Nonprofit Sustainability

It is great to see more and more research and writing around the topic of
financial sustainability. There are enough variables that the typical board,
and finance committee, needs to take the time to step back and examine them
in the context of their specific organization.

Beyond Sustainability: Identifying the Right Resource Mix for Growth - 
Woods Bowman

On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, across Central Park from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met), stands the New-York Historical
Society. It was founded in 1804 as both a museum and a library sixty-two
years before the Met and ninety-one years before the New York Public Library
(NYPL). The combined budgets of these much younger institutions are now
thirty times greater than the Historical Society's.

Sustainability is a necessary condition for long-term success, but it is not
sufficient to optimize the impact of an organization. The Society is over
two hundred years old, so obviously it is sustainable, but long ago it ceded
its preeminent role among New York's museums and libraries to younger
rivals. This article explains how an organization should manage its revenue
composition to go beyond sustainability and maximize its growth potential.

Read the entire article here.