Mission and Revenue: A Balance
Money is King
Money is king, whether you are a for-profit, non-profit or government agency. Without money you can’t pay salaries, you can’t pay the rent, and you certainly can’t deliver products or services. This is a truth that often masquerades as a dirty word in the social change sector…but it’s still a truth. Managing cash flow is the only way to keep the doors open at any organization. I’d argue, however, that running a non-profit presents unique challenges, because not only do you need to meet payroll, you have to run programs for which it is inherently difficult to charge.
This creates a fundamental tension between the need to raise money and the need to change lives. How to maintain a balance between the two? For me, it comes down to asking three questions every time we make a decision: Will this have an impact on the client’s life? Will this make the client happy? And will this bring in revenue? These questions form a decision matrix: programs on which we lose money better have tremendous social impact; programs that don’t have impact better make money; and regardless of what we do our customers better have a good experience.