State of the Nonprofit Sector 2013: Survey Results
For the nonprofit data nerd in all of us, there are many productive ways to slice and dice the data from this year’s survey. The Nonprofit Finance Fund and Bank of America surveyed more than 6000 nonprofits and derived a few key learnings. One that stood out to me:
Under these challenging [financial] conditions, many nonprofits are unable to meet growing need in their communities:
- For the first time in the five years of the survey, more than half (52%) of respondents were unable to meet demand over the last year; 54% say they won’t be able to meet demand this year.
- This represents a worrying trend; in 2009, 44% of nonprofits said they were unable to meet demand.
- Jobs (59%) and housing (51%) continue to be top concerns for those in low-income communities.
- 90% of respondents say financial conditions are as hard or harder than last year for their clients; this is actually a slight improvement from prior years’ outlook.
For me, the survey re-highlighted to (the cynic in) me how struggling nonprofits need to humble/smart enough to fold or merge. While I certainly don’t want to see their constituencies’ needs completely unaddressed, I do want to see more collaborative and stable approaches to tackling concerns like jobs and housing. Right now, segmentation is huge, creating a greater-than-necessary competition for resources, which means nobody can do their job and address needs quite as well.
Let’s discuss.
This section was particularly interesting to me, because I think being able to have more frank and relevant conversations with funders and board members would create a win-win for everyone. When people invest in an organization, it’s because they believe in it and want to see results. A nonprofit doesn’t need to communicate facility needs to all funders (nor should they!), but being able to openly converse about that need with certain funders - especially board members - would absolutely catalyze solutions or steps in the right direction. These conversations based in transparency immensely build the human and social capital of the nonprofit.
Posts to keep you entertained, thinking, sharing, and discussing. I blog across subject areas because there's a lot of interesting stuff out there; why limit our conversation?
