Educational Programs
2008 Nonprofit Strategies Forum 
National nonprofit expert Peter Brinckerhoff used his keynote presentation at the 2008 Nonprofit Strategies Forum to share with this region his unique thinking about nonprofits and how they can be mission-driven while pursuing innovative ways to generate resources.
This prolific author and popular lecturer has far too many ideas to share here, but we wanted to give you an inkling of his forward-thinking concepts.
Nonprofit doesn’t mean no profit
Is it ok for a Not-For-Profit to make money? Is it ok to make a PROFIT? Absolutely. Not only is it legal (there is no regulation or statute that forbids it) it is essential to your organization's ability to perform its mission. Only profits allow you to innovate, competitive and take risk on behalf of the people you serve. I talk to organizations throughout the country that feel somehow that it is wrong to make money. It's not, as long as the money goes back into the mission.
A Nonprofit is a mission-based business
One of the most important things for a not-for-profit manager to remember is that you are running a mission-based business, not simply a charity. With limited resources, you need to get as much mission for the money as you can. That means paying attention to standard business practices in running your organization. Just because business invented it doesn't mean its bad. Good marketing is good mission, monitoring cash flow means staying around to do mission, smart personnel practices mean not getting sued, and on and on. Use all the resources available to you: including the business techniques that are tried and true.
Expenses are investments in your mission
One of the key elements of improving the mission-capability of your organization is to develop the technique of looking at your expenditures as investments in mission. Usually, we think of expenditures as bad things, merely to be minimized. But when you and your board start to look at the utilization of any resource, cash, people, buildings, or equipment as an investment, a lot starts to change.
To begin, you have to ask: "What are we getting for our investment?" And, you should find the answer in two parts: First, you should look at the return in mission; second, examine the financial return. What this means in practice is that you may have services that lose money, but are so mission-rich that the overall return on investment is appropriate. On the other hand, something that is not mission rich (such as fund-raising) needs to make money.
What does it mean to take reasonable risks?
A social entrepreneur is someone who takes risks on behalf of the people her or his organization serves. For-profit entrepreneurs take risk for themselves and their stockholders. Nonprofit entrepreneurs take risks for the stakeholders.
Reasonable risk is a good thing. It's the only way we grow, learn, and develop best practices. Note, however, that I say reasonable risk. To be a good steward, you need to take risks, but you also need to take them prudently. This requires the business skill of being able to develop feasibility studies and business plans. Why? Because you are a mission-based business!
Entrepreneurial activities don't have to mean only a new business, and certainly don't mean a for-profit subsidiary. You can use these skills to evaluate whether or not to accept a new contract that will cause substantial growth (and the attendant strain) in your organization, you can use them to evaluate a possible merger or collaboration, or to see what would happen if you took an existing service and offered it to a new population or geographic area.
You can still buy Peter Brinckerhoff's books at discounted prices >
Visit Peter Brinckerhoff's website for more great ideas >>
