Pic from JC Colie

A donor should expect a nonprofit to maximize the return on their donated funds.  A donation should not be treated by a nonprofit as funds that are a commodity to be used once.  It is easy for any organization to spend funds and obtain no long term impact.  The action to make zero impact with donor funds takes no energy, no action.

It is not supposed to be easy to maximize the impact of donated funds.  A funding strategy plan is just as important to a nonprofit as a strategic plan and business plan.  The act of balancing a nonprofit’s priorities and control growth is the same for any business.

Impacting the level of success toward a nonprofit’s goals, objectives and outcomes lies with a donor’s choices.  A donor chooses among the 1.4 million nonprofits most times with little information.  A donor’s donation whether by an individual, a corporation or foundation is still made by people with preferences, likes and dislikes.

A donor can strategically choose to donate to a nonprofit that stands out in their community.  What makes the nonprofit chosen stand out?  What does the donor consider their community?  What natural ties does the donor have to a specific nonprofit?

Some aspects of nonprofits that donors have begun to look at is the true nature of what a nonprofit stands for.  Is the larger nonprofit management more or less likely to interact with programs?  This is less likely since most large nonprofits do not locate their administrative functions in the same location as a program.  Out of site out of mind is all too familiar and often the truth. 

The other aspect of larger nonprofits is the fallacy that they must pay large salaries to recruit the right talent to compete with the for-profit businesses.  This argument is false; it is just a way to justify management’s larger salaries than the general population. 

Nonprofit means giving and that includes employees.  Thousands of government workers manage and make decisions every day on hundreds of millions of dollars effecting thousands of people and thousands of nonprofits and they do not make near some of the salaries in the large nonprofits.  Voters mandate and expect checks and balances on the salaries of government workers.  The same oversight is expected to be extended by government on behalf of voters in allocating funds to nonprofits.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 12:01 am and is filed under Fundraising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.