NonprofitEye

Working in the nonprofit sector it's easy to forget about the resources in the for-profit world. So today, I'm going to recommend poking our heads out into the sun once in a while. I sat down to read a copy of CFO magazine. I figured it wouldn't have a lot to relate to, but was I wrong. Keep in mind no endorsement received, I love this rag! One article in particular, Finance in History: Here's to the Bean Counters: A slur to finance folks and accountants, the term has a noble past by R.G. Voorhee s captured my imagination. I won't quote it away, but just give you the opening paragraph (emphasis mine): "Bean counting" has long been an insulting term for what finance professionals and accountants do. Often, it's been used to tar CFOs as transaction processors—a role largely relegated to the back office . What's more, people like to use the phrase to ratchet up the pedestrian aspects of finance by tagging practitioners as "mere"...

Last week, in MISSION WITHOUT I.T. IS LIKE A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE I set out to write  ROI, but before I'd finished my first paragraph, I had revealed my own flawed organizational paradigm. Allan Benamer contributed a critically important comment: IT is actually responsible for all the other departments you mentioned (accounting, marketing, etc.) in the best nonprofits? You really can't do accounting, marketing or fundraising without IT. ...you could try but you'd have a heck of a hard time scaling. Think of IT as an umbrella that keeps all the other departments from getting wet. In the best nonprofits, it should be integrated into every department and not be a standalone. The only way to effectively address complaints about ineffective organization? Offer a solution. How about this: replace our world of the three overlapping sets: communications/ operations/accounting--with a new world---mission/community/investment. The catches? If your giving is an investme...

Just read Andrew Taylor's post An Unpleasant Argument . In his post he struggles with donor challenges about how to prioritize the recipients of charitable gifts: Why should people give to your organization rather than support the poor, the hungry, or the destitute? And why should your donors get a tax break on their gifts? It reminded me of something that happened during the Katrina disaster. Rescuers enforced triage rules and refused to allow people to bring their pets. Of all of the horrors that occurred during the bungled emergency response, this gave me the most pause. It was a double punch, first you've just lost your home and you've been sitting on a roof fearing for your life and then, forced to leave your family cat or dog to a certain death (drowning or starvation). I knew, with every shred of logic I have, that the triage strategy was correct. People first, pets second. And there were people everywhere, stranded and dying and desperate. There's no...

How did I make sense of the nonprofit universe before I discovered the Urban Institute (a Nonpartisian Economic and Public Policy Research Organization)? There are 11 policy centers under the umbrella of the Urban Institute. The one that rocks my boat is, of course, the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy (CNP). The mission of CNP is to promote understanding of civil society and improve nonprofit sector performance through rigorous research, clear analysis and informed policy. Even more enticing is one of CNP's programs: the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) - the national clearinghouse of data on the nonprofit sector in the United States . Current NCCS Projects include: The " Form 990 Wiki " (a collaborative website) for helping the nonprofit research and practitioner communities reason together about the draft IRS Form 990 released in June 2007 by the IRS. The goal is to develop a set of practical recommendations that have been carefu...

How do you achieve your mission without infrastructure? What is your mission? Help underserved youth get jobs? To get to that mission you'll need to: Tell others about your story? Marketing Ask for help (especially money)? Fundraising Keep your government funding? Accounting Answer an email? IT Congratulations, now you need $100,000 to carry out your mission (not counting your salary of course). Will the purpose, the appeal, the grant request and the communication advance your mission? Sure, but it has to make more than $100,000. Enter the business measurement: Return on Investment or ROI. This is a measure that profit making companies use to determine how much money they make from how much money they used. In other words, if you invest $100,000 and make $500,000, that would be a pretty good return on your investment. Now, what place does ROI have in the no...