Giving Compass' Take:

• Suzanne McKechnie Klahr, writing for Medium, discusses the hardships of working in the social sector with the current nonprofit model. However,  she believes that changes to this model, namely operating like a for-profit business, will be the most beneficial in addressing burnout and lifespan of an organization. 

• How would the social entrepreneurship model help diversify funding sources? What are the challenges when pivoting to a new model in the nonprofit world?

• Read about the importance of nonprofit capacity building. 

As someone who has spent over two decades in the non-profit sector, I notice two trends lately. The first is that an alarming number of social entrepreneurs and non-profit founders are stepping down. Founders of organizations including Code 2040, Blue Engine, Education Pioneers, Genesys Works, Lift and Thinking Beyond Borders have either left or announced their intention to leave at the end of this year.

I have various theories — our work is more challenging than ever before, we feel a sense of crisis and the work we have been doing is not enough as we need to change systems not individual lives or, for some of us, we are just beaten down and exhausted.

This leads me to the second trend. I have been getting an extraordinary amount of emails from Foundations publishing reports on their own effectiveness.I applaud these introspective learnings and reports but at the same time I have come to the conclusion that no matter how effective funders become organizations and non-profit leaders cannot, if they wish to be sustainable, rely only on philanthropic dollars. They need to diversify their revenue sources — just like any good business.

I want to proceed with caution advocating that all non-profits need to have an earned income stream and operate more like for-profit businesses. We must encourage young, social entrepreneurs who enter the field idealistically to start with a business model that is sustainable. It’s time for non-profit leaders and boards to start having more dialogue and learning best practices about earned income streams, diversified “product” lines, partnerships with corporations and government programs where the dollars are not being deployed strategically.

Read the full article about nonprofit model by Suzanne McKechnie Klahr at Medium