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Originally appeared in a July 6, 2015 post to The Patterson Foundation’s blog
You have a good idea for your organization. You have the opportunity to receive free consulting to help implement that idea. However, you aren’t sure your organization has the capacity to execute on that idea. What do you do? Do you take the valuable, free consulting or not?
Most would view this scenario from the fund recipient’s perspective. In other words, we believe it should be the recipient’s decision whether or not to take the help. We would hope that they would say, “No,” unless they were sure they had the ability to execute. This is logical.
But, alas, decisions involving money aren’t always logical. In the nonprofit space, if a funder is willing to make an investment, the nonprofit organization would be hard-pressed to say, “No.” Financial resources are limited, so when the opportunity to receive something of considerable value presents itself, the nonprofit leader is almost required to accept it. Not doing so might prevent future opportunities. The money creates the imbalance in power between the funder and fundee involved, and this often forces the fundee to accept money/resources it can’t optimally deploy.
The Patterson Foundation’s Theory About This Dynamic
To avoid this, we believe it is the funder’s responsibility to rebalance this dynamic so that the best decision can be made – even if it means the nonprofit does not accept the money/resources at this time. The Patterson Foundation (TPF) recently tested this theory with our latest initiative: Margin & Mission Ignition.TPF engaged No Margin, No Mission to lead nonprofit organizations through three educational labs, 14 weeks of business planning coaching, and 14 weeks of implementation — all followed by a year of support for developing an earned-income revenue stream.
