By Noble Smith
Reduced philanthropic support and demand from potential donors that non- profits operate cost-effectively, within budget and tightly managed!
It is clearly obvious and critically necessary to recognize that private sector fund-raising in a difficult economic environment is a huge challenge and this current situation will be a part of non-profit philanthropy for years to come.
In essence, fund-raising in this new age of philanthropy is changing rapidly. The traditional Arts of Asking are still valid and continue to be an integral element in the fund-raising tool box. However, the social media networks offered by on-going and exciting technological advances must be given equal attention and implementation.
There have been many peaks and valleys in the magnitude of philanthropic support over the past century with two of the most challenging times during the 30s at the time of the Great Depression and since the summer and fall of 2008 continuing right through 2009 and beyond. The vast majority of today’s economists are warning that returning to the free spending levels of the late 80s and 90s and the first years of the 21st century are forever in the past.
Tomorrow’s economic climate will have a dramatic impact on philanthropy, and the non-profit industry best grab its bootstraps and relace them tightly.
Today, the onslaught of the current economic downturn has caused many non-profits to fold or join with other organizations that have somewhat similar goals and objectives. It has also created, fortunately in my judgment, numerous opportunities for non-profit leadership – both staff and volunteers – to rethink, retool and reformat how their institutions are managed.
Diminishing support levels have forced non-profits to reexamine business and strategic plans of action, or in many cases to create them. Pencils are now constantly sharpened and programs and activities are under intense scrutiny and rightfully so.
Many non-profits, even those old and established ones, are looking at revenue projections with brazen reality. Unless programs and activities generate enough income to sustain operations, they are being mothballed, cancelled or remolded into other institutional programs and activities.
Tough as the current recession is, I view the future in extremely positive terms for those in the industry and those advising it have been forced to set hard-nosed benchmarks and view and operate their organizations as though stockholders were constantly overseeing each transaction.
Many non-profits have redefined the meaning of “creativity” when that skill relates to generating income or insuring that adequate funds are available to sustain programs and new operations. Not only is revamping a necessity during down times, but it plants the seeds for constant close monitoring of all operations ad infinitum – it is forcing more non-profits to control their destinies.
As quintessential portion of destiny control revolves directly around the opportunities that “electronic fund raising” has provided the non-profit communities. Such relatively new devices – blogs, myspace, faceboook, utube and even newer systems still on the drawing boards – will become integrated fund raising tools for almost all non-profits. These 21st century social media networks will not replace the time-tested and honored art of asking. They will, however, become indispensable fund raising tools if the non-profit wants to survive financially. The current and next generations will have no problem understanding and readily using these giving mechanisms.
As the nation rights itself financially and economically, those in the non-profit world who have used these difficult times to strengthen and restructure their operations and learn, accept and implement new and creative methods of raising private sector support will be on solid ground tomorrow.
The non-profit world is a huge business which demands that its operations, management and oversight equal those traits in private sector Fortune 500 companies.
(Next blog – The Art of Asking – still “groovie”, essential and successful!, IF…….!)
Noble Smith is a featured blogger a former Commissioner of the Maine Commission for Community Service, and President of Noble Smith Associates (Development and Marketing Consultants).
