization can make strategic decisions about growth, maintenance, pruning and ultimately where best to funnel limited resources in order to create sustainable social impact.

Tags: BCG Matrix, Mary Mohr, Nonprofits, Robert Gruber, social entrepreneurs

Plan in the Face of Uncertainty

As I continue to meet with nonprofit organizations, it amazes me how few have a detailed, comprehensive strategic plan.  And as I write that I can imagine many rolling their eyes at the dreaded words: strategic plan.  Why is planning such a dirty word?  I know it can be time-consuming and involve tremendous effort, but the payoff, if done well, can be enormous: better program results, more effective use of resources, improved staff morale, more engaged board of directors, and so on.  And in these days when resources are tighter than ever, a solid, well-thought out plan ensures that every last resource (financial, staff, volunteer) are used most effectively.

I realize that much of the lack of affection for strategic planning comes from the fact that it can be an organic process.  And sometimes a strategic planning process can waste a lot of time but result in very little.  Or, if it does result in a plan, that plan sits on bookshelves gathering dust.

A real, successful strategic plan lays out a clear path over a future period (3-5 years) with concrete steps to get there.  Then, the plan is revisited, measured, updated by all involved monthly, if not daily.  In essence a good strategic plan is very simple:  this is where we want to be, this is how we are going to get there, now get to work.

So here is my suggested strategic planning process.  I will preface this with my bias that an outsider should be involved in some of the facilitation of this process.  If a staff or board member facilitates there will be a bias to the process and the results will be suspect.  An objective third party can ask the hard questions that others within the organization are afraid to, make sure that discussions stay on track, keep the end goal  always in sight, and ensure that an organization doesn’t just settle back into their normal way of doing things.

There are 8 basic steps to a good strategic planning process:

1. Conduct a SWOT: strengths and weaknesses (of the internal organization) and opportunities and threats (facing the organization from external circumstances) among staff, board, and other key constituents to the organization.
2. Do some research on your competitors (those providing similar services in the community) and your consumers (funders and clients) in order to understand trends and reactions to those trends.  This will help you determine how your organization needs to react in the coming years.
3. Revisit/refine the vision and mission of the organization.  These two things are very different, but are often confused.  The vision of the organization is the future reality in the external world that the organization would like to see, for example:  “An end to homelessness.”  It isn’t necessarily achievable, but it is what the organization is striving to make happen.  A mission is how the organization is working towards that vision.  It describes the impact point and what the organization exists to do, for example: “To move the homeless population of Phoenix off the streets through access to education, healthcare and job training.”
4. Create 3-5 broad goals for the organization in the specific timeframe of the plan.  What is it that you want to accomplish in the next X years that will help you achieve your mission?  More than 5 goals are too much for staff and board to focus on.
5. Break each of the 3-5 broad goals into activities, or steps to get there.  What is it going to take to make each goal happen?  What are the specific activities that need to occur?
6. Create a timeline with deliverables, people responsible and due dates for each activity.
7. Create an electronic, interactive format for the timeline so that each staff member can update their piece of the plan on a regular basis.
8. Monitor and measure achievement of the deliverables and the overall goals at least quarterly, and revise the plan as needed.

The key to a successful strategic plan is getting staff and board members involved early and often.  That is not to say that the entire board and staff should participate in each step of the process.  Rather, create a team to lead the process and then find ways throughout to get feedback from others (surveys, retreats, lunches, meetings, etc.).

Finally, a good strategic plan doesn’t have to be long, arduous and difficult to comprehend.  To the contrary, the more basic and simple you can make it, the better.  The end goal is that everyone in the organization will understand the overall plan and how their efforts fit into it.  With everyone on the same page marching toward a shared vision success can be achieved.  And those scarce resources will be made to reach even farther.

Tags: strategic plan