Syllabus for Introduction to Nonprofits

The Syllabus for Introduction to Nonprofits has not been officially approved yet, but I don't expect any major changes. I tried to accommodate most of the very helpful comments.

This will be a class offering a broad fairly comprehensive overview, with time unfortunately not permitting a lot of depth.

From the Syllabus:

Students will gain a general understanding of the roles and functions of nonprofit organizations in the US and in New Mexico. In the first half of the semester, the course will cover the legal, regulatory, policy and ethical aspects of the nonprofit sector, as well as the major nonprofit theories. The second half will cover issues of organizational development and management, including resource development, financial management, HR, strategic planning, collaborations, program development and volunteer management.

We will suggest additional resources and literature on each of the topics. And we will take a lot of notes that will inform the development of the future WNMU Nonprofit Management Certificate and degree programs.

Charlie Alfero and I will co-teach the class, with the help of some wonderful guest speakers.

No quizzes, no exams, but a bunch of empirical research and writing assignments are expected. As is attendance and participation in the class/group work: To cut down on sleep inducing lecture time, Charlie has thought up a group exercise that will be continued throughout the semester, at each session: we will create a mock nonprofit - based on a community priority setting exercise, go through the start-up stages, put together a board, a strategic plan, work on developing a program, an organizational budget, and discuss most of the class topics (see below) as they apply to our class-created nonprofit organization.

We are hoping for a diverse group of students that will allow for peer learning. Some new to the nonprofit world, some with practical experience in a few areas, and some bringing expertise from the business and government sectors.

The course will be beneficial to people already in the NPO workforce who feel they never got the big picture, and educational for Social and Political Science students trying to understand the role of nonprofits in our society, as well as informative for anyone aiming at a career in the sector.

Here's the schedule (starting January 12, each Tuesday 5:30-815 pm)

Session	Date	Theme
1	Jan 12	Introduction
2	Jan 19	Ethics
3	Jan 26	Governance
4	Feb 2	Nonprofit Theories
5	Feb9	Policy and Regulatory Issues
6	Feb16	Social Innovation and other functions
7	Feb 23	Strategic Planning
8	Mar 2	Organizational Stages
	Mar 9	Spring Recess
9	Mar 16	Management
10	Mar 23	Revenues and Resources I
11	Mar 30	Revenues and Resources II
12	Apr 06	Financial Management I
13	Apr 13	Financial Management II
14	Apr 27	Volunteerism and Volunteer Management
15	May 4	Program Development
16	May 11	Program Management
17	May 18	Collaboration

More input on our class "Introduction to Nonprofits"

Thanks to all of you who have left comments here. All this is very helpful, and we will try to cover all of your items. Stay tuned for the class outline, I will post it here shortly.

Following are some more ideas and suggestions I received via email, and i wanted to share them here:

DC:
Sounds fabulous and just what I am looking for. I would like to see covered in this class: successful grant language, non-profit sustainability, the nuts and bolts of a non-profit organization's infrastructure, successful staffing and daily function of the n-p, dos and dont's, and basic accounting issues -- i.e. what to watch out for. I will sign up!

FM:
I would suggest some focus on the following regarding nonprofit finances:

1) Planning to make a profit on events rather than planning to break even
(The event was fun and we made some money too!)
2) Planning out and creating a reserve fund for the organization
(The crisis is being handled through our reserve fund!)
3) Having a system in place for handling cash
(There is no money missing or unaccounted for!)
4) Having a checks and balances system for handling the nonprofit's funds
(The opportunity for embezzlement is not an option!)

NP:
Two areas I suggest some discussion around:
1) Ethics in nonprofit organizations
2) Nonprofit organizations modeling after successful for-profits in these areas: accounting, board development, marketing and human resources.
I also wonder if you will discuss the term “social profit” replacing the term “non-profit”.

EB:
I recently wrote a response to a sociological piece that highlighted the success of a collaborative effort between university, for-profit and non-profit sectors....essentially, my critique was this---non- profits must be in the business of putting themselves out of business. This would be what a piece of what I'd like to see in the course....not letting bureaucracy (and the money from those who have helped to created the problems non-profits are addressing) get the best of us.

