Wielding the Money Sword

A new blog at the Chronicle of Philanthropy site launched this week that I’m pretty excited about. Written by Clara Miller and others at the Nonprofit Finance Fund, the Money and Mission blog will help nonprofits “understand and skillfully wield money as a tool.”  What a revolutionary idea.

As Clara writes in the inaugural post:

Great ideas, deep caring for those in need, creativity, resourcefulness, a service ethic, and an expansive vision for the future are abundant in the nonprofit world. But we lack the financial capacity to meet these ideals, and our financial habits undermine efforts to build it. We need to think of finance as more than a muddle of fund raising, budget monitoring, and compliance with overhead rules. The current, tough economic environment is spurring needed change. Now, understanding money concepts like risk, leverage, and accounting, seems to be a moral imperative.

Indeed, the nonprofit sector has for too long been burdened by a lack of financial literacy and thus an inability to use money effectively. Sure there isn’t enough money in the sector, but if nonprofit leaders better understood the financial tools available to them and how to use them to their advantage, the results could be revolutionary. This is the argument in our Financing not Fundraising series.

Capital campaigns provide a great example of this. Nonprofits have used capital campaigns for years to raise money for a new building or, less often, an endowment. Capital campaign money is raised and used in a very different way from how general operating money is raised and used. A capital campaigns USES money raised to buy a building. An annual fundraising campaign USES money raised to buy additional services that the nonprofit provides (food for a food bank, mentors for kids). An annual fundraising campaign often RAISES money by cobbling together various activities (events, grant writing, some direct mail appeals) hoping that the sum will equal the expenses needed for the year. A capital campaign, however, RAISES money by conducting a feasibility study to determine how much they can likely raise, then creates a plan, budget, and case for support. Then potential donors are cultivated and solicited in a systematic way. This is a deliberate, strategic way to bring capital campaign investors in the door.

However, capital campaigns are often misguided attempts to grow the impact of an organization. A nonprofit thinks that in order to be taken seriously in the community and attract larger donors they need to build a new building. Enormous amounts of time, energy and money are spent to create a building they don’t need, burn out their development staff, and eventually shoulder new building maintenance fees for years to come.

What if nonprofits could pour those same desires–to do more, to make a bigger impact, to attract more resources, to build deeper networks–and that same time, effort and resources into a campaign that will actually help them build a more effective, more sustainable organization that delivers more impact? What if the methods of a capital campaign were instead employed to raise growth or capacity capital that allows the organization to provide more, better services to the community? That would be huge. Enormous.

The Nonprofit Finance Fund turned capital campaigns on their head with their SEGUE (Sustainable Enhancement Grant) program. It is essentially a capital campaign, but instead of buying a building, the nonprofit raises growth capital to scale the organization for greater social impact. NFF takes a concept nonprofits understand and are comfortable with, a capital campaign, and transforms it into a way to raise organization building money, a completely new idea. I’d love to see more nonprofits using financial tools already available to them to accelerate their ability to create social impact.

Like it or not, money is an incredible tool. If nonprofit leaders could better understand it, stop fearing it, and learn how to wield it effectively, the results could be transformative.

Photo Credit: piermario

Tags: capital campaign, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Clara Miller, financing not fundraising, growth capital, Money and Mission blog, Nonprofit Finance Fund, SEGUE