Doing More with 'Enough'

In light of current economic conditions, the nonprofit sector can’t afford to continue in a “business as usual” manner. This was the message that NYU Professor Paul Light delivered at the 6th annual conference of the Connecticut Association of Nonprofits. His keynote reflected the event theme of “Sustaining Nonprofits, Strengthening Communities.”

“We’re the first to go into a recession and the last to come out,” said Light, who is also Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. To that end, he recommended the following paradigm shifts:

  • Greater state support. Grant money is appreciated, but state funds also need to help cover capacity building. Nonprofits can’t be expected to fulfill their respective missions with grants that don’t support training, marketing, and other critical areas.
  • Sector makeover. Many leaders in the nonprofit arena are getting older and retiring—and young people aren’t clamoring to take their places. The nonprofit world needs to shed its stodgy, ascetic image to attract innovative young minds.

As the global community prepares to tighten its belt, everyone talks about the need to “do more with less.” Light argues that it’s time that nonprofits have the opportunity to “do more with enough.”

WAKE UP CALL: What steps can we take to increase state support and to attract the fresh talent we need?

The Moment of Now Conference 2008



On October 24, 2008, the Columbia School of Business held a conference titled “The Moment of Now: Market Innovations in Social Enterprise” to explore themes in the emerging sector of social enterprise. In this session on Cultivating Effective NGO-Business Partnerships, Gordon Peterson (second from left),  VP of Corporate Social Responsibility for The Timberland Company, squared off with two nonprofits: Allison Clements (left), Corporate Counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Kyle Cahill, Director of Corporate Engagement at the Environmental Defense (third from left), moderated by Alan Webber, Founder of Fast Company magazine.Continue reading

Creating Awareness for the Third Sector

After the three-day Nonprofit Congress in May, the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (NCNA), which produced the Nonprofit Congress, organized a lobbying day to create awareness about the nonprofit sector. The New York delegation was one of many that went to Capitol Hill to lobby our Representatives and Senators about the National Capacity Building Initiative (put forth by NCNA). The bill provides $25 million for training and infrastructure for charities to help them become more effective and sustainable (half the funds from the federal government, half from private sources). That’s me (Howard Adam Levy, Principal of Red Rooster Group) in the yellow jacket, with Fred Fields, from the United Way of New York City, behind me, and Doug Sauer, Executive Director of Council of Community Services of New York State, bottom left.

The lobbying effort was important on three fronts:

1. To generate awareness about the need for funds specifically for non-program activities to allow nonprofits to pay for leadership training and operational costs.

2. To demonstrate to government the impact and importance of the nonprofit sector, which accounts for $1 trillion of the economy and 10% of the workforce.

3. To promote advocating for the nonprofit sector as an essential activity for nonprofits and to show that we can be effective when organized (with the NCNA the organizing body for the social services sector).

WAKE UP CALL: What are you doing to advocate for the nonprofit sector?

Social Media Strategies

Darren Ernest, President of 74 Marketing, shows how different forms of social media (such as blogs, video, social bookmarking, document sharing) all drive traffic to your website. His tips for using social media:

  1. Have a strategy.
  2. Have a measurement plan – know what do you want to accomplish
  3. Integration – blog is the hub, drive SEO, create relationships
  4. Implementation – who will be doing this and what resources are we allocating to it.
  5. Monitoring and adjustment.

RESOURCE: www.74marketing.com

WAKE UP CALL: What’s preventing your nonprofit from taking advantage of social media?

Peer Mentoring Group Provides Support

Like all small business owners, juggling many balls often doesn’t leave time for the long-range planning necessary to grow the business. Going it alone, I longed for feedback from peers facing the same challenges. I found the answer to these two concerns in a peer mentoring group presided over by the aptly-named Ed Abel, president of the Abel Business Institute. The group consists of five small business owners in the same industry (four design firm principals and one writer), run by Ed, who challenges us to overcome our obstacles. On a monthly basis we gather to set our goals, track our progress and get answers to current issues we face. This forum has been invaluable in helping me grow Red Rooster Group, as well as develop cherished relationships with everyone in the group.

RESOURCE: www.abelbusinessinstitute.com

WAKE UP CALL: What are you doing to get peer feedback and track your goals?

Social Entrepreneurial Sweet Spot

At a recent Green Marketing Group gathering convened by Les Judd of Green Bouroughs, a monthly gathering of environmentally-minded business owners to help each other share ideas and grow our business, Kerry Gillick-Goldberg, VP of PR for The Business Development Group simplified the essence of small business marketing as the intersection among three variables: what you do best, what buyers want and how you can make money bridging the two.

The provided specific marketing advice to the several of the members seeking to promote their green products, and discussed ways of helping increasing revenue for entrepreneurs through: increasing your billable rate, hiring others, passive income projects, books and products, commissions and affiliate sales and partnerships.

