• Impact of economic crisis on Canadian nonprofits


• Response of volunteers and the need for volunteers during times of economic slow down


• Warren Buffet's fundraising advice

A to Z Grantmakers' Guide for Uncertain Times

Foundation Giving Priorities Remain Consistent During Economic Slowdowns

i think alot of non profit organizations are not non profit any more.

This discussion started about 8 months ago.  I wonder how everyone is feeling the financial crisis now? 

I know that in my own Chicago organization, our YTD giving is up over last year but still below 2008 and 2007.  We're also not certain on the rest of this year.

We're a moderately small organization (rev. $350k ly vs $450k the year prior) so one grant of $25,000 can have a big impact up, or down.

I feel this is an opportunity for non profits that traditionally compete with each other, to find ways to work together to expand the number of donors interested in specific types of charities.  I've been maintaining a database of non-school tutor/mentor programs in Chicago since 1993 and organizing quarterly events to try to draw volunteers and donors to the database, then to each organization, based on where they are, what age group they serve, and what they show on their web sites.  We've created a map-based program locator to support this.

The challenge is finding ways to increase the number of people who visit this map to shop and choose where to get involved.  Since we don't have advertising dollars, we need others to be writing about tutoring/mentoring, and pointing to the Program Locator as a place to go to find information.  If the American Idol TV show can draw 10 million viewers weekly, why can't organizations and business partners in the non profit sector innovate ways to draw large number of people through sites like Tech Soup, or similar portals, to all of the organizations who spend time sharing ideas here?

I've seen blog action days, and taken part in blog exchanges, but I've not found many intermediary groups who work to draw volunteers and donors through their portal directly to a large number of like-kinded non profits in the same geographic area.  The articles in this collaboration section illustrate what we're trying to accomplish.

Do any of you see evidence of non profits in different geographic areas banding together to create "advertising" that would increase the number of people volunteering, or providing financial support,  in one, or more, of the groups in such a collaboration?

If you have links to those, please share.

As someone who runs a nonprofit without any money at all (no, really) I can say that obviously this recession didn't impact the org.  We have been very successful at drawing large numbers of people to what we do without paying a single cent (obviously) for advertising.  In our first year over 1100 people had joined our email list and we have managed to make it into virtually every print publication in Seattle including two glossy magazines.  We've had no shortage of volunteers and without wasting our time over thinking ROI or anything else we spend our time moving forward, making the program happen and reaching out to get free advertising (though we've actually stopped doing this as we're doing pretty good at the moment).

I honestly think going without money has been the key to this as we're something to write about, something different.  But more than that because we don't take money we don't have a board, an ED or anyone at all to have to run things through.  We're nimble and can simply move forward with outreach, looking only to each other when we have questions about how to do that or to run something by someone else to see if it's appropriate.

There are lots of groups that can help nonprofits find volunteers and occasional collaborations but in my humble opinion until nonprofits become more nimble, more able to produce and reach out without having to sit through an overly lengthy process this will always be a problem... combine more people together who have to overtalk each process and likely nothing will happen.  There are obviously NPO's out there who aren't stuck in the meeting/talking trenches and are instead on the producing side but certainly if that applies to a nonprofit they will likely drive themselves into the ground simply talking about fundraising or connecting rather than doing.