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Dec 2012Ten Predictions for the Nonprofit Sector in 2013
A post by James V. Toscano 1. As traditional sources of gifts and grants plateau, nonprofits will increasingly turn to new and alternative sources of revenue, including social entrepreneurship, cause marketing, and for-profit subsidiaries. Pay for performance, in many forms, will be an emerging methodology for payment by government and other funding groups. 2. The total number of nonprofits will increase year over year, as will the number of mergers and acquisitions among existing nonprofits. 3. Of those retiring Boomers from the business world and others who want to benefit society, some will choose to start B-corporations, which are double…
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Dec 2012How Many Board Members Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?
A Posting from James V. Toscano How many times have we read, heard or said something like, “Board Members Must Not Only Give, They Must Get” or one of the variations of that message? I have read it, heard it, said it, taught it, written it a few thousand times in my fifty years in nonprofit management and consulting. And who listens? Apparently not a lot of board members In the latest BoardSource survey of nonprofit CEO’s on their boards’ performance (see the distribution in the map below), a consistent pattern emerges. Sampling both BoardSource members and nonmembers on a range…
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Nov 2012Is the Honeymoon Over?
A post by James V. Toscano Is the long honeymoon between government and nonprofits winding up on a particularly sour note? In my last posting, Plus Ca Change, the role of nonprofits in advocacy with government was discussed. Here the effects of changes in public policy and efforts of nonprofits to find new sources of revenue are discussed. A recent Christian Science Monitor story. “A Political Chill for Charities?” details a number of moves made by cash-strapped government units on the governance, operations and, especially, finances of nonprofits. Journalist Jeremiah Hall writes: “Perhaps the greatest threat is to a charity’s finances. Nonprofits…
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Nov 2012Plus Ça Change
plus ça change A post by James V. Toscano Well, the long drawn out election process is over, with everything pretty much the same, albeit with early hints of a desire to get something done. President Obama returns for four more years, hopefully no more than one as a lame duck. Congress remains essentially the same, with the Democrats picking up one, possibly two, seats in the Senate while they have three more votes in their minority status in the House of Representative. Could we reverse the old saw and predict: “ Plus la même chose, plus ça change?” Pardon…
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Oct 2012What Would Adam Smith Say?
A post by James V. Toscano The headline reads: “A Scoop of Social Responsibility: Ben and Jerry’s the B Corp” The NonProfit Quarterly’s Nonprofit Headlines goes on to report that Unilever’s Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Company is the first sub of a publicly traded corporation to be certified as a B corporation. And what is a B Corporation? The B Corporation website is quite explicit: “B Corp certification is to sustainable business what Fair Trade certification is to coffee or USDA Organic certification is to milk. B Corps are certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of…
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Oct 2012The Revenue Crisis
A post by James V. Toscano The traditional nonprofit revenue model is broken. Revenue formulas are out of date. Contributions just don’t flow in the same way. Some revenue taps have dried up. Others, such as government, are fading. Traditional methods don’t work as well. It’s time to reimagined the nonprofit revenue paradigm. Attention and concern lately have focused on measuring results and impact. However, if we lack the resources to do the work, we get no results. Revenue always precedes results in priority. And if revenue sources demand results but do not pay to evaluate and obtain results, we…
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Oct 2012A New Paradigm?
A post by James V. Toscano Traditionally, help in supporting poor and vulnerable populations was largely the responsibility of government, foundations and nonprofits. There didn’t seem to be opportunity for the third sector, the market, to intervene in significant ways. Certainly, businesses give charitable dollars to help alleviate such conditions, but it has never been its focus for profits. Now, the ground is shifting. Privatization of some governmental functions has attracted the for-profit sector, now in a number of areas. Politicians of one stripe or another are talking about new ways to meet societal need through market-based competition, especially in…
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Sep 2012More Money for Good, More or Less
A post by James V. Toscano In a recent posting on “Apples or Oranges,” I suggested a number of problems with Charity Navigator’s methods in trying to combine measures of financial health and of transparency and accountability into some kind of measure of effectiveness. There are number of other organizations besides Charity Navigator attempting to guide donors on the effectiveness of nonprofit organizations, including Hope Consulting, Guidestar, Foundation Center, Better Business Bureau and our own Charities Review Council, to name but a few in a crowded field. Ultimately, at least for now, the holy grail is the attempt to measure and report…
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Sep 2012Guest Post from the UK – Is Offline Fundraising Needed in The Current Online Era?
Post by Alison Richmond Where do you go to raise money? Traditional wisdom says TV commercials, mail-in forms and even door-to-door. But things are changing in the age of the internet – virtual giving is growing. Once considered a luxury, online fundraising is now a standard procedure for most charities and other non-profit organizations. Online fundraising has netted over €15 billion since 2010, a number that only continues to rise with the increasing prevalence of paperless banking.* So what’s the appeal? For one, online fundraising is easy and convenient. It requires no “sales pitch” and no haggard afternoons standing on street…
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Sep 2012Moving the Needle
A post by James V. Toscano In an article in Nonprofit Quarterly, “Strategic Philanthropy: Who Wins and Loses?” Prentice Zinn, using a variety of reasons, outlines the argument against funding sources alone deciding where to focus their grants as part of their version of a strategic initiative, often involving outcomes measurement and scaling up service. In a trenchant major point, he states: “Today, the field of philanthropy is seeing a relative explosion of conversations, debate, and reflection about how it can be more effective. Add to this rich exchange of information a dose of organizational narcissism, careerism, and peer pressure…