AJ:
Having been through all the struggles of setting up a new non-profit, I do have a couple of ideas for you. First of all, walking people through the process of incorporation in NM and getting federal non-profit status would be helpful. I found it extremely daunting! Most of all, once that was done, I wish the state and the feds would send out a list of what is expected of non-profits once they’re created: reporting obligations, obtaining CRS numbers, and rules re: issuing non-taxable transaction certificates. I have had to stumble my way through all of these things and wish I had had access to a course such as the one you are planning! Good luck with it.

NC:
I have three major issues. I'm sure you know all of them! But I'll put them out there anyway...
1. Make sure the nonprofit organization is needed. Identify the constituency and determine what it's lacking. This is a chicken and egg question: which comes first? And there's no doubt that the need/target group may shift over the life of the organization. But I still think needs assessment is a vital first step.
2. Be realistic about funding. Develop a business plan and stick to it. Do not guess about revenues (amount and source).
3. Create the ideal Board of Directors. The mix of skills and temperaments both to recruit the Exec. Director, oversee the operation, solicit funds, and represent the mission.

EZ:
Given the usual requirements, i.e., knowledge of IRS requirements, audits, etc....I think I might recommend the "philosophical" piece. Maybe not so much a philosophical view, but, the visionary aspect and other reasons that someone would consider entering the nonprofit management sector.

Introduction to Nonprofits

This spring semester, Western New Mexico University will offer, for the first time, a class on the nonprofit sector. It will be provided at the Junior (300) level through the Sociology and Political Science Departments. It's open to anyone from the community who wants to attend and beef up their understanding of the sector.

The class is the first step in a process to develop a nonprofit management certificate program, and ultimately a master's level degree program.

It is also an example of a community education institution responding to a community need.... in this case, the difficulty nonprofit employers are experiencing in hiring competent staff, paired with the realization that the sector employs 10% or more of the local workforce, and there is no relevant training available locally. Look around and add to that the average age of nonprofit leadership in our area, and it will become obvious that we'll need to prepare the next generation for the sector.

Fortunately, there are hundreds of nonprofit management degree programs all over the country, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel. As I am putting together the curriculum, however, I would like to hear from NM nonprofit workers, employers, volunteers, and board members which specific skills and knowledge areas they'd like to see covered. Please submit comments to this post. I will post more details on the curriculum shortly.

PS: The class will meet on Tuesdays from 5:30-8:15 p.m. , Silver City campus, starting January 12th, 2010.

wrappin' up 2009

This is the one time during the year I will brag. All year I enjoy the work I do, the tailored capacity building and proposal preparation services Z-A provides, and the satisfaction of our nonprofit and government customers. I am proud of the programs we helped develop, the jobs we helped create, and any other "lasting" outcomes of our work, visible all across our communities in Southwest New Mexico.

Towards the end of the year, however, we tally up the balance of the year.... so we can assign a dollar amount to it all.

Here it is for 2009:

Grant proposals prepared: 17
Grant proposals funded: 8 (47%)
Grant proposals still in review: 2 (equaling $5.3 million)
Total $$ requested: $18,101,165
Total $$ funded: $8,813,489 (49%)

For comparison, total proposals funded in 2008 amounted to $4,072,428; with a funding rate of 87%. In 2009, we roughly doubled the funds coming to our communities through our shop, largely due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

2010 was a good year. Thanks to all the Z-A clients who are already hard at work implementing the awarded programs!

Vendorism vs. Innovation

So the recent academia buzz about Social Innovation has taken hold in government quarters this spring. The White House Office of Social Innovation (if somebody can locate its website, let me know) and the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) are the manifestations of the Obama administration’s belief in the ability of the nonprofit sector to come up with new grassroots answers to old problems, and the willingness of the government to invest in dissemination and scaling of high-impact programs.

That’s as much of a definition as you’ll get from publications about these two new institutions. The SIF will be run out of the Corporation for National and Community Service, and work with grant makers to identify community organizations that have projects worthy of scaling.

But haven’t foundations tried it all before? As Steven Goldberg demonstrates in his book, “Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets” philanthropy’s support of innovative nonprofit work has failed to produce any meaningful social change. Grants are too small and spread too thin, and there will never be enough private funds to spread high impact models to any significant number of people in need.

Or, as Thomas Luce said at the National Philanthropy Roundtable annual meeting last year““We have lit enough pilots that we ought to have a furnace somewhere.”

Despite efforts at renaming philanthropy, and consultants, writers and bloggers selling strategic, catalytic, targeted and high-engagement philanthropy and impact investing, I fail to see how these re-definitions of the same thing will make any difference for significant numbers of people served by the sector.

