The Boys & Girls Club I was working for just shut down all five of its school-based programs because it ran out of funding. This city is just west of the wealthiest zip code in Utah, but the residents are poor and for some reason it's a huge black hole in the middle of other well-developed cities with thriving businesses.
The city has a surplus of 300K this year, and the Boys & Girls Club went to beg for a piece of it. The other items eligible for the money included replacing street lights, repairing roads, hiring more policemen, and improving juvenile detention facilities. We had more than 1,000 kids enrolled, about half of whom attended five days a week because they don't have parents at home after school. The money is a one-time surplus, and the mayor made it clear they will not make whatever gets the money a line-item in the budget.
Where would you vote to put the money, into building up infrastructure to encourage economic growth, or keeping 500-1,000 kids out of trouble after school for a year?
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Well, the hiring more policemen thing is on a similar footing, being a recurring cost started with a one-time surplus, but the other stuff is definitely competing on those terms.
How much of the surplus would the Boys and Girls Club soak up? $80k towards it is much different from $180k (for instance); I would very likely support the former, but have to think hard about the latter.
Plus, I'd of course, hope the year was used to look for additional funding sources.
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Probably. I was going to ask for more info, but I can't imagine there are too many Wendys employed by B&G in Utah in this situation. Small world, eh?
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Fugu- That's funny, there was a guy in the audience who regularly attended city council meetings and that's almost exactly what he said. I agree, actually. It costs about $250K to run the 5 sites for a year, but I bet we could run on a smaller budget than that. I'd take a pay cut. Anyway, no matter how much we get, I think it will be mismanaged by the current executive director.
So here is another question- my biggest problem with the exec's explanation for closing the sites out from under us was the part where he said, "We were overly optimistic about our fundraisers." He and his director of development(if you're in Utah, this woman is the infamous Aisza Workman, Nancy Workman's daughter, who was funeling county money into the Club illegally) had been acting- right up until 2 weeks before we closed down- on a budget they figured according to a fundraising goal of $600K. The fundraiser started in March- we all knew by mid-April it was a complete disaster. Aisza used to send out these progress reports with a bar graph containing one teeny little bar and one very tall bar that indicated- with no numerical figures whatsoever- we were very, very far away from meeting our fundraising goal. But she and the exec kept having us do things as if everything was okay- we had no idea the existence of the entire program hung on that one fundraiser until they announced the closures.
Is this how non-profs RUN? Shoot me now.
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That is NOT how non-profits should run (or any business for that matter). Ouch.
*shakes head*
Imagine that - a city with a surplus that won't share with the needy. *grimace face*
Hey fugu! How's that fit into the other thread question about allocating funds? The part about what the community can pull together on it's own? How would you statistically show that?
Don't answer that - I am going to bed, now! Even though I am fascinated by these sorts of dilemmas and scenarios . . .
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Shan- (for the morning) Thanks. It was your thread that made me post it, and Mike brings up an interesting point. I'm taking a social stats class in the fall, but running on my woman's intuition I think number crunching is just an oblique way of approaching decisions about what kind of society we want and what we're really willing to do to create it.
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That's how incompetently run non-profits run. Successful non-profits nowadays (as any day) run fairly similarly to a business.
I'd suggest focusing on partnerships with other local non-profits, and schools, to help with fundraising. Also, since donations appear to be a problem, look into paid services and government grants; most non-profits run on a mix of at least two of those three revenue streams. Since sports-related activities are often involved in Boys and Girls Clubs, and you have the facilities (if you're anything like the local one), perhaps local sports figures would donate their time to "workshops" which people would pay to attend, just as an example idea.
As for the surplus money, I'd definitely vote for it, for that low an expenditure, particularly as there's a potential to remain open past then. $50k a year just isn't that much in the grand scheme of funding. And the city should make the hiring (or obtaining as a volunteer) a decent accountant who will keep stakeholders apprised of the accurate current financial situation a requirement of the funding.
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The only way to tell what a community can (in a realistic sense) pull together on its own is to look at what it is pulling together on its own.
