By way for an Arts Presenters newsletter I was directed to a worthwhile resource for non-profits of all kinds put out by Mellon Financial Corp, Discover Total Resources: A Guide for Nonprofits. (Downloadable PDF, by the way.)
Though billed as “a descriptive checklist to be used as a guide, or self-audit, by boards, staff and volunteers to assess the degree to which they are tapping a full range of community resources: people, money, goods and services,” the document is much more than a mere checklist. It provides great ideas and some of the best fundamental guidance about how to run a non-profit I have seen in or out of textbooks.
It does indeed provide a self-discovery audit for your organization, but some of the real value as one might imagine comes in the Money chapter. No coincidence, I am sure, that it is the longest chapter. Though honestly, read them all.
I single out the Money chapter because it is the area of greatest concern for non-profits and it is dense with good guidance about topics like internal financial controls and being wary about earning income outside the purview of your non-profit status. Some of the grant and fundraising notes are familiar, but the summary of options is good.
One option I had never heard of before is a Program Related Investment.
“Stated simply, a PRI is an equity investment, loan or loan guarantee made by a foundation to serve a charitable purpose. It is sometimes called a social investment. Unlike grants, PRIs must be repaid, sometimes with the addition of a low interest rate.”
They seem to be used for social service programs which may be why I hadn’t come across them before. Doesn’t seem to be any reason I can see for them not to be use in the arts. Though their use may be more complicated than the summary can do justice to.
While reading I had a “duh, why didn’t I think of that” moment when it came to the idea of consortia and other cooperative efforts between organizations. One of the suggestions they make is that groups can leverage their pooled resources to obtain higher quality products and services than they could alone. Among the examples they give are purchasing supplies in bulk and perhaps sharing legal and accounting services.
I often talk about how block booking efforts are going to become a financial necessity in the near future for arts organizations, but I lacked the wit at the time to make the logical extension of that idea to other operational areas. Some of the examples the document gives about cooperative efforts might be worth reading to spark ideas and surmount blind spots like mine in ones thinking.