Anyway, should it really be the function of private donors and foundations to solve all problems of inequitable societies, by throwing more money at them?

Philanthropic giving only accounts for 12.3 % of nonprofit revenue nationally, and government accounts for 29.4 %. (NCCSS, 2008) Maybe there is potential for a bigger scale impact if government funds provided to the nonprofit sector are re-organized to be more strategic? Such as with SIF….it’s a good idea, but if it happens within the parameters of the current system, I have doubts:

I think the biggest barrier to innovation is the government itself. I sound like some libertarian, anti-big government wacko. What I mean is that the systems that have evolved at federal and state levels are forcing social service nonprofits into a vendor role. Government –nonprofit relations have been reduced to, in many cases, the submission and processing of reports and invoices, and the regular contract renewal process. Services are provided in compliance with binders full of standards and regulations. All services are reimbursed based on billing units, not based on positive outcomes for recipients. There is no incentive nor time nor creative space for innovation.

And, at least in New Mexico, there are no effective communication channels between nonprofits and state entities. So the problems of the out-of-control bureaucracy, the failure to improve clients’ lives, or any ideas for improvements outside of the current system are simply not discussed. In NM, the communication between government and the nonprofit sector happens mostly between the larger nonprofits with lobbying capacity and the legislators, usually aimed at creating additional funding sources, benefiting the bottom line of already well-funded corporations. Innovation?

There are a few examples of funding agreements that were designed to encourage local problem solving and development of innovative, integrated community-based service systems . One example I know of are the local behavioral health collaboratives in New Mexico. They were born out if the notion that locally coordinated services might be more effective than throwing money down various silos. Local collaborative have formed in each judicial district of the state to build effective local systems of care for mental health and substance abuse services. They are not directly supported by state funding.

At the state government end, a “statewide entity” was formed, and contract management and billing was outsourced to a for profit company. The state began to merge all grant announcements into one “super-RFP”. Sounds like a good idea? The organizational chart on the NM Behavioral Health Collaborative website illustrates how the attempt at streamlining the system went haywire at the government end.

Then the NM State Legislature decided to put their money where their mouth was and approved “Total Community Approach” (TCA) funding for six judicial districts. The funds were to be used to create or improve local systems of care to reduce the suffering caused by substance abuse and mental health problems.

In Judicial District 6, the TCA funds were used to fill the gaps in the continuum of care of small, rural and economically desolate Hidalgo County, starting with universal prevention all the way over to intensive outpatient treatment and everything in between. Providers came out of their silos, started working together to assure multi-point access to seamless service provision, and effective prevention messages. They created new programs, including a youth organization and an adult drug court. They are just starting now to talk about effective tracking of services, referral follow-up and evaluation of outcomes, supported by a professional evaluator. The scale is really small: Hidalgo County has 5000 people. The TCA network is onto something good, but it is certainly not close to proving it yet.

Meanwhile, the state end of the program has morphed into another bureaucratic monster. Providers have to submit monthly narrative reports, reporting on the cost reimbursement, enter claims into a web-based system and prepare a monthly invoice that includes fee for service units and deliverables. The TCA Coordinator spends 80% of her time managing the billing process, and the rest of her time liaising, or should I say, struggling, with the State Behavioral Health Division and Optum Health Care, the for profit company that “manages” the contracts this year.

In one or two more years, legislative TCA funding will expire. It remains to be seen if the project will manage to reach a stage where outcomes are measured effectively, and where enough funding is available to sustain the evaluation, cooperation , quality improvement and dissemination functions to make the whole thing sustainable and replicable. They could have gotten there a lot sooner, if the coordinator and the providers hadn’t been so busy wrestling with the ever changing billing company over each providers’ invoice and monthly report.

Early nonprofit theories explained the existence of nonprofits as a response to government failure. Now it is widely believed that nonprofit and government sector are complementary. Interdependence theory sounds really good- in theory: the nonprofit sector provides community-based services , while government assures sustainable funding streams.
Other recent theories are emphasizing the role of nonprofits as innovative societal forces. I am not arguing with the notion that the best ideas often come from the communities that are tackling the problems.

But I would suggest that the current system of nonprofit revenue generation from government grants and contracts constitutes a barrier to innovation.

