Taking care of business.

There’s a lot of talk in the nonprofit trade papers and blogs about whether nonprofits should behave more like for-profit businesses.  I’m fascinated by this question, especially as it applies to fundraising.

What’s this conversation really about?

I don’t think it should be about behaving in a more “corporate” manner -- wearing better suits and mandating money-oriented results in a top-down, heavy handed manner. (Though personally I would love some better suits.)

And I agree with those who argue that there are plenty of dysfunctional for-profit corporations out there that are more cautionary tale than role model. We sure don’t need more autocratic executives, bureaucratic decision-making or ruthless (and often unwarranted or counter-productive) headcount reductions.

And the point shouldn’t be to make bottom line profit our primary goal. That, obviously, doesn’t make sense if you’re a nonprofit.

But I’m convinced that there are at least three areas in which nonprofits would benefit from adapting the habits of successful, well-managed for-profit businesses: 1) Quantifiable evaluation of success; 2) Accountability; and 3) Competition.

From my experience, these ideas are not well integrated into nonprofit management practice. We need to change that.

First let’s look at “quantifiable evaluation of success.”

To me, that means setting numerical goals and then continuously assessing how we are doing in terms of them.

In a fundraising office, that would mean creating a set of ambitious but achievable goals for each fundraising area at the beginning of each fiscal year and then breaking those goals down into quarterly and/or monthly and/or weekly milestones. 

These goals shouldn’t only cover money raised. They might also cover issues like timeliness of acknowledgement letters, stewardship touches, requests made, prospects identified, networking events attended, etc.

And then the manager and his or her direct reports need to meet every week (or two weeks or month, perhaps) to look at the results and assess how things are going.

For many, probably most, development people, that would radically change the way they do business. 

But it would benefit everyone. The staffer doing the reporting can quantify all of his or her hard work and demonstrate what makes sense and what is a waste of time. The manager gets solid data to use for his or her own prioritization, and to report to his or her own boss and/or the board. 

We move from managing by intuition and anxiety to managing by plan and execution.

How many development directors are doing this already? That’s a real question: if you’ve seen this in action, let me know.

I’ll continue with all of this in my next posting.