What does the economic downturn mean for NGOs
For most of us, we are living through our first, large scale economic crisis in decades. From an economic viewpoint, there is a shortage of money supply. People are not buying. Governments are trying to change this situation by pumping funds into the system under what is called a stimulus package. Get people working, and get people spending.
So how does this impact the NGO's? When people are trying to survive debt, firings or layoffs, they are less apt to give money away to help others. What will you do?
As corporations tighten their spending so must NGO's. You must see where in your own organization you can be more efficient. Perhaps there is a service or program that is really not essential to client success. Perhaps you are trying to offer too much. Maybe, you need to do more partnerships with other similar agencies to offer more with less.
Now is also the time to decide where in your organization you
really need the money. Making focused asks that specifically outline where the money will be used and how it will improve client success are your best chances of succeeding. Asking donors for an increase from last year is no longer effective.
Larger NGO's will need to refrain from doing capital campaigns since those campaigns drain money from other NGOs. Even if the NGO has enough wealthy donors to support it, the rest of the community will suffer. There is no longer enough money to support all the demands.
Now what will you do to survive?
Something to think about!
Labels: economic crisis, impact, NGOs
Who is your client?
I had quite the discussion with one of my teaching peers about who the client is for non-profit organizations. Do you know who your client is?
If you are a direct service agency, you will find it easier to answer this question, but if you are an umbrella organization, then is your client the people that you are raising the money for or the service provider agencies that offer the services? To add one more, is your client the researchers or the funders?
My argument was that whoever you are servicing, as stated in your mission, is your client. Well, you might say that is still not clear. Let's use an example. Supposing you worked for the national cancer society and your mission at the head office was "to find cures for patients suffering from various types of cancer. We will do this through extensive research." Who would be your client or possibly client(s)?
This can create quite the debate and has!! I would argue that the client is or are all the cancer patients. My colleague would argue that it is the researchers.
Let me throw something out at you. Supposing we were to take the researchers as the clients, then our success could be measured by finding the reseachers and the money to undertake extensive research. In other words, we could be judging our success by number of ongoing research projects. That is process. Yes, researchers do want to find cures, but...
If we were to take the cancer patients as the primary client, then success would ultimately be based upon finding cures for various forms of cancer or for increasing the survival rate. The focus is ultimately back on the person who is suffering from the disease.
Something to think about!
Labels: clients, non-profit, outcomes