What, to my knowledge, has not been looked at –neither by the research community, nor by the new social innovation institutions, are the factors that prevent innovation. Although, groups like the Nonprofit Finance Fund have been laudably outspoken about how the current nonprofit financing system sets organizations up for failure. More questions to explore could be:

How we can improve government –nonprofit relations and funding mechanisms to allow room for creativity?
How can reimbursement systems incentivize outcomes over units of service?
How can service provision and innovation be paired, and made mutually supporting functions?
How can we create avenues of communication between the two sectors?
How can we build capacity of individual nonprofits to develop, test, disseminate and assist in replication of effective models?

The Challenges of the Hired Hand

Those of you who have sat on proposal review committees have learned to detect the hired hand grant writer, right? Using just the slightly wrong terms, a certain awkwardness in how facts are strung up and a somewhat wooden project design? Lots of standard propoleese words?

Several rants exist on the internet about the disservice done to whatever good cause or whatever cozy researcher position by hiring the under-qualified “grant mercenary” to write your R01. But these are not my clients, nor my causes, and somehow I can’t drum up all that much compassion for the PhD tenure professor who can’t get it together to justify their own research project, especially given four cycles a year, and RFPs that haven’t changed in years.

Our clients are those that run small (budget between 30K- less than 5 million) social and health service providing organizations and local government entities in rural New Mexico. They make between nothing and 60K/year, and they work an average of 60 hrs/week. Their battle is an uphill one, all the time, and they are truly mission-driven. Their budgets never have enough room to hire that “development person” on a permanent basis, and so they call me. 3-5 week before deadline. Frantic.

I think we do a pretty good service to these clients. Many of them I have worked with for years. I know their mission, their services, why they are needed and who they benefit. I know the budget gaps, the organizational capacity and the organization’s needs. I don’t have to make stuff up. Or, let’s say, not very much stuff. There’s no way you can convince me that one of the large national grant writing firms can do the same kind of tailored and detail-oriented service for these local clients.

In the past I saw some of the projects funded by my grants morph into something completely new and unintended, or, fail miserably. As a consequence, I have tried to improve my ability to be realistic about what we promise in the proposal. So after the client gets funded, they don’t hate me for the whole duration of the project, struggling to live up to an impossible plan. Knowing your clients well helps with that reality check too.

Sometimes we work for statewide associations, larger nonprofits, or state government. The picture there isn’t much different at the individual level, although you wonder why improvements couldn’t be made at the institutional level, building the agencies’ capacity to write their own proposals. It doesn’t happen though, so they call me too. 5-3 weeks before deadline. Frantic.

With these projects it’s much more challenging to avoid hired-hand syndrome. Their scopes are larger, the budget bigger, the partnerships more complex, the issues not necessarily close to my expertise. And the politics are usually a nightmare.

Many times during the 3-5 weeks, as I am frantically trying to educate myself on whatever the issue is, I am asking myself, why don’t they write their own $#@! grant? Why don’t they have all this info stored somewhere other than their heads? What do you mean you don’t have last year’s proposal anymore?

And then I send the first draft, and very few edits come back from client staff, the very people who should straighten out all the obvious hired hand phrases and the output projections that are completely fictional. Too few edits, and I think….these people put way too much trust in me. And who are they going to blame if this doesn’t get awarded? Not themselves.

What it boils down to is effective communication, asking the right questions of the right people, in the communication style appropriate to the person. Making it very clear what you don’t know, and what you won’t do. And hoping that your client has the ability to follow up, meet internal deadlines, and focus on at least one good editing session. Tony Poderis has some good pointers on how to work with a grant writer effectively.

As challenging as all this is, it’s what makes me tick. Every new project is initially a confusing unorganized mess of information, facts, and knowledge. Once complete, and the submit button is pushed, it’s a well-organized case for a worthy project. And, if funded, it changes lives.

Once a New Mexico House Representative, upon hearing that I am a grant writer, sighed and said, that there are so many good grant writers who write grants for bad projects or organizations, and they get funded. I told her that I have turned jobs down, because I felt that the organization was too dysfunctional, or had unethical practices. The hired hand does discriminate.

I read all my reviewer comments on unfunded proposal, and I try to learn from them. I haven’t found hired hand complaints in written comments (which doesn’t mean reviewers haven’t thought or said it). But I don’t feel bad about being the hired hand. I provide a service by doing work that that would otherwise not get done. I help decrease the rural resource gap. And sometimes I make stuff up to get my client the award. Get over it.