I thought now might be a good time to share some observations about the life cycles of nonprofits from the perspective of someone who spent fifteen years working in nonprofits large and small, including three years' work for a "troubleshooter", a consultant hired to help small nonprofits with their crises
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...and sometimes, I love living in a post-communist country where everyone had to learn business all of a sudden 21 years ago, and knows exactly how fun that is. Balcerowicz's our national hero, and that means economists and businesspeople are respected.
We took over several teams from competitors, and oh, it's a shock. I'm talking about things Everyone Knows, like that lady in admin who knows everything, or a support team we've had for years who format documents for us, and the new people are clueless. They had induction courses, but courses don't cover how the company actually works!
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But the left's counter is that business is really rather lower class! Thinking people are artists or academics and never soil their hands with filthy money! And of course never think about how to actually execute a plan, rather than simply think of it!
Also, of course, throwing out the rules. I'm all for throwing out rules that don't work, but we love to throw out all the rules and then reinvent the wheel by discovering that there was a reason those policies and rules existed. They do something valuable or they safeguard against something catastrophic.
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Sorry to veer a bit off topic and be a bit ranty....but good grief some of the OTW folks really need to go back to remedial non-profit school.
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The key issues for a small nonprofit, whether c3 or church, are twofold -- the value of the professional service, and the monetary value of the creation.
If, for example, you have volunteers make flyers about a music program at church and pass them out, no reporting is necessary. Making flyers is not a professional skill, and the flyers themselves have no monetary value. If you have someone donate their bookkeeping services to the church, you must report as that's a professional skill even if nothing of monetary value is produced. If you have volunteers restore a classic car which is then auctioned off, you have to report because the restored car has monetary value. And if you have someone design software worth thousands of dollars, you doubly have to report! 0_0
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