(pic by hartboy)

Nonprofits to do some heavy lifting for the economy.  Ready and willing to bring their muscle and means to the table to overcome the enemy.

photo by scottpartee

What comes to mind first?  What is OK?

A person with a disability
A person who is weighs 300 plus pounds
A person who lives in public housing
A person who is homeless
A person who has multiple jobs
A person with mental health condition
A person who dresses well
A person over qualified
A person who did not finish high school
A person who is married
A person who is single
A woman
A man
A person whom looks young
A person whom looks old
A person with experience
A college student

Become an educated organization and begin to make changes. As nonprofit organizations you will recoup you costs more quickly than for-profits.

Check out Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and its information on Alternatives to Oil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_oil

Check out this web site on the use of Hemp and all of the products produced from it. http://everything.hemp.com/

Steps to take to lower impact to the environment and lower your costs.

1. Take advantage of video conferencing
2. Buy products on line, in bulk and those that have a lesser impact on the environment and ultimately lower your costs. Look for recycled or local products.
3. Request local businesses carry products that are made of recycled material.
4. Send email instead of mail.
5. Create a web experience for volunteering and delivering some of your services.
6. Raise money to be make changes to be carbon neutral.

pic by robin hutton

1. List Your Priorities of Programming Ideas
2. Elements to Use in Action Steps/Approaches/Strategies (Working Together)

• Strategic Planning (What, where, when and why baseline)
• Maximizing Assets: People, Organization, Effort, Space, Allocation of costs, Labeling, Cost allocation plan, Assignment of job function.
• Referral and Intake Systems
• Cross Pollination: Using resources already available and maximizing capacity.
• Whom do you serve: Geography, community, age and service type. (Who shows up in the Service Plan or the Strategic Plan?)
• Reality Check on ability to serve
• Equal Access Goal (Where are the cases? Where are the resources?) Geo coding for allocating resources. (Transportation weight to consider. How do you manage yourself to complete all of your daily tasks?)
• Low Lying Fruit
• 20-40 Minute Rule
• Day Job Syndrome (Capacity to change, evolve, develop vs. the day to day job) (Capacity to change, evolve, develop vs. the day to day job)
• Investment Risk Scale of Capital (Can what I am committed to doing be used for something else if I am wrong?)
• Management Choices for change vs. Institutional Choices for change
• Defining Outcomes
• Branding: Ownership, reporting, sharing, confidence and leadership
• Communication: web, telecommunicating, Co-location, transparency, team responsibility, and risk
• Continuous Quality Improvement (How do you learn?)
• How do you compete? Niche vs. General and Narrow vs. Broad. What does your mission allow?
• Who are my Funders?

1. 1. Donors
   2. Foundations
   3. State
   4. Federal
   5. City/Town
   6. Community
   7. Individuals
   8. Your Organizations Assets

If you are interested in overcoming barriers check out the previous post:

http://mynonprofitwebsite.com/blog/2008/04/30/nonprofits-evolution/

Do you want to changed the business environment of your organization? Try the outline below.

1. List Your Barriers and Challenges

2. Evolution of the Non-Profit Business Environment (Supporters Working Together) List supporters.
   1. Donors
   2. Foundations
   3. State
   4. Federal
   5. City/Town
   6. Community
   7. Individuals
   8. Your Organizations Assets

3. Successful Approaches and Innovative Strategies

• Strategic Planning (Why do you exist? Whom do you not serve? Why do you not serve them? Why do you do things the way you do? Whom do you consider a competitor? When was the last time you asked a person you served what’s missing?)
• Whom do you serve: Geography, community, age and service type. Who shows up in the Service Plan?
• Day Job Syndrome (What is the organization’s capacity to change, evolve, develop vs. the day to day job)
• Maximizing Assets (Review your people, organization, effort, space, allocation of costs, labeling, cost allocation plan, assignment of job function, etc)
• Systematic Evaluation at Intake (How is it done thorough out the organization?)
• Cross Pollination of Expertise
• Continuous Quality Improvement
• Thinking Out of the Box
• Defining Outcomes
• Branding
• Co-location of Programs

How do you stretch a dollar at your nonprofit? You accept more in kind contributions. Know what you use consistently each month and letting the community know what that is, will provide a means for businesses to donate if they do not have the cash. It is amazing how quickly it adds up. For example, a specific toner cartridge costs $20 plus, a ream of paper $4, toilet paper $7 (family size), paper towels $6 (family size), gas cards, etc.

