Don't be guilt-tripped into changing your mission.

In an article posted to their website today, Philanthropy News Digest passes on the information that a report has found that family foundations lag behind in social justice funding.

Reports like this abound in every sector. In general they tend to reflect the bias or mission of the agency or organization that commissioned and compiled the report.

Most people and organizations know that and just will shrug this off and move on, but inevitably some will react by deciding that they are somehow in the wrong.

A few years ago, a client was profiled in a newsletter as being "unsympathetic" to minorities because they chose to focus on developing job skills and teaching low-income folks the value of having marketable workplace skills. The gist of the original article was that their programs didn't reflect  the national ratios regarding racial distribution.

Their programs were not defined by race or gender. The only qualifier to participate in the training was to be un- or under-employed and have an annual income below the poverty level.

Unfortunately for the NPO, the majority of the people that responded were white females. Not too surprising, since females are normally the caregivers in single parent homes and the minority population in their area was low, but it gave the group that published the newsletter ammunition for the presses.

After several weeks of heated social media back-and-forth, the board of the targeted NPO  met and decided to develop a minority-only program within the main program. They reasoned that would not only get the critics off their back, but open up new and perhaps better sources of funding.

It didn't work out very well.

First, they had trouble attracting minority participants. Since that had been a problem from the start, a disproportionate amount of time was spent to reach out to that segment of the population, and the main program outreach suffered accordingly.

Second, when they had to provide racial breakdown information for their program participants and graduates, i.e. their outcome results, they remained weighted toward white females. Hardly surprising, since the total minority population, i.e. all other races, of their service area was under 27%.

After struggling with the problem for three years and watching their funding fall by 35%, the board voted to resume operations as they had been prior to the bad press

The moral to this tale?  Do what you do and do it well. You can't please all of the people all of the time.

Political winds change constantly. If your programs are sound, needed and most of all effective, the money will be there.

Understanding how program development increases funding

All nonprofits have goals, or as they are usually stated, missions. Feeding the hungry, providing shelter for victims of domestic violence, supporting veterans, or rescuing animals are all goals, or missions. They are the reason your nonprofit exists.

To support the main mission, action plans, i.e. programs, are developed to reach the main goal.

In addition to solving or alleviating an adverse condition or circumstance, programs also provide funding parameters for supporters. To put it another way, they provide opportunities for people sympathetic to the main goal or mission to collaborate in achieving that goal, without being directly involved in the management and operation of a nonprofit.

Criticism of nonprofit effectiveness is seldom related to mission. Almost without fail, when nonprofits get in trouble with donors or grantors it is related to failure of the program or programs to achieve the mission.

One of the shortcomings of newer nonprofits is failing to communicate how a program advances mission accomplishment.

Interestingly, sometimes that goes back to the mission concept. Vague or overly ambitious missions can make it difficult to design realistic programs that can be developed to deliver the desired results.

Go back and re-read that last sentence, especially this part. " …design realistic programs that can be developed to deliver measurable optimum results." This is often one of the first things I address when working with new clients.

If your program, or programs aren't designed well, they can't possibly develop methods that achieve the best possible outcomes.

To design realistic programs you need to have a realistic program model in relation to your ability to deliver results.

Reality trumps vision

By way of explanation, let's look at the "No Child Left Behind" mission, a product of the George W. Bush presidency resulting in the 2001 legislation of the same name. The goal was to see that every child in the United States receives access to a quality education.

That's a totally realistic mission in terms of the resources available to support it, i.e. the Federal budget.

If that same nationwide mission was to be undertaken by a nonprofit in a town of 400 people in rural America, then the mission is not realistic in terms of scope, and no program could be designed that would achieve it.

Organizations need to take the availability of resources to achieve the mission into account at the time they decide to become a nonprofit. That limiting factor will determine the initial design and development of the programs. Ideally, future planning incorporates an "if-then" component so the program can be expanded as resources become available.

Well-designed programs provide better funding opportunities

Funding, especially from grants, is seldom sustainable from one source, so having a variety of funding opportunities is critical to mission success.

If a program is designed to provide both an immediate benefit and an opportunity for expansion, it can continue to grow as resources become available.

Setting realistic goals that are measurable and achievable allows the nonprofit to show donors that the program does provide tangible benefits at varying levels. When the organization can document positive results, it can attract more funding.

Thus, a neighborhood literacy program for ESL learners can start with a phased in program that first funds community outreach to raise awareness of the mission, then seeks funding for books or electronic readers, then expands to purchase furniture for a rented space, and finally seeks funding for a building to provide a permanent base of operations.

Each of those phases will attract a slightly different donor audience. For instance a corporate donor in the public relations field might fund a PR campaign, a tech company might provide in-kind donations of tablets or e-readers, a furniture company might grant funds to purchase desks and chairs, and finally, major foundations might grant  substantial funds to purchase the building.

Instead, far too many newly formed nonprofits start out with trying to fund the building before they can even prove that the community is deriving a benefit from the mission. All that accomplishes is to drive grantors and major supporters away.

As frustrating as it can be, good program planning pays dividends far beyond the time it takes to do it.

Managing your Mission

Recently I was listening to a nonprofit founder explain that the person's  organization was set up to serve 100 clients onsite at any given time, but was now serving 300-400 onsite. The reason given was that the town had no other resources to handle all the clients who needed help.

The person was taking questions, and two things bothered me.  One of them is the scenario above, and the other was a question from the audience asking how the person could set up a nonprofit doing the same thing, but by taking some of the overflow that was outside the original nonprofit's mission.

The question didn't bother me.  What bothered me is that the speaker completely dismissed it, saying that if the person wanted to help they should just support the existing group.

This is a very well-publicized charity, one whose name you would probably recognize immediately. The speaker had just said that they were over-loaded and that financing this operation was a constant struggle, even before the addition of the extra client load.

This is a glaring example of mission creep destroying an otherwise fine organization.

Without going into too much more background, this charity is offering a service that people are taking advantage of inappropriately and knowingly.

The mission, once closely defined, has now been expanded to serve a population that was never initially part of the plan.

Knowing a bit about the history of this group, I seriously doubt that there is enough money out there to keep the place going unless they take charge of their mission again.

I totally understand how that happens.  It happens when you care too much, and when you won't or can't say "no".

This whole thing is wrong on many levels.

 

In the first place, people who have been supporting the organization have been sending money to support the core mission, once tightly focused on one target population. If they are donating because of a connection to that target population, they may feel that it is being shortchanged to accommodate a totally different group. That can impact funding.

Second, instead of doing a stellar job with that target population, the charity is now barely servicing any of the clients. The outcomes they desire not only aren't happening, they can't happen.

Third, when someone offered to try to help by setting up a nonprofit working in the same field, the founder blew them off, and even sounded insulted that anyone would even offer to provide another resource.

I sort of understand the response.  It takes a long time to build an effective nonprofit, the organization's need for more funding is immediate and a new organization might compete for already scarce funds. But by being so openly derisive, the founder probably turned the would-be helper into a non-supporter.

A far better choice would have been to say that they would welcome the person as a volunteer, show them the ropes, and then if that resulted in a new organization in the future, turn over some of the clients to them.

The upshot of all of this is that I sort of lost interest in the organization.  If you need help, you're begging for help, but you don't want to fix what's wrong and won't accept help when it is offered, I'm probably not going to feel that supporting you is the best long-term use of my funds.

In short, you have to manage your mission for maximum effectiveness. As hard as it is, no organization can help everyone, all the time.