A Tale of Two Missions

Once in a while, in a nonprofit organization, someone will propose a creative idea for raising new earned revenue.


And often, someone else will point out that regardless of its business merits, that idea is just too far afield of the organization's mission. And that's not what the organization knows how to do.  So...forget it.


I find that reaction mystifying.


Imagine if baseball teams were so sanctimonious about their sport?  "No selling hot dogs -- that's not our mission.  We hit balls and run around bases."  Or movie theaters?  "We're here to show moving pictures with sound, not peddle exploded kernels of corn!"


I'm exaggerating a bit, of course.  Nonprofits will serve hot dogs and popcorn to make money.  We'll also run cafes and gifts shops.  Actually, we'll do all sorts of things, as long as they've been done a million times before by a million other organizations.


But when a new idea is suggested, many nonprofits will recoil in shock.  That's not our mission!


So I'd like to propose that we nonprofits hereby consider ourselves to have two missions: Our first mission is whatever it says in our mission statement.  Our second mission is to raise as much revenue as possible, in whatever way is legal and inoffensive, to support the first mission.


Here's an example:


Imagine you are an orchestra with a little concert hall, conveniently located in the middle of a functional but unused gas station, which your organization happens to own.  (In fact, it is a magical gas station: the underground tanks never run out, it's the only station within miles of a thruway off ramp, and it's environmentally harmless.)


But forget about all that for now.  After all, you need money to run your orchestra.  So you duly hire a development staff to write grants, seek sponsorships, build a membership group, hold a few fundraising events each year, etc.


But your community is not wealthy, and so you barely muddle through.  There's never enough money to pay the musicians what they deserve or fix the acoustics in the hall.  You consider transposing all the violin parts for tubas because tuba players don't need such high wages.  You are in a continuous state of under-funding.


Then one day a new staff member asks, meekly: "Why don't we try selling some gas from those pumps out front?"


And everyone shouts back: "Because that's not our mission!  We're an orchestra, not a gas station!"


I'm arguing that if you can better fulfill your mission of being an orchestra by also being a gas station, then you are obligated to be an orchestra and a gas station. 


If you're an orchestra, you expect your musical quality to rise to the highest possible level.  You strive for perfection.  Because that's your mission.


But we're often willing to overlook opportunities to leverage our assets for earned revenue because it's a distraction, or simply because it's off mission.  Carry advertising on our Website?  Rent our mailing lists?  Play weddings and bar mitzvahs?  Horrors!


Well I say, if it doesn't seriously harm your reputation or otherwise undermine your organization, then you are obligated to do everything you can think of, and to do it as well as any for-profit business could be expected to do it under the same circumstances.  If you don't have the expertise to maximize the opportunity, then go and find it.  


After all, it is your mission -- or at least it's one of them.

(I should point out, by the way, that I'm not secretly talking about the nonprofit I work for, which is very flexible and open to new ideas.  This post, and most of my posts, are culled from decades of direct experience with various organizations, some great and some crazy, and shop talk with colleagues.)