Operating a non-profit devoted to changing the climate, feel and reality of entire neighborhoods turns out to be a real challenge. I mean one of those "lose sleep at night" kinds of challenges. A number of factors conspire to make this the case.
1. If you are successful during your growth and development years, you will begin to engage new partners and other organizations. New doors of opportunity will open before you. You may even have the advantage of merging efforts with other organizations in formal, as well as informal ways. We have taken a number of formerly independent organizations under our umbrella over the past decade. Growth will mean a larger team of community builders and the need for more funding.
2. As you are successful with your organizational expansion, public funds and institutions will begin to regard you as an ally and partner in the struggle to improve matters for low-income people. This could mean more funding for you, even though most of these funds will be tightly regulated and restricted in terms of how they may be deployed. Over the past five years we have received an increasing number of public dollars, all of which are restricted in this way. You build out your team even further and you grow stronger. As a result, you are able to accomplish more. And you set in motion a new cycle of opportunity.
3. Private funders will take notice of successful efforts by community-based non-profit organizations. A few really larger funders may approach to challenge you with unique opportunities to move into the upper levels of community philanthropy. I know this has happened to us here in Dallas.
But with every blessing, there comes a new challenge. Presently, we are working with such a philanthropic group to fund the expansion of one of our most important efforts. The only problem is we now have a formal agreement that limits us in terms of approaching other funders and foundations for funding for other programs during this special time frame. So, a plus in one area can hurt us in several others. We face a couple of funding agreements and arrangements like this right now. At times the funding challenges remind me of a Rubix cube!
4. Large scale community change efforts cost enormous amounts of money. Take the affordable housing challenge in a city like Dallas. We have been working for several years on two or three notable projects. Again, the timing of the process can be frustrating beyond words. Funds "loaned" to one side of the organization must be recaptured at certain points in other processes. If one funding gate doesn't open on time, other parts of our work suffer.
5. The largest challenge we face in funding is the unrestricted donations for general operations. Most foundations, corporations and public funders want to direct their money to very specific projects. As an organization grows, the percentage of general or unrestricted funds usually declines. Take it from me, this creates all sorts of new challenges.
Somehow I feel better getting this off my chest this morning!
All of this to say, it is not a simple thing to really make an impact on the reality of poverty in a city like Dallas.
We need more help from people who want to make a difference. We need more involvement, not less, from faith communities. We need more freedom to take aggressive and, at times, risky action to improve life for those at the bottom.
We need a new army of partners to change the city.
It saddens me that growth can be so difficult financially. Sounds like the opposite of the for-profit sector!
ReplyDeleteHow much of your budget do you get from churches?
Anonymous, thanks for your post.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, we receive less than 5% of our funding from churches. We find that once we reached a certain level of capacity and strength, the churches felt as if their support was not needed. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.