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.