Robert J. Oravitz, MBA

If you are a non-profit executive, you know that the two resources you never seem to have enough of are funding sources and non-operational dollars. Most outside of the non-profit world assume that non-profit status ensures a flush cash position and reserves, and a working cash flow with plenty of room to weather the bad times. That position of understanding is simply not true for most local or small regional non-profits.

So what tact do you take? Does going after operational revenue streams spread your organization too thin? If you build a new robust non-operational funding model, do you spend too much valuable time and energy that could applied elsewhere?

The answer(s) to these three questions are simple and complicated? The tact you take is having a volunteer team and staff in place that can move between servicing operational cash flow development and a vibrant non-operational model. This may make volunteers, board members and staff uncomfortable, but it is necessary. Cash is the life blood of your cause efforts, your mission.

Developing a non-operating funding plan involves a long-view of 3 to 5 years and beyond. Some members of your staff and volunteer team who want the instant gratification of bills being paid may not be able to move to that position. Each of these points lays the foundation for a funding dichotomy, two opposing views. If the organization builds programs to meet current operating needs, and a funding model grounded in quick hit, low goal events for limited perspective projects, you are taking a short-view survival perspective. The existence of your cause cannot have true impact if a short-view is the philosophy and the grounding for mission.

Path to Short and Long Term Funding Co-existing:

• Build board, staff and volunteer teams that can buy into a long view.
• Step outside of the box of what the organization “has always done.”
• Find a Champion for each cause of short-term/operational and long-term sustaining funding.
• Be very specific about what operational and reserve needs are. Set attainable funding goals.
• Choose the most easily implemented and most manageable sustaining funding (long-term) mechanisms.
• Use measurement metrics that everyone can understand. All results should be pegged to an identifiable outcome in the overall cause and mission.
• Hold regular vision meetings that allow everyone to check-in and see where funding programs are in relation to goals set.
• Be willing to change course if the environment you are operating in calls for it.