Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Doing Better with Less? (and results from our April Nonprofit Survey)

It was fun to be asked back to speak to one of the peer groups that I assisted in initially convening some 5-6 years ago. This group of nonprofit marketing professionals met at Butler University this month and was hosted by the Indianapolis Children’s Choir. Their next meeting will be in mid-July – you can find them on Smaller Indiana.

For decades, the nonprofit sector has been told to “Do More with Less”. In the current economic crunch, nationally known speaker and author Jan Masaoka has suggested we must now “Do Less with Less”. Read

The theme that came out of discussion with this group last week was to move beyond that mindset to think about “Doing Better with Less”. Looking for ways to narrow our focus and serve our core constituencies in new and better ways. Examples included centralizing intake and handing off programs that are not a tight match to your mission or where you don’t have the critical mass/size to promote, fund, and do them really well.

We have done some initial compilation of the responses to our early April nonprofit survey.

These reflect Indpls and we will be compiling Cincy area responses next.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Accepting Donations Online: Three Great Service Providers

Sometimes we can be theoretical and sometimes we need to be practical. If you are thinking about adding on-line donation to your website or exploring changes in the way you do things, you’ll find this article of interest. Bryan Orander

Accepting Donations Online: Three Great Service Providers - More people than ever are making donations to charitable organizations via the internet. They already shop, work and play online, why not give? If your group is not yet taking donations online, now is the perfect time to start. The tools that make online giving possible are becoming much more user friendly for both the charity and the donor. Plus the technology is more affordable than ever. >>Read entire article.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The First Collaboration Prize - $250,000 Goes to Two Organizations

Third in a series on Nonprofit Restructuring

The national Collaboration Prize was created by the Lodestar Foundation to support collaborations that increase impact and eliminate duplication of efforts among nonprofits that would otherwise compete. In support of this mission, Lodestar seeks to identify achievements in collaboration as models for inspiration and replication in the nonprofit world.

The Prize also seeks to build an information base of effective practice models that can be studied and used by academics, nonprofit leaders, and grantmakers to inspire and advance their work. True to the spirit of collaboration, the Lodestar Foundation has partnered with the AIM Alliance which includes The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University

In the summer of 2008, over 600 nominations were received for the inaugural year of the Prize. The collaborations that advanced demonstrated quantifiable evidence that they achieved exceptional impact and substantially eliminated the duplication of efforts through programmatic collaborations, administrative consolidation, or other joint activities.

First-Ever $250,000 National Nonprofit Collaboration Prize Contest Ends in Tie Between Two Successful Mergers – YMCA & JCC of Greater Toledo Area and Dallas Museum of Nature & Science - More

This link is to a series of one page overviews of the finalists (12 pgs - 4MB).