Use your web site and solicitations to inform a person or business how they can help all year long. If your nonprofit is only asking in November and December, your placing your request at risk of ending up in what i call the Maybe Motivated Pile.

In the last two months of the year I received 63 requests for donations from nonprofits and picked three. However, certain solicitations during the year stood out and received a donation to fulfill our family contributions.

My point:  Make giving a year long process and provide for many levels of opportunities to inform and have people participate in the organization.

It is important for a nonprofit to plan on how it is going to raise money or support for its organization. To help nonprofits in their outline of the planning the process I have provided 6 questions below.

1. Do you have a Strategic Plan?

2. Do you have a Development Plan?

3. Is the Development Plan incorporated into the Strategic Plan?

4. Can you describe for your nonprofit each outcome in three sentences or less?

5. Is each outcome for the nonprofit something that can be publicize?

6. Do you know what it costs the nonprofit to deliver each outcome?

If you answer no to any of the six, your nonprofit needs to improve to be more successful in raising money.

In observing Earth Day my six year old and I had fun in the woods.  His conversation went something like this;

“The world is perfect and correct when I am walking in the woods. Then, next winter we cut down trees and in the spring we use them to cook our food. Then we use the leaves to make the fire with. The planet is real. It is important for animals to live on the earth; us too.

Are we an animal??

We need to be nice to nature, do not kick nature and kill it. If we are nice to nature, it will be nice to us.  We take care of nature like pets.”

Our joint action: We planted 26 trees that were grown by us and involved no use of vehicle transportation  to an area effected by construction and used fallen trees to cook our dinner and conserve our use of foreign fuels.  Any organization with its staff or community can start trees in a small space to be used elsewhere locally.

The use of tax credits and the economic might of the USA to improve the lives of the America people should not be so hard.

The reason for Tax Havens is the motivation not to pay taxes. Therefore, create zones of tax havens in the US where unemployment is the highest. Create the incentives to be in areas of the economy where there is the greatest needed to create new industry. Today the greatest need is energy independence. This is an area of National Security that has long been ignored.

Whether the country begins in Michigan or Ohio, two former power houses of manufacturing and industrial production or in Appalachia, jobs allows an individual to put food on their table, clothing on their back and a roof over their head.

The federal government has the largest amount of Research and Development money spent in many fields. Target the money to be spent in locations that meet economically depressed zones. Let anyone apply but require a minimum 51% of the money has to be spent to employee people who come to work in the designated zone. The money is intended for the economic development of the area targeted, any attempt to subcontract the work or any work around to companies outside the zone should be view as not in good faith.

This is the best way for public policy to work. It brings business, government, organizations and the community together in a coordinated effort.

Is Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina onto something? They recently created a network of international hospitals for its insurers to use by partnering hospitals in Thailand, Singapore, Turkey India, and Ireland. The list continues to grow. A key component for measuring quality is whether the Joint Commission International, an arm of the Joint Health Care Commission that accredits US hospitals, approves the hospital.

With the costs of procedures at foreign hospitals being substantially less than US hospitals and the state of health of individuals at these hospitals no less than US hospitals it seems that money does not make a better quality of care.

In many comparison studies on health care of the US and other industrial countries where there is universal health, the US population does not live longer or have better outcomes, wait times or successes. The only difference is that the US system is the most costly.

A shift to using the health care system of the world seems like opening competition to the US health care system may just be a way to lower costs. However, buyers beware, it is very difficult to sue for malpractice in many other countries.

One aspect of opening the health care system that I would advocate be assigned to insurers, is the liability that they yearly certify that the appropriate accreditation is current and that procedures be pre-approved to ensure the health insurer referral system documents are current.