A rough indicator will be median income -- a high median income indicates the area is on the whole fairly affluent, which generally translates to ability to provide interstitial aid (that is, aid which wouldn't easily be counted by looking at expenditure measures; aid which happens on a small level) as well as being a rough indicator of general local government funding (though that's better measured directly).
If a community is giving substantially less money to the needy than similarly wealthy communities (counting both through the government and through non-profits and other service orgs), it may be appropriate to attempt to stimulate an increase, through incentives (matching funds, tax breaks) and directed efforts (larger non-profits being encouraged to do extra fund raising in that area, for instance).
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Actually, it's more like $ 2 50K. Still, though, that's encouraging. That's a good note, on requiring certain changes if the Club gets the money. I couldn't believe when I asked the exec why he was running the Club on hopes and dreams instead of behaving like a businessman and securing funds before acting like he had them, he said I just didn't understand the world of non-profitss and this is how all executive directors figure their budgets. I thought, if that's true we've just found the first job where stupid is a required qualification.
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fugu, do you know what kind of parameters city governments are working in? Like, I just got hired for a community program in Salt Lake, just about 15 miles north of Midvale, where the Clubs were closed. They have an ENOURMOUS community center with a pool and fantastic facilities for arts anfd crafts and cooking, and the summer program I'll work for is well-funded and includes field trips, and van accessibility- stuff we never had at Club. It's all city-run. It kills me, the poorest of the kids I worked with don't have access to anything this cool just because of geography. Also, my mom works for the Salt Lake City school district, and she gets paid better and has access to much better resources than teachers in the Jordan School Dist. where I was working. So how much sovereignty does each city have over its own money? When can the state step in and encourage actions like those you mentioned?
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Hopefully you'll find the social stats class useful, though many stats classes just teach one how to number crunch and set up some contrived word problems from the relevant domain. Good luck with this not being one such .
Number crunching is very important, but is easily misused. For instance, to measure success, a firm understanding must be created of what constitutes success, a statistic chosen which measures that understanding, and regular measurements taken (both of the statistic itself and of the continuing accuracy and appropriateness of that statistic) throughout the process.
That basic thought pattern applies to most statistics. Keep a strong hold on what a statistic really means, and don't fall into a metonymic trap. Statistics are an essential tool (how do you know "how much" you've helped a diverse array of thousands of people without them?), but are not a crutch for compassion, empathy, and humane judgment. At the same time, common sense, while often right, is also often wrong when it comes to complex situations -- this is one big reason why statistics are such useful tools.
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Thanks for the advice, I'm terrible at math in general but if I can keep the point of it all straight while I'm working on it I'll probably get more out of it. Maybe I'll even get something higher than a C out of it, bonus Posts: 377 | Registered: May 1999
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Oh, I thought I read 250k for five years. Sleepiness getting to me.
If you can bring the budget down to 150k needed from the city, I'd almost certainly be on board.
Still well within the realm of reasonable fund raising to keep it afloat past then, too.
That's certainly not how all non-profits run their funds. Its not necessary to have the funds in hand, many non-profits have too uneven a fundraising schedule, but its extremely important to have a reasonable expectation of funds (preferably more funds than you intend to spend).
Unfortunately, the parameters for city governments are highly locale specific. They depend on historic funding levels across all sorts of government (state, county, city, township, et cetera), current economic state, impressions by citizens of the current government's integrity and reasonableness, et cetera.
The biggest factor is will. Where there's a will, there's a way isn't just a pithy saying. Generally speaking, there's money/volunteers/whatever available in some manner for all endeavors of reasonable size, what it takes to organize those resources is a determined leader.
Wills don't hurt either: money being left by rich people is a good way to fund some things.
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Heh, nice play on words. This is interesting, and encouraging. Thanks. Have a good night, sleepiness is getting to me, too.
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I have literally written the book on how the non-profit councils should handle their finances. No, everything should NOT depend on one fundraisier. Oh my stars. However, it is harder for non-profits starting out, just like it's harder for people who have just started working to have a six month reserve in case of emergencies.
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