Nonprofits as a Business

Most of us are tired of hearing that “government should be run like a business”.  While it may be trite, those of us from the business world understand the frustration of taxpayers who look at how the money is spent and collected. 

Nonprofits, however, are more like businesses than government.  Fundraising is Sales and Marketing.  Programs are Operations and collecting money, spending and tracking expenses is Finance.  These are traditional departments in any business.

Because the bulk of nonprofits are small (according to the Weingart report, about 80% have less than a $250,000 budget), they really mirror a small business.  Usually the CEO or Executive Director does a myriad of jobs.  In many cases they do the books, write grants and do “other duties as needed”. 

What we have observed as former business owners and workers is that a majority of Executive Directors come from the Program side.  This means that, while they may have some experience in budgeting, the actual bookkeeping and Accounting functions were done by others.  The same is true of Sales and Marketing.  So the usual strength of a small to medium-sized nonprofit is in programs, which is good for well-run programs, but the sacrifice is at the running of an organization.

New Book I am reading

I am reading a book to review for the Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.  It is entitled “Grown Up Digital”- How the net generation is changing your world” by Don Taopscott.  He wrote the books “Growing up Digital” and “Wikinomics”.  This is a must read for anyone who is trying to reach the new generation – from ages 11 to 31, according to the author.

I will post my review when I have finished but I am so excited by reading it I thought I would get this out first.

Efficiency with Outlook

How many times do find yourself forgetting to answer an e-mail?  You probably get a whole bunch every day and you “filter” the ones you will answer when you are busy.  This creates a problem when you click on one and don’t reply right away.  The act of clicking on the message gives it a “read” status.  Then, later on, you may forget that you need to answer it.  Here is one way you can mitigate the problem (first of all, make sure you look at all of them, starting either at the top or the bottom).

If it is an e-mail that you won’t be able to address right away, you can left click on the message and drag it to the “tasks” folder, where you can add a reminder to go to it.  Outlook will open a task dialog box when you do this and you just have to click on “reminder” and set a day or time or both.  When you click on the reminder, it will open the e-mail. 

I also have a two minute rule.  If you can answer an e-mai in two minutes, do it.  That way you won’t have a bunch of forgotten or unanswered e-mails in your inbox.

Too many things, so little time

Every day I receive an e-mail from Diigo in Education that sometimes has links to new sites.  I have been trying to keep a running spreadsheet on the ones I think might benefit a nonprofit.  I also get links from friends who have new sites as well.

There are so many choices today, I am sure many of you are wondering – “what should I be using?”.  This reminds me of the early days of computers and that people were worried about obsolescence.  The lessons from those days are relevant in today’s ever-changing market. 

 The biggest lesson is – obsolescence means that it just doesn’t work for you any more.  So if you have invested time in an application, and it is working for you, don’t worry about a new one.  If you jump from one to another just to “keep up”, you will lose the consistency you have built.

One thing you can do, however, is create links or feeds from the old one to the new one if you feel that the new one will give you some functionality you didn’t have.  Creating links and feeds is fairly easy.  That way, you have connectivity between all of your sites and no one gets left out.

I give up…..

While I believe that Mozilla and even Google are on the right track and that Microsoft is a behemoth, it doesn’t mean that using an alternative to MS Explorer for a browser is the right thing to do.  About a year ago I decided to switch to Mozilla’s Firefox for my default browswer.  Just this week I changed back to using MS Explorer because with the new edition of Firefox, I have encountered a few situations where the software I was trying to run wouldn’t execute. 

So the bottom line is that each software package that is written for a browser, needs to be tested and changed for whichever browser you might use.  Apple has had a hard time getting Safari to be used because most software developers for PC’s only recognize MS Exploerer and Firefox as legitimate enough to spend the time testing their software.

For now, I will continue to use MS Explorer and maybe in the future I can switch back to Firefox, or Chrome might be a good alternative.  It just isn’t worth the effort to use something that requires me to use two browswers.  You win, Microsoft.

September 10 Presentation

Web 2 0 for nonprofits

This is the presentation from the Developers’ roundtable at the Long Beach Nonprofit Partnership

NPLIC Home Page at WordPress

The Nonprofit Institute of California (NPLIC) was formed in 2008 to assist nonprofits with understanding business concepts and processes, including the use of technology.  The first effort was a series of classes aimed at teaching the basic business concepts from organization through Accounting and Marketing to Strategic Planning.

This blog is meant as another source for those nonprofits who are looking for resources that will help them increase funding and decrease expenses.  Please feel free to ask any questions or give us any ideas you may have that will help others.  There is an emphasis right now on the use of technology in nonprofits.

On the left are bookmarks from sites and articles that are of interest to nonprofits.  Some of them are specific to products and others are just articles that might be interesting.  If you click on the main link, you will be linked to Diigo and you can see all the bookmarks.  These are constantly changing and new ones are added.  Feel free to join Diigo and add your own.