3 Reasons Nonprofits Struggle and How to Avoid Them
Operating a nonprofit is a challenge. While focusing on the positive impact they can have is critical and purposeful, it is just as essential to scrutinize the business practices, operation, and fundraising strategies instituted by organizations. The areas of performance are what keeps nonprofits driving toward their vision. These areas are what fuels their mission. With this in mind, a useful way to improve is to look at common ways nonprofits struggle and how those challenges can be overcome. Below we dive into three specific ways nonprofits struggle and offer insights on how to improve. See what applies to your own organization and use these strategies to get moving in the right direction.
Forgetting Reality
Nonprofits are founded on dreams of improving our communities and the world, but in order to actually achieve that dream, we must work with what is realistic. When it comes to helping others, your organization needs resources: staff, financial resources, in-kind support, volunteers, members, and more. Nonprofits can only gather these resources by crafting a mission and vision based on pragmatic business strategies and nonprofit best practices. It takes concrete resources to get started and sustain a nonprofit, so it is essential that nonprofits recognize the financial investment that supports a thriving organization. That said, it often takes a dream to get started.
How to balance pursuing your dream of a better community and realistically pursuing it? You have to pursue your vision with technical strategies and skills. A big part of this involves building a quality board and dedicated staff, but we will cover that later in this blog. The other pieces of the formula involve learning. You and your team must learn to operate your nonprofit like a business, finding new strategies and insights to constantly refine your abilities. You must be on top of your budgeting and fundraising because this is the real basis on which you decide what you can and cannot do. If this sounds like a lot of effort, it is. Significant amounts of time will be spent raising money for the work you want to do. You will have to implement and maintain robust volunteer and membership programs. You will need to make yourself a pillar in your community and connect with new audiences through developing marketing strategies. Most importantly, you must develop and mission and vision that guides everything you do. While this is a lot, we like to be real about what nonprofits have to do. As soon as you hammer out the concrete aspects of your work, you can start building a lasting organization.
Building a Board Without Leadership Experience
As a young nonprofit organization, you may not be able to build a board comprised of veteran board members, but that does not mean you can’t recruit members who have the skills to be great board members. Aside from the professional skills you are targeting (accounting, finance, legal experience, etc.), leadership is an essential skill to have throughout your board. Leadership skills can be found without finding seasoned board members. Where nonprofits often fail is recruiting board members based on their already existing relationships rather than key skills, especially leadership. Simply having living people to fill your board seats may get your nonprofit off the ground, but it will inevitably cause disaster. The board is a critical feature of a nonprofit that can make or break its future, so be sure to set yours up for long-term success.
Avoiding this pitfall is simple. It just takes a test. Whenever you are looking to recruit for your board, only seek out board members who bring value to your board. Consider all the factors that build a great board: diversity of perspective and experience, areas of professional expertise, the potential for growth, community representation, leadership experience, donor capacity, and connections. Not every board member will bring the same factors to the table and that is a great thing. No one person could have every element, so bringing together members who all have the same skills and experiences will cause your organization to miss out.
Recruiting and Keeping Quality Staff Members
Finding the right staff is paramount to nonprofit success. These are the people who work toward achieving all of the features that build a successful nonprofit. Your team will be boots-on-the-ground fundraising, recruiting volunteers or members, and making your nonprofit operate day-to-day. Finding the right people and keeping them is key to sustaining a stable organization. We understand that this reason for struggling is often difficult to fix because most nonprofits lack the resources to compete with bigger nonprofits and the for-profit industry. So how can you keep quality staff members when other organizations and companies are able to offer better financial incentives.
When recruiting nonprofit staff, you may not be able to pursue the development director that is a multi-decade veteran and has fantastic experience soliciting major gifts. What can you pursue? Potential. When nonprofits cannot recruit the big players, it is important that they are methodical when hiring in order to put together a staff that has significant potential for growth. Additionally, soft skills can be useful and indicative of potential.
This blog highlights just three big reasons nonprofits struggle. It is not an exhaustive list but we hope it provides valuable insights for many nonprofits facing these challenges. Take these areas of difficulty and the tips that follow and apply them to your day-to-day work. These are solid starting points to begin with, and from here, your organization can increase its knowledge and sophistication to increasingly apply better practices. Make use of the available resources out, including our blog and webinars that cover everything from fundraising, marketing, strategic planning, membership, and more.
Need help reorganizing your organization or setting a strategic direction? At NMBL Strategies we help organizations be their best self by utilizing our own experience leading nonprofits for over three decades. From leadership development to financial studies to turnaround work, we have the services and skills needed to help your organization achieve its mission.
