Giving Compass' Take:

• Nell Edgington's Social Velocity provides four key steps to help organizations achieve their funding and growth goals by breaking the so-called nonprofit financial "glass ceiling."

• This is basically about the often-nebulous funding limit that nonprofits hit without the ability to grow further. What can we do to help orgs push past this obstacle?

• Read more about nonprofit financials, costs and growth. 

I received some great responses about my last post, “Why Don’t We Make Big Bets on Nonprofits?” One of the recurring questions in those responses was “How do we change nonprofits and the nonprofit sector to be able to absorb bigger investments?”

The fact is that a financial glass ceiling exists for nonprofits — a limit, which many nonprofits hit, where the money just won’t grow. They may have a great solution to a social problem, but they are unable to attract the money necessary to deliver on that solution.

I see this all the time in my consulting practice. A nonprofit has existed at a certain budget level — let’s say $1.5 million — for years and years, and though they have big ideas for how much more they could be doing, they just can’t seem to get past that $1.5 million mark.

But if we are ever going to truly address the challenges we face as a society, we have to figure out how to grow the finances of our social change organizations, networks, and movements. Certainly funders can help alter this reality (and a topic for a future blog post, to be sure). But I think a big part of the change comes from nonprofit leaders who have a vision for growth taking a systematic approach. In my experience, there are 4 key steps to breaking the nonprofit financial glass ceiling:

  1. Create a Long-term Strategy and Financial Model
  2. Develop Your Internal Critical Mass
  3. Build Your External Network
  4. Educate Your Funders

Read the full article about the nonprofit financial glass ceiling by Nell Edgington at Social Velocity.