Innovations in the Nonprofit Sector

Free Rent at Malls for nonprofits

North Carolina, some malls are filling empty retail spaces with nonprofits. In some cases the spaces have been donated and in some cases the nonprofit pays a nominal fee for premium space. In one case at least, the mall and nonprofit have struck a deal that requires the nonprofit to move within 72 hours if the space is rented but the group says it is well worth it.

Nine Tips to Better Nonprofit Pricing (SSIR)

Great recent blog by Rafi Mohammed at Stanford

"Nonprofits care about pricing just as much as their for-profit counterparts. Since nonprofit organizations generally aim to serve as many customers as possible, their prices have to encourage growth. However, the urge to set low prices is balanced by the need to produce revenue to improve services. Here are nine pricing tips that simultaneously generate higher revenues and growth. Best of all, these tips emphasize the importance of better serving customers by offering pricing choices."

Read the full blog, but here are the tips:

Adopt the right nonprofit pricing mindset.
Stop marking up costs.
Set prices that capture value.exhibitions.
Create a value statement.
Understand that customers have different pricing needs.
Implement differential pricing.
Offer product versions.
Provide pick-a-plan options.
Use pricing tactics to complete your customer puzzle.

Does the Jr League need to be groovier? (WSJ)

Thought this was of interest - the Jr. League has lost a fifth of its members over the past 10 years. This article in the WSJ describes their 'makeover'  - undertaken with the hope of attracting the next generation of volunteers.  I suggest they come out here and check out the Care Fair. Nobody organizes like our Jr. League.

Lack of money stifles innovation

According to a study released by John Hopkins University, “a willingness to innovate, experiment, and evaluate is wide spread in the nonprofit world.” However, nonprofits are financially restricted and thus unable act on these innovative ideas. 

Of the more than 400 social-service, economic-development, and arts charities that were surveyed, about 80 percent said they had adopted at least one innovative program in the past five years.  But, more than two-thirds of respondents said they had identified an innovative program they were unable to implement, generally because they funds.

According to the study, large nonprofits were more likely to fund innovative projects than small ones. Of groups with budgets greater than $3-million, ninety-one percent said that they had adopted at least one innovative program or service in the past five years, compared with 75 percent of groups with budgets under $500,000.

When it comes to measuring results, 85 percent of charities surveyed said they measured the effectiveness of at least a portion of their programs and services at least once a year.

The most common way to measure was to focus on ways to quantify a charity’s work, for example, the number of performances an orchestra holds or the number of meals a soup kitchen serves. But many charities, nearly 70 percent, also look at results produced.  These outcome measurements survey whether the organizations are succeeding in doing such things as curbing hunger or homelessness in their communities.

While most nonprofits agree that there are definite benefits to measuring results, many wish there were better, more efficient means for evaluation.  Eighty-two percent of respondents said they needed improved tools to measure the qualitative impact of their work, and 81 percent called for measurement tools that took less time to use.

According to one respondent, “The message that evaluation is important is heard loud and clear.  The message that we need help developing the methodology to do so and the assistance in implementing it and paying for it is not being heard at all.”

Read more.

New Online Legal Resource for Nonprofits

A legal organization has unveiled a new Web site, LawForChange, that offers information and resources about legal issues affecting nonprofit groups in areas including fund raising, lobbying, governance, and taxation. Check it out!

Apply for the Digital Fundraising Campaign Challenge!

We do not usually post grant opportunities her, but this one really resonates with some of the issues raised in the speed mentoring event.

Catalog Choice, a mail reduction service funded by the Overbrook Foundation, is launching a national contest designed to recognize and reward paperless fundraising campaigns by nonprofit organizations. The Paperless Choice Challenge will award prizes to organizations demonstrating innovation and results in digital fundraising techniques and campaigns.

The program invites entries of successful, creative, and replicable campaigns that use email, Web sites, video, social media, widgets, etc. — anything that is moving an organization away from traditional paper-based direct-mail fundraising.

A first prize of $5,000 and an honorable mention prize of $1,000 will be awarded in each of the following categories: Best Digital Campaign by a Small Organization (annual budget of $1 million or less); Best Digital Campaign by a Medium Organization (annual budget of $1 million to $5 million); Best Digital Campaign by a Large Organization (annual budget of $5 million or more); and Most Innovative Digital Campaign (organization of any size).

The Paperless Choice Challenge will be open for entries starting June 15, 2010, with submissions due by September 15, 2010. Program guidelines are available at the program Web site.

What makes a good nonprofit video?

Check out these examples

http://bit.ly/c4kGrt

Last Year's Social Entrepreneur of the Year changing homelessness (SL Tribune)

Matt Minkevitch and the other members of the Homeless Task Force have made a tremendous difference in the lives of homeless individuals in Utah.

"The state is halfway through a 10-year effort to reduce chronic homelessness, which often drains the services available for individuals and families in short-term crisis. State officials point to the ongoing construction of new housing for the chronically homeless as part of the explanation for the drop. Providing housing is often the first step toward sobriety, employment and improved mental health.

"The quality of life of people who suffered homelessness for many years has improved significantly," said Matt Minkevitch, executive director of The Road Home, the downtown Salt Lake City shelter.

A total of 3,372 homeless people were tallied statewide during the annual point-in-time count in January. Despite the ongoing recession, that is an increase of less than 1 percent, compared to the January 2009 count. In 2005, the chronically homeless made up about 18 percent of the homeless population over the course of the year. This year, the group is expected to be 5.2 percent.

