Fundraising. Development. MONEY.

If anybody ever would say to you that charitable work is not about money, they are wrong.  Full stop. Every day, every minute working in the philanthropic / nonprofit sector means thinking about money. How can we raise funds for our programs and services? Should we organize an event to raise more funds? How are we paying for a salary increase for staff since they’re working for low pay already? And, how can we raise general funding to invest in and grow our organization, just like any other ‘business’ entity?

To say that they non-profit sector is not focused on money is to miss how the sector works.  Yes, it works differently that the for-profit sector in many important ways, but the bottom line is very similar: how much is coming in, how it’s allocated, and what’s going out. 

A big difference in how the non-profit sector works is that there’s no room for profit, but even that needs to be qualified a bit since nonprofits have to work towards raising funds in order to fund programs and services. And paying staff.  What it doesn’t have to do is to give back to shareholders. Instead, nonprofits are accountable to their donors and their constituents.

The misconception about nonprofits is not so much that they don’t work to make a profit, but instead they raise funds to give back through programming and client services. In some ways you can say that clients, recipients of services and donors are shareholders, who require accountability just like any other business. 

So next time you donate to a nonprofit, think about them as an entity that relies on your support in order to provide services and programming, and to be able to do that, they need funds to run their business, too.