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Nonprofit’s Guide to Surviving a Recession

By Sharon Schneider

I assume you’re not spending your nonprofit’s money to hold lavish parties. (If you are, stop.) Other than that bit of wisdom, I do not have tips to cut costs for your nonprofit (join Costco?).  But that’s mostly a losing game, I think, trimming operations and trying to squeeze pennies out of the expense side of the ledger.  Suriving and thriving is, over the long term, about building a committed, passionate base of supporters, not about reducing your phone bill (try Skype?).  There is no magic shortcut and no secret handshake to get the funding you need. Instead, there is only a long-term prescription for organizational health: “Always Be Cultivating”

Your greatest source of future contributions is your current donor base. It’s possible, but unlikely, that a new $1 million donor will fall into your lap. Rather, the people who support you now with $50 or $100 will someday, with your guidance and attention, move up to give $500 or $1,000 or more. And remember, your volunteers are your donors, so make sure they are well-used and well-treated.

Your Brand is your Most Important Asset. In these times, authenticity, accountability, transparency and impact are the key words.  Of course, you can’t just throw those words around, you need to determine your own authentic identity.  My hunch is that successful nonprofits, though, are already living those words and it’s just a matter of cultivating the brand image. Great examples of brand winners include charity:water, kiva.org and Acumen Fund.

“Social Media: Brand, Don’t Sell” This post was a fantastic nugget of wisdom from Tom Megginson at Change  Marketing. What it means is that your social media presence needs to be much more than a stream of carefully crafted marketing blurbs. It should be actual thoughts from actual human beings (not to cast undue doubt on the humanity of marketing types).  It should be genuine and written by people with brand consciousness but also with personality.
Here’s an example of one of the world worst nonprofit twitter streams ever:
  • “Another matched fund up yesterday – 30 days to match $10k for the Whitechapel Gallery…”
  • “Over $25k donated today – not bad going! Orangutans in the lead…”
  • “$12k matched in the first 10 minutes”
  • “30 minutes to go til Darwin’s Natural Selection fund launches”
  • “Gearing up for the next matched funding rush on Monday!”

On the flip side, here’s a great Twitter stream from an environmental nonprofit:

  • “Goat Milk for lather, Honey for its natural sweet scent, and Oatmeal for gentle exfoliation. Soap in our shop http://is.gd/rBoI“
  • “This guy makes a solar cooker out of 2 cardboard boxes, wins 75k and may save forests. How cool…http://twurl.nl/oc3pko“
  • “New post: Why Is This Egg Different from All Other Eggs?http://is.gd/rv5n“
  • “Let the sun shine onto your outside solar lanterns. http://is.gd/rrnO“
  • “Guide for kitchen countertops. Icestone, Vetrazzo, granite or wood.http://is.gd/riVi“

My rule of thumb is that you should aim to have at least 5 tweets that are not about your organization for every one tweet that is specifically about your organization. Anything more is probably overly self-involved.

Add value to your constituents’ lives. That’s what makes the second Twitter stream great: it adds value to the lives of the people receiving those tweets.  You have to figure they follow you because they’re interested in your cause.  That doesn’t mean they are only interested in you.  So direct them to other bits of information, resources, links, organizations.

You can also add value to people’s lives by helping contribute to their holistic identity. Most of us are looking for ways to integrate and express our values not just in our monetary donations, or  even our volunteer time, but in our everyday lives. The key to a building a passionate base of supporters is to provide them with ways to express that identity.  That means actions they can take from home, badges they can add to their Facebook page, petitions they can sign, companies they can patronize or avoid, etc.

If you can provide that kind of opportunity for association and positive identity, then when you need to raise funding for a new project or to cover an operational shortfall, your passionate supporters will be more than happy to chip in.

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This entry was posted on June 10, 2009 at 7:31 am and is filed under Governance, Great Nonprofits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Nonprofit’s Guide to Surviving a Recession”

  1. Nonprofit's Guide to Surviving a Recession « The Philanthropic Family « Non Profit Says:
    June 11, 2009 at 12:02 pm | Reply

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    June 12, 2009 at 6:11 pm | Reply

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