Guest Post – The Best Advice to Achieve Success
Post by Gary Gilson
When I headed the Minnesota News Council I heard what I consider the best advice for a nonprofit on how to achieve success.
I was in Denver to conduct an ethics workshop for managers of public radio stations in the far west, and I heard a Washington, D.C.-based consultant tell them the two most important things they could do:
1) convince their audience that the station belonged to the listeners, not to the management, and
2) take risks to grow, even if risks meant incurring debt.
In other words, a nonprofit had to be entrepreneurial to avoid stagnation and death.
In the case of the News Council, whose mission was to help the public hold news outlets accountable for accuracy, fairness and ethical standards, our services needed strong branding, especially since those services seemed soft compared with other nonprofits’ services — distribution of food and shelter to the poor, or delivery of entertainment through the arts.
To boost the News Council’s branding the board of directors included in the budget funds to support a cable television series on media ethics and a magazine focused on media matters. Those activities helped generate business for us:
1) requests for our help and
2) cash and in-kind contributions to our operating costs.
Nonprofit boards of directors, from what I have observed, take very seriously their fiduciary responsibilities: to make sure the books balance, and to insure that the agency fulfills its mission.
As they should.
But in so doing, they may be avoiding risk — like a football team that is leading in the final minutes of a game, but instead of playing to win, plays what is called a “prevent defense,” so as not to lose. In spite of themselves, those teams very often lose.
It’s very hard to raise money for anything, especially in this economy. I came to believe that it was easier to raise a million dollars for, say, a major arts organization than to raise $175,000 to $200,000 for a small outfit like the News Council.
Our budget covered the salaries of the agency’s two or three employees and the office rent. Many of our needs were met through in-kind donations, such as printing and space for public meetings. Still, as small as the operation was, it had to function as a business, not as an ethereal do-good venture.
The crucial step any business must take these days is to harness the power of the Internet to market itself, and an investment in expert help is, in my mind, the very risk a nonprofit should consider.
The News Council served the public and the press for 40 years, before closing shop in 2011, due to the economic slump, the shrinking of the news business and declining financial support from corporations and foundations. In its life the News Council’s services contributed significantly to the raising of journalism standards and to understanding between the press and the public.
Those of us who participated in the process — volunteer panel members and staff — feel gratified.
Gary Gilson is a career journalist who served for 14 years as Executive Director of the Minnesota News Council, an independent nonprofit agency. To find out more about Gary click here.