Read about their success here

 

 

Podcast on Strategic Restructuring from SSIR

David La Piana: Strategic Restructuring for Nonprofit Organizations rom the Stanford Social Innovation Review

"The current economic climate may be leaving nonprofit management leaders at a point where they find merging with another organization as a strategy for survival. However, consultant David La Piana offers a broader array of collaborative options, which he has coined strategic restructuring, as a way to strengthen effectiveness, spread best practices, and expand reach. Incorporating case studies as a practitioner and consultant, he reviews the motivations and inhibitions that come with these options. In tough economic times or not, nonprofit management leaders may find that they may benefit from strategic res.tructuring as a way to build sustainable, long-term relationships that further the impact of the cause."

. >>Listen to this podcast

1/4 will lose nonprofit status May 15 (NYT)

According tot he New York Times, as many as 400,000 nonprofit organizations will lose their tax exempt status on May 15, thanks to a provision buried in a 2006 federal bill aimed at pension reform. that directs the IRS to revoke the tax exemptions of groups that failed to file for three consecutive years. Three years have passed, and thus the deadline looms.

Read the article here. Oh, and dont forget to file your 990 or an extention!

Millennials use email - but prefer face to face asks (Survey)

A recent survey of more than 2,200 Americans between the ages of 20 and 40,  found that Millennials put a high value on face-to-face communication when it comes to requests for time or money:

• 91% said they were at least somewhat likely to respond to a face-to-face request for money from a nonprofit
• 8 % said they were highly likely to respond to an e-mail request.
• 93 % prefer email  for information from organizations, followed by Facebook (23.8 percent) and print (26.9 percent).
• 72% said they do not need to volunteer for an organization before they donate
• 61% would like to have access to board and executive leadership;
• 72% said they would be willing to communicate with friends and family about ways to be involved in an organization they support

Read the report here.

Nonprofit business planning (SCORE)

Check out this new toolkit and template from SCORE specifically for nonprofits

 

Asking NPOS to pay (Boston Globe)

Now Boston is following the on the heels of Salt Lake County and asking nonprofit organizatoins to pay a sur charge for municipal services.  Boston hospitals, universities, and other tax-exempt nonprofits may be asked to contribute tens of millions of dollars more to city coffers to help pay for basic municipal services such as police and public works.  Read the story here:

Accountability conflicts (HBS)

This new working paper from Harvard Business School professor Alnoor Ebrahim describes the multiple, and sometimes competing, accountability demands faced by nonprofot organizations.

Key concepts include:

• Accountability is not simply about compliance with laws or industry standards, but is more deeply connected to organizational purpose and public trust.
  Nonprofits will continue to face multiple and competing accountability demands, so they must be deliberate in prioritizing among these demands. A critical challenge is to find a balance between upward accountability to their patrons and remaining true to their missions.
  Few nonprofits have paid serious attention to how they might be more accountable to the communities they seek to serve.
  Juggling the many expectations of accountability—for finances, governance, performance, and mission—requires integration and alignment throughout the organization.
  Numerous mechanisms of accountability are available to nonprofits, such as greater transparency and disclosure, performance assessment, industry self-regulation, and adaptive learning. But leaders must adapt any such mechanisms to suit their organization.
  The greatest payoffs rest with strategy-driven forms of accountability that can help nonprofits to achieve their missions.

State Budget Crises and NPOS (Gates Foundation)

This report from the Gates Foundation describes how state and local government actions to cut program funding, withhold payments, and impose new fees and taxes threaten nonprofits struggling to meet growing demand while charitable giving declines. They advocate strongly that nonprofit organizations must have a strong presence on the hill to counter these policies making

Just Ask! (Stanford GSB)

This article by Stanford University graduate School of Business professor Frank Flynn has some gems, for example one of the most overlooked strategies for getting people to be generous, for instance, is actually to ask them!
His experiments find:

• that one barrier to "the ask" is that people grossly underestimate how often their requests for help will be honored.
• People who say "no" to an initial ask are more likely to say "yes" to a subsequent one.

Homer Simpson for Nonprofits? (Network for Good)

Here are some highlights form the Network For Good free book:

• "Small, not big - The bigger the scale of what you're communicating, the smaller the impact on your audience
  Hopeful, not hopeless - People tend to act on what they believe they can change--If your problem seems intractable, enormous and endless, people won't be motivated to help
  Peer pressure still works (Nope, it doesn't end after high school) - People are more likely to do something if they know other people like them are doing it. "

Download it here

Economic impact of just 6 npos (Boston Globe)

This article in the Boston Globe reports that six cultural institutions in Framingham, a suburb of Boston, "generate nearly double their budgets in local spending annually, creating scores of jobs along the way." Combined, these arts and history centers, a public garden and library—spend about of $6.3 million annually create some 87 full-time equivalent jobs. And here is the most important element to the region's economic development - these organizations generate nearly double their own budgets annually—or $11.4 million—in local spending.

New survey of nonprofits (Grant Thornton)

Most nonprofits responded to the troubled economy and heightened scrutiny in 2009 by cutting costs and taking steps to be more accountable, a new survey says.

Among 465 nonprofits:

• 87 percent reduced expenses
• 57 percent reduced personnel
• 53 percent delayed capital projects
• 56 percent revised their strategic plans to reflect the economic downturn
• 58 percent rebalanced their investment portfolios
• 39 percent changing their investment policies

Do events work? (Philanthropy Journal)

When nonprofits accept that net proceeds from fundraising events should not be a primary funding source, they are freed up to truly analyze the value of special events. Read this quick analysis here.