Nonprofit Skills-Based Volunteering Toolkit

whitePaper | October 10, 2022

In a digital-first world, every organization needs a data management plan. Yet, fewer than 25% of nonprofits report having a plan in place. This means data is infrequently shared across departments and rarely used to make decisions or predict future stakeholder behaviors.

whitePaper | March 25, 2020

In their seminal article, "Nonprofit Starvation Cycle", Ann Goggins Gregory and Dan Howard exhort nonprofit finance professionals to report to funders the real costs of running nonprofit organizations. The authors explain that the popular trend to restrict funding to specific programs without accounting for infrastructure expenses leads to an unintended consequence, a "nonprofit starvation cycle", where charities cease to function because they can't pay for overhead costs, such as administrative employees, computers and electric bills. To break this unhealthy cycle, the article encourages nonprofits to recalibrate funder expectations by providing accurate financial reports and other supporting information to reflect the true costs of nonprofit operations.

whitePaper | March 30, 2020

Like the rate of failure seen in new business ventures, nonprofits often fail because they cannot secure the funding to be sustainable. This is because many nonprofits focus on their outputs rather than outcomes. Fundraising strategies should emphasize the value of the result expected to be delivered, then emphasize the downstream impact (outcomes) not just focus on the activities (or outputs) of the nonprofit itself.

whitePaper | October 2, 2021

Disaster planning isn’t fun or exciting and it doesn’t directly help the people we aim to serve. However, it is essential for nonprofit organizations who want to remain resilient in the face of the unforeseen. Nonprofits provide a wide variety of services ranging from travel and leisure to educational and informational to health and direct services that may be crucial to their clients’ survival. Nonprofits provide essential services, and need to be prepared for the emergencies that may impact their operations or their ability to serve and fulfill their missions.

whitePaper | December 21, 2021

We live in a world that is changing both rapidly and dramatically. Climate change threatens hundreds of millions. Policy changes have reduced or eliminated many of the benefits in healthcare, education, and other areas. Mass migration overwhelms the availability of resources needed as a result of the influx of new immigrants. The public sector can’t keep up, which means that philanthropy needs to work harder than ever to fill the gaps and improve people’s lives. At the same time, philanthropy has a new generation of mega-donors, many of whom come from the tech sector and find the established processes in funding dated and limiting: they lack capacity, visibility, and the ability to collaborate widely. The rapid growth in donors and money flowing through the system, coupled with the increasing demand for nonprofits to meet needs locally and globally, make it harder for all of us to quickly and efficiently connect funders to the boots on the ground.

whitePaper | December 10, 2019

Ask most board members if they were told they’d be responsible for fundraising when they joined the board and you’ll hear a lot of no’s. Somewhere in the recruitment process, the fundraising part of their job got downplayed. Maybe it wasn’t you, maybe it was a board member who let them off the hook.