|
At least six different strategies have emerged over the past decade as diverse non-profit organizations in different local communities and regions of Canada have successfully faced the organizational sustainability challenge. These strategies are not mutually exclusive.
1. Strengthening Internal Capacities
This basic strategy focuses on building the internal competencies and capacities of the organization, its leaders, managers, staff, and volunteers through planning, learning, innovating, and changing.
Continuous attention is paid to the four quadrants of organizational health, excellence, and sustainability:
- Recruiting and retaining experienced, knowledgeable, diverse, and creative leaders, managers, staff, and volunteers; and, building effective and synergistic internal teams and relationships
- Visioning and creating concrete and realistic plans for the future, covering mission development, program development, people development, financial development, and capital asset development
- Building internal systems, policies, and procedures as a basic safety net in such areas as finances, people, buildings, clients, programs, risks, and revenues
- Connecting with the community, funders, clients, supporters, and other agencies, building profile, supports, influence, credibility, and new markets and opportunities.
Most non-profit Board members and managers know and understand this strategy. It is about paying attention to the basics. However, a large percentage of non-profit organizations do not pay sufficient attention to the internal issues of organizational health, excellence, and sustainability. They focus more on programs and services, on the needs of their clients and communities.
2. Diversifying Program and Revenues
This strategy focuses on diversifying the organization, its programs, people, and revenues; and, on building an entrepreneurial spirit. The goal is to strengthen organizational resiliency and robustness.
The underlying belief and experience is that diverse non-profit organizations are:
- Less vulnerable to the changing priorities of funders, donors, and volunteers
- More capable of providing clients and communities with easier access to the programs and resources they need and want, and responding to community change and new opportunities.
This strategy has its own challenges. The conundrum is: “Do we remain small and focused (the niche organization) or do we grow in size and diversity?”. Perhaps the biggest challenge is that there is no middle ground. Those organizations that have tried the “somewhat diverse, somewhat larger” approach have found life very difficult. Increasing diversity (and growth, the next strategy) brings more complex and time consuming governance and management issues. Many of us resist the idea of working with other people who are quite different from ourselves. “Why do we need to change?” is a constant cry.
3. Growing Larger
This strategy focuses on building the competencies and capacities, and the diversity, of organizations through growth. The goal is to ensure that the organization can acquire the necessary skills and competencies to mange its programs resources, and changing environments.
The underlying belief and experience is that larger non-profit organizations are more capable of:
- Constructively influencing their communities and funders
- Recruiting wise and skilled Board members; and, affording and acquiring a diverse senior management team
- Offering wide ranging supports, learning opportunities, and career development possibilities for volunteers and staff
- Achieving economies of scale.
4. Collaborating And Partnering
This strategy focuses on building positive and synergistic relationships with other like organizations, both locally and regionally. The goal is to expand programs and resources for clients and communities, and to strengthen each organization through sharing in the collective pool of skills, ideas, competencies, knowledge, relationships, and reputations of the partners.
The underlying belief and experience is that partnering non-profit organizations are able to:
- Provide expanded, higher quality, and more connected programs and resources to clients and communities
- Acquire more resources together
- Present a combined front to funders and other potential supporters.
The possibilities and challenges of this strategy are discussed further in Part 4 and Appendix P.
5. Embedding In Systems
This strategy takes the idea of partnering further using a systems perspective.
An example might help.
Imagine a local community crisis line, initiated in the 1970’s in response to the youth drug culture. Over the past five years, the numbers of calls have been declining, the types of callers have been radically changing, as have been the motivations (more learning oriented) and ages (younger) of the volunteers. The contractor is the formal mental health system. They are wondering whether they are getting any value for their funds, and whether the crisis lines could not be more efficiently delivered on a regional basis.
The non-profit organization decides to embed the crisis lines more deeply in the mental health and community health system. They negotiate a relationship with the formal mental health services to provide ongoing hotline support to current mental health clients, and in doing so, reduce the pressures on the professionals in the formal mental health system. A triage telephone arrangement allows the crisis line to link a mental health client up immediately with a professional if this is required. The same kind of relationship is extended to seniors and people struggling with addictions issues.
This strategy moves away from the traditional independence of the non-profit sector, recognizing that governments contract with non-profit organizations to deliver certain services as key parts of the broader service system or service sub-system. Particularly in tougher times of fiscal restraint and rationalization, if the non-profit organization’s contracted service is not seen as essential, and adding value, to the broader system, the chances are the contract will be lost.
6. Creating Social Enterprises
This strategy focuses in two directions at once. On one hand, the emphasis is on creating programs that operate more like a business, where clients (now called customers) pay for services, and there are opportunities to create profits49. On the other hand, the emphasis is on building the wealth of the organization so that there are funds to invest in future work regarding the mission, advocacy, and innovating and developing new services and products.
Non-profit organizations have always run programs for fees. Examples would be counseling, childcare services, fitness programs, and summer camps. Further, many non-profit organizations have been governed and managed on a business-like perspective, where people pay serious attention to issues such as financial management, marketing, risk management, and long term planning.
Non-profit organizations that are pursuing the social enterprise strategy have taken these strengths and gone further. They are:
- Considering some programs that operate purely on a fee basis
- Analyzing all programs from a cost/benefit perspective, and making informed decisions about which programs should be allowed to run at a loss and which must make profits
- Building up organizational wealth so that there are real opportunities to invest in the long term
- Investing reserves in innovation and development
- Building internal entrepreneurial and marketing capacities
- Considering programs that are outside of their traditional ways of operating, and that may bring them into competition with the private sector.
Consider, for example, the story of an organization that has traditionally provided services for women and children facing family violence. Over the years, the organization has built a capacity for property management. The organization creates a wholly-owned private company to offer a full range of property management services to other non-profit organizations, private landowners, strata title corporations, and co-operatives. Over 5 years, this company grows, after an initial investment of $ 150,000, to become quite large and profitable. Profits are returned to the society to support needed community services.
|