WAKE UP CALL: Whether in business or at a nonprofit, are you doing what leverages you best attributes and meets a market need?

RESOURCES:

Les Judd, Green Marketing Group: les@greenboroughs.com

Red Rooster Group IconRed Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites, and marketing campaigns to increase your visibility, fundraising, and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.

The Triple Bottom Line


At a Craigslist Foundation event on Social Entrepreneurship, Jeffrey Robinson, PhD. Asst. Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, at the NYU Stern School of Business, discussed the triple bottom line of social ventures: profits, social responsibility and environmental responsibility – given equal weight. The triple bottom line concept is gaining traction as a viable business model as people seek to make a living by doing good.

WAKE UP CALL: In what ways can you incorporate these areas into your bottom line?

Fundraising Day NY 2008

Keynote speaker to Association of Fundraising Professionals Fundraising Day NY 2008 conference, Lorraine Cortes-Vasquez, Secretary of State for NYS, shares her insights and inspirations to the nonprofit sector.

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I liked her quote encouraging nonprofit leaders to think like business people: “I is not for profit, but I is not for loss.”

WAKE UP CALL: To have the capacity to continually serve clients, nonprofits need to think strategically about investing for the future.

Smart Models Conference

AIGA’s Smart Models Conference Provides Lessons for Nonprofits
Drew Hodges from Spot Design opens the AIGA conference on Smart Business Models by describing how his agency transformed from a design studio creating a posters for Broadway shows, most notably, RENT, into an ad agency to capture the  hundreds of thousands of dollars in media commissions. This is a good lesson in making the necessary changes in your organization in order to take advantage of opportunity.

Athletica 3

Matt Owens discusses how he works collaboratively on projects with other young designers under the name Athletica. By sharing an office, they reduce their overhead, and by approaching clients as experts in various areas they are able to attract business that they could not independently. Nonprofits can learn from this approach to collaboration.
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Douglas Riccardi, from Memo Productions, a protege of Tibor Kalman, the legendary designer from M&Co., describes his journey to attract respectable clients and produce outstanding work. Keeping his business small while tackling large projects, he found that his personality was was his key selling point. In the face of daily mediocrity, he urged designers to “push to do something fantastic.” A good lesson in that your recognition comes from doing great things that get noticed, not in doing good or mediocre things consistently. Nonprofits that seek wider visibility from the public and funders need to things dramatically in order to get noticed.
Joe Duffy & Eric Block
Joe Duffy and Eric Block describe their latest venture, Duffy Partners – essentially, the relaunching of Duffy Design before it was swallowed up by the advertising conglomerate. Nonprofits can learn from this process of building up, selling or merging the entity, and starting again.
WAKE UP CALL: New ways of conducting business, serving people and fundraising, are being developed in response to technologies that shrink the world and allow people the interact in different ways. Smart organizations conduct periodic reviews of their missions and their business models to assess whether they are still relevant. When is the last time your organization checked the relevancy of its method of achieving its mission?

Drawings from the Nonprofit Congress

The opening session of the National Nonpofit Congress held in June in Washington, DC, kicked off three days of conference sessions bringing together the best ideas to promote the public sector.

Kari Galloway

Karrie Galloway, the Director of Friends of Guest House, shares the joys and challenges of helping recovering addicts to acclimate to society.

Jenifer McDaniel
Former heroine addict, Jennifer McDaniel shares her heart-breaking story of being sexually abused as a child and kicked out of her home, leaving school without learning to read, entering the foster care system, becoming a drug addict and her ultimate path to literacy, a job and normalcy.
The format of the conference combined personal stories such as this one, with macro level sessions on issues and best practices affecting the public sector. On the last day participants broke out into statewide groups in order to form committees to continue the discussion during the course of the year. The conference concluded with all the statewide delegations assembling to share their plans for promoting the visibility and viability of the nonprofit sector in their states. Some, as I did, stayed in Washington, DC another day in order to participate in lobbying on behalf of a bill which would provide $25 million in funds for capacity-building for the nonprofit sector. The Nonprofit Congress reconvenes in May of 2009 in New Orleans.

The Secrets of Business Referrals

The Nonprofit Resource Group meets monthly to foster connections between nonprofit consultants and to help each other grow our businesses. At the last meeting, Interim CEO Consultant, John Corwin, gave advice on how to create an giving and receiving referrals. Addressing the natural apprehension to call some one, he provided with these seven reasons people will take your call:

1. The relationship of the referrer.
2. It’s the only thing they will do that day that is risk free.
3. There is a mystique about helping people.
4. Be shameless about offering free food (breakfast, lunch or coffee) in exchange for free food.
5. People love to give advice.
6. People understand that networking is a life-long quest and two-way street.
7. You become a part of their network.

Red Rooster Group IconRed Rooster Group is a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites, and marketing campaigns to increase your visibility, sales, and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.