Today’s economic realities have prompted many nonprofits to consider new business models so they can better serve their constituents while ensuring their own financial solvency.

These adjustments are taking many forms. Some organizations are investing in new ways to deliver programs and services, while others are making their current activities more effective and efficient. Change can mean restructuring operations, collaborating more formally with similar nonprofits or, as now happens with greater frequency, trimming the size of the group’s staff as well as its programs and activities.

Regardless of what form it takes, change isn’t easy for many nonprofits. It’s time-intensive and expensive, and it involves risk.

What makes some organizations more likely than others to adopt change effectively? A history of surpluses? A board that is willing to step out of its…

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Too often, foundations don’t get as much out of a research grant as they could.  That’s because grantees and foundations don’t distill the lessons in ways that organizations can easily find out about and apply to their day-to-day work and conversations.

But now some grant makers are collaborating with nonprofit organizations to take different approaches. The Steppenwolf Theatre Company, in Chicago, chose to make public the results of a new report on attracting and engaging theatergoers in their 20s for the benefit of other organizations facing the same challenges.

The Nonprofit Finance Fund provided assistance in this effort and asked the report’s author, Patricia Martin, to organize and publicize the findings in the report through interactive social-media channels used by creators and consumers of culture.

I asked Ms. Martin, who is author of RenGen, Renaissance…

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Below is the final part of my interview with Ben Cameron, program director for the arts at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, about a program administered by Nonprofit Finance Fund and financed by Duke to help arts groups. (Read the first, second, and third installments.)

Through the multiyear “Leading for the Future” project, Nonprofit Finance Fund is directing more than $10-million in capital from the foundation to 10 performing-arts organizations. The goal is to give them the flexibility to test new ideas, explore new business approaches, resist distraction, and even risk failure.

Below, Mr. Cameron shares his thoughts on the lessons he’s learned during the program’s first year.

With innovation and risk comes the possibility of failure. How have you seen your grantees use capital to turn major disappointments into future artistic successes?

Success for us lies not…

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Below is the third part of my interview with Ben Cameron, program director for the arts at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, about a program administered by Nonprofit Finance Fund and financed by Duke to help arts groups.  (Read the first and second installments.)

Through the multiyear “Leading for the Future” project, Nonprofit Finance Fund is directing more than $10-million in capital from the foundation to 10 performing-arts organizations. The goal is to give them the flexibility to test new ideas, explore new business approaches, resist distraction, and even risk failure.

Below, Mr. Cameron shares his thoughts on the lessons he’s learned during the program’s first year. Over the coming days, we’ll post additional questions and answers from him about this program. We hope you’ll contribute your thoughts to the conversation, too.

Creativity and passion are…

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Below marks the second part of my interview with Ben Cameron, program director for the arts at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, about a program administered by Nonprofit Finance Fund and financed by Duke to help arts groups.  (Read the first part.)

Through the multiyear “Leading for the Future” project, Nonprofit Finance Fund is directing more than $10-million in capital from the foundation to 10 performing-arts organizations. The goal is to give them the flexibility to test new ideas, explore new business approaches, resist distraction, and even risk failure.

Below, Mr. Cameron shares his thoughts on the lessons he’s learned during the program’s first year. Over the coming days, we’ll post additional questions and answers from him about this program. We hope you’ll contribute your thoughts to the conversation, too.

How do you assess a potential grantee’s…

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Grant makers often fail to recognize that nonprofit groups need two distinct types of money to thrive.

Nonprofits need capital (and lots of it) to, among other things, plan for and invest in ideas that will help them prepare for future growth and make changes to the way they operate.

They also need reliable and recurring revenue to sustain themselves year in and year out after the change has happened.

Today, I interview Ben Cameron, program director for the arts at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, about a program administered by Nonprofit Finance Fund and financed by Duke to give these groups access to capital, while also helping them generate revenue for their operations.

Through the multiyear “Leading for the Future” project, Nonprofit Finance Fund is directing more than $10-million in capital from the foundation to 10 performing-arts organizations. The goal is to give…

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In their new book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, the business scholars Chip and Dan Heath describe a three-part process to change an organization.

They borrow an analogy used by Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis to describe a person’s rational side as a rider and the emotional side as an elephant. To change behavior, they argue, organizations must:

• Direct the rider, by providing crystal clear instructions on where to go and how to get there.
• Motivate the elephant, by finding ways to appeal to a person’s emotional side.
• Shape the path by creating an environment conducive to change. Some people are more like elephants, and some more like riders. But everyone needs a path to aspire to follow to do their best work.

I found myself thinking about this idea in the context of nonprofit fund raising and finance, where the three elements are often out of…

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