Doing Less With Less

Hala Altamimi and Qiaozen Liu of Georgia State University have, in a recent study, declared that the idea that charities should spend as little as possible on overhead expenses might just be wrong.  They noted,  “nonprofits that spend more on information technology, facilities, equipment, staff training, program development, and fundraising tend to be more successful than those that skimp on these ‘overhead expenses.’”

Well, duh.  Did we really need scholars on public administration to tell us what is demonstrably obvious?  I think not.  And the effort spent in researching this point would have been better spent in studying how we actually get board members and donors to understand the realities of how things work.

When you have less, you actually can accomplish less.  We see this in all areas.  It’s the reason the rich get richer.  They start from a better place. And why top fundraising organizations tend to be….yep, top fundraising organizations.

Okay, we know that not all organizations have the bandwidth to raise a ton of money.  But that shouldn’t mean they don’t even try.  And while every organization can’t always find board members who can give a lot (and yes, there are reasons they shouldn’t even only be looking for those folks), the board does have a duty to ensure that the organization has the resources to do what its mission promises.  That means that every board member needs to first understand that poverty only begets poverty, and if the organization is truly going to make a difference it needs to spend adequate amounts on overhead.  And to do that requires raising funds.

Not all those funds have to be charitable, but a good percentage ought to be.  The board, of course, is best positioned to help with that.  For starters, every board member must give.  It doesn’t have to be a lot, but it needs to be significant to that board member.  And every board member needs to tell others in their circle that they give to the organization and are hoping that their friends and colleagues will also give.

But the board alone probably can’t raise enough to ensure that there are enough funds to ensure success.  For that you need a strong development team.  And as you’ll all remember, there is no “i” in team, meaning that one person is not enough.

Fundraising is not one thing.  Rather it is an act that utilizes a number of techniques to  raise funds for the nonprofit.  These techniques range from grantwriting to putting on events, sending out mass appeals, and meeting with individuals to cultivate and solicit them.  While many people can do all of the above, no one person can do them well.  And sadly, the one that raises the most money—the one where you are meeting with one person or couple at a time—is the one that generally gets short shrift.

What makes this even harder that in many, too many, organizations, the person doing the fundraising is also the person running the organization.  Despite that old saying that if you want to get something done, ask the busiest person you know, the truth is that having more to do means getting less accomplished.  And doing everything less well.

In short, nonprofit leaders—that this means the board—must invest in their organization and making a virtue out of “running lean”, which is just another way of saying the organization is barely sustainable