Go to content Go to navigation Go to search

November 09, 2008

Independent Sector
Amid Challenges, Nonprofit Leaders See Big Opportunities

Charity leaders at the Independent Sector’s annual meeting, which opened in Philadelphia today, turned what could have been a doom-and-gloom discussion about the financial challenges facing nonprofit groups into a feel-good look into what a new presidential administration might mean for nonprofit organizations.

Miles Rapoport, president of Demos, a think tank in New York, opened the session called “Making the Numbers Work during the Economic Squeeze,, saying that the country is “entering a period of time that is enormously creative, enormously uncertain, enormously new,” and that presents “tremendous organizational possibilities.”

Participants touched on some of the fine points of moving through a recession, such as whether it is prudent to start new programs to attract new sources of revenue when money is tight.

Garvester Kelley, vice president of the mid-Atlantic region.of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, cautioned charities to resist the temptation to start new lines of business to chase new revenue. He said that new ventures take time to nurture and can quickly burn through cash.

William Eberwein, founder and president of Children’s Choice, a social-services group here, was less conservative about making new investments. “In difficult times, the wolves buy and the sheep sell,” he said.

And some participants expressed concern about the fund-raising climate. One fund raiser, only four months into her job at a public-radio organization, asked if she should just quit now. Another wondered whether it was prudent to start a new fund-raising campaign.

But overall the mood was optimistic, and the talk was about all the change in the air.

Christine James-Brown, chief executive of the Child Welfare League of America, said that charities need to collaborate better among themselves and with the new Obama Administration. Leaders of nonprofit groups especially need to work with the government, she said, to clarify and simplify existing legislation, so that federal money for, say, social-service programs, can move more easily through the system to the state and local levels.

Mr. Rapoport suggested it was time for charities to step up their advocacy work and make public-policy demands.

“It’s a pivotal moment in our country’s political history,” he said.

— Debra E. Blum

Sunday November 9, 2008 | Permalink

Commenting is closed for this article.

Previous: Nonprofit Leaders Debate Foundation Disclosure
Next: What's Needed: a Dow Jones Index for the Nonprofit World

---

Copyright © 2009 The Chronicle of Philanthropy