Epstein and Yuthas draw few distinctions between a nonprofit
organization and a public corporation. They consider the role of the manager
the same for both for profit and nonprofit, where on one side you have monetary
investors, while on the other you have the donors and the people they’re trying
to help. Either way, the CEO is responsible for how the money is used.
In the first chapter, the authors show you how you can give
the investors firsthand views of how their donations are being spent.
Organizations that work with African relief can invite them on tours to see
what they are supporting, or as in the case of some sponsorship charities, you
can exchange letters with a child that you sponsor. The implication is that you
attract more donations when the sponsors can see firsthand what their money is
doing to help, rather than just telling them that it’s being used to provide
education. If you tell the donors “we’re using this money to build a school
building in the village to educate 50 children, then you can show them photos
of the building and the 50 children. Careful planning makes all the difference.
After that, we get a chapter on the goals that you
organization is trying to accomplish. Are the goals realistic? Will your
efforts make any positive change? I have seen firsthand many examples of nonprofit
organizations that make no positive change at all. For instance, a health
insurance company donated thousands to a church food pantry in a low-income
neighborhood, with the expectation that the congregation would receive meat,
vegetables, and fruits. When they went to check on the place, all they saw the
members taking home was government surplus food, and not good quality either.
No fish, no chicken, no vegetables (unless they came in a can) and what looked
like cast-off Army food. When the donors asked where the pastor was, they found
that he’d taken his family on a two-week vacation to the Dominican Republic. I
leave it to your imagination as to where he got the money.
One problem with nonprofits, to which the authors devote a
chapter, is the measurement improvement. Too often, the organizations don’t
want to create studies on their achievements, for reasons that include
hardship, cost, time, and effort. Measurements can take up time, which is one
reason, and sometimes it’s just difficult to measure. If you’re doing an
anti-smoking campaign, how can you know if your efforts have caused smoking to
cease among teenagers? How can you be certain? As with earlier chapters, the
authors imply that if the effort has clear goals in mind, then it’s easier to
measure the results.
It seems that the main point of this book is that you can
only make serious improvements when you have clear, measurable goals. Take for
instance a program where kids paint murals on building walls. The organization
needs paint, brushes, paint rollers, drop clothes, and a van to drive the kids
around. The measurement will be how soon the mural was painted, how much paint
was used, and to reward the donors, you show them the results. If the
organization provides a dance studio for low-income kids, then you decide what
kind of space you need, the instructors needed, and in the end, you measure how
much skill the students have gained, and show that to the donors.
Nonprofits are no different from the average corporation. In
the end, the management has to be accountable to whomever provides the funding.
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