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Management Consulting Services - “A Snapshot of the Effect of the Economic Downturn on Nonprofits”

January 23, 2009

Management Consulting Services, based in Boston, MA, has recently published a report outlining findings of a study asking representatives of many Massachusetts-based nonprofits about the specific impacts of the current economic crisis on their work.  Entitled “A Snapshot of the Effect of the Economic Downturn on Nonprofits”, the report is intended to use data, as opposed to anecdotes, to discuss the effects of the crisis.  Some of the reports findings include: smaller organizations anticipate feeling more effects of the crisis than larger nonprofits, organizations have seen and anticipate continuing to see a decrease in revenue alongside an increase in demand for services, and organizations will focus on cost-cutting (especially in the area of staff costs) and increasing their donor base among individual donors as primary strategies for weathering the crisis.  View the full report and other MCS publications at http://www.managementconsultingservices.org/research.

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What We're Reading

HBS Examines the Future of Social Enterprise

October 28, 2008

We were excited to come across a recent article published in the Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin entitled The Coming Transformation of Social Enterprise. The article highlights an interview with Kash Rangan, an HBS professor and founder of Social Enterprise Initiative, now 15 years old.

Positioning social enterprise as a business that creates social value, the article discusses the need for venture philanthropists to better define measures of social return, as well as offers a warning to nonprofits to avoid launching ventures that could potentially distract an organization from its mission-critical work.

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What We're Reading, Best Practices, Social Innovation

Good Reads: Forces of Good

January 28, 2008

Kevin “I like to read” Kovaleski here with a literature review. If I could make a diorama on this blog, I would.

There is an ongoing debate in the nonprofit sector on what makes an organization a social entrepreneur. Forces for Good, a recent voice on the subject, provides a fresh approach to this topic.

To make the distinction between social entrepreneurs and traditional nonprofits, authors Crutchfield and McLeod-Grant spent four years researching the management techniques of hundreds of nonprofits.  Their findings target the management techniques of twelve nonprofits that they conclude are examples of high-impact, socially entrepreneurial change agents.  In their analysis of these organizations, Crutchfield and McLeod-Grant posit that these groups do not measure success through revenue increases, brand recognition or organizational chart sophistication.  Instead these twelve social trailblazers measure success by the change they are affecting in the piece of the world that they are attempting to improve. 

While old-school nonprofit management looks to governance, organizational structure, fundraising and other internally facing strategies to build a strong organization, social entrepreneurs focus their energy externally through six creative techniques.  These techniques (such as one that advises nonprofit groups to cross sectors and include for-profit partners into the execution of the mission) challenge traditional nonprofits to rethink goals and strategies in the execution of their mission. By exposing limitations and even flaws in traditional thinking, Forces for Good identifies commonly held myths about nonprofit management that are indicative of an outdated system of thought.

The authors conclude that the twelve nonprofits in study focus on the end-goals of creating impact and improving society rather than focusing on building a secure, fiscally sound organization, as their traditional counterparts so often obsess.  The authors offer well researched and thought out examples of innovative approaches to management employed by these groups. The case for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking is also supported by the authors’ warning against reckless management based on wild idealism.  The success of the organizations featured in Forces for Good is instead a product of an unwavering management philosophy that postures mission above tradition.

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What We're Reading, Best Practices, Hiring Advice, Social Innovation, Talent Issues