• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Social Velocity

Creating more strategic, financially savvy, and confident nonprofit leaders and organizations.

  • Consulting
    • Financial Model Assessment
    • Executive Coaching
    • Strategic Planning
  • Book
  • Clients
  • Speaking
  • Blog
  • About
    • Nell Edgington’s Bio
    • Media
  • Connect
  • Tools
Home » Nonprofits » Making Donors Organization Builders

September 25, 2009 By Nell Edgington 2 Comments

Making Donors Organization Builders

The “starvation cycle” of nonprofit organizations doing more and more with less and less has to end.  But how can nonprofit organizations break out of this cycle when donors won’t fund nonprofit capacity?

The news last week that the Boston Foundation will shift the majority of their competitive grants to unrestricted operating support, which in reality means capacity building, is fantastic.  The Boston Foundation is one of the few foundations that understands that strengthening nonprofit organizations, through money to support technology, infrastructure, fundraising, top talent, management expertise, strategic planning, evaluation, research and development, is absolutely key to making social change possible.

But the Boston Foundation is just one in a sea of foundations and individual philanthropists who have yet to understand the importance of money to build nonprofit organizations.

But perhaps there is hope.  Social Velocity has helped many nonprofits convince foundations and individual donors, who previously may have only provided direct service funding, to become organization builders.

I have discussed before Social Velocity’s work to help Heart House, an after-school program for at-risk kids in Austin and Dallas, strengthen their plan to grow statewide and create a pitch for growth capital.  Heart House could not pay for this planning work through their operating budget, so they went to a foundation that was already supporting their program and asked them to invest in this growth planning.  When the foundation understood that a small investment in organization building would help this organization that they love improve the lives of even more children, they were happy to invest.

Another example is Social Velocity’s client, English at Work, a nonprofit that teaches ESL classes to the employees of restaurants and hotels.  English at Work is a subsidized social enterprise where the hotels and restaurants pay them a fee to run these classes.  The nonprofit is demonstrating great results and has real potential to replicate the model.  First, however, they need to strengthen their overall revenue function to position them for growth, which is where Social Velocity came in.

But again, English at Work didn’t have the operating revenue to pay for that outside expertise. So they approached a foundation in their fold and made the case for how a strengthened revenue function would put English at Work in a position to start planning for replication. And that replication would mean that their results-achieving model could provide more people with stronger English language skills.  Stronger English language skills mean better, higher paying jobs, less stress on the social safety net and a stronger, healthier community.  And what English at Work helped their donor understand is that to get to that positive outcome, English at Work as an organization has to be more effective.  They have to learn how to create a stronger, more sustainable revenue function that can support a larger organization over the long term.  And figuring that out costs money.

Nonprofit organizations need to start approaching the donors and board members who are already supporting their programs and make the case, in an articulate, reasoned, but passionate way that for more results, they have to invest in organization building.  And they need those closest to the organization to make those investments.  It is a process of educating those nearest and dearest to the organization about the power of a stronger internal organization.  It’s a new conversation, but an important, and potentially game-changing, one.


Related Posts

  • Nonprofit Capacity Building Works: An Interview with Kathy Reich
  • Building Better Nonprofits: A Podcast
  • Nonprofit Leaders Have the Power to Create Capacity Funding

Filed Under: Capacity Building, Nonprofits, Philanthropy Tagged With: Boston Foundation, capacity, English at Work, Foundations, Heart House, nonprofit, organization-building, Philanthropy, Social Velocity, starvation cycle

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Free Training

Consulting Services

If you want your nonprofit or foundation to do and be more, Nell can help you get there

Ready to Learn More About Working with Nell?

Book a Discovery Call

Featured Blog Post Topics

  • Social Changemaker Interviews

  • Smart Strategic Planning

  • Effective Philanthropy

  • Networks for Social Change

  • The New Nonprofit Leader

  • A Groundbreaking Board

  • Reinventing the Nonprofit Sector

  • From Fundraising to Financing

Recent Posts

You Can Turn Any Challenge into Opportunity

A Social Change Army is Amassing

It’s Not All Up to You

To Save the World, Save Yourself

Imagine the World You Want to See

Categories

  • Abundance
  • Advocacy
  • Board of Directors
  • Capacity Building
  • Capacity Capital
  • Financing
  • Fundraising
  • Individual Donors
  • Leadership
  • Marketing
  • Networks
  • Nonprofits
  • Philanthropy
  • Roadblocks
  • Social Change
  • Social Movements
  • Strategy
  • Consulting
  • Book
  • Clients
  • Speaking
  • Blog
  • About
  • Connect
  • Tools

© 2022 Social Velocity | Privacy Policy | [email protected] | Tel: 512-694-7235