GOURMET CONSIDERATION
You won’t be able to devour Gourmet magazine after the November issue. Even with a 68-year history and nearly 1 million subscribers, television food shows and online sites have taken a serious bite out of Gourmet's advertising revenue. (Gourmet will remain in book publishing and television programming; Gourmet recipes will still be available on Epicurious.com; and Bon Appétit, Conde Nast’s other epicurean magazine, will continue to publish. Editor Ruth Reichl will be on PBS.) How is this relevant to the nonprofit world?
There are arguments, particularly from the foundation sector, about the proliferation of nonprofit organizations. Since 1996, the number of 501(c)(3) organizations has increased by 81 percent to nearly 1.2 million – is that too many or is that in proportion to the unmet needs of society? Speaking of unmet needs, foundations provide only 13 percent of charitable dollars, usually highly restrictive dollars, often only partial funding, over short periods of time, with burdensome application and reporting requirements.
The Lodestar Foundation takes a carrot approach to overlapping nonprofit interests -- they've created the Collaboration Prize ($250,000) to inspire mergers, acquisitions and collaborations among nonprofit organizations that provide “the same or similar programs or services and compete for clients, financial resources, or staff.” The Museum of Nature and Science won this year for merging three museums in Dallas: The Science Place, Dallas Children’s Museum, and Dallas Museum of Natural History. Lodestar contends the new entity is an “all-encompassing museum with greater attendance and quality of education content. The staff consolidation saved $600,000 in the first year and the ratio of benefits to salaries went from 17.6% to 10.5%, without reducing quality.” YMCA/JCC Integration also won for their merger of the Jewish Community Center and the Young Men’s Christian Association in Toledo. “As a result of combining, the organizations did not build a new YMCA which realized savings of $5-8 million. Staff consolidation alone saved $300,000 and there was administrative savings of $130,000.”
If you are having serious financial problems, for the greater good, should your organization consider a merger? Mergers have to make sense. They are painful, disruptive, expensive and there is no guarantee of a stronger entity. However, because of market forces, merging may be the best way to sustain services. Nonprofit Mergers Workbook Part I: The Leaders Guide to Considering, Negotiating, and Executing a Merger, Updated Edition by David La Piana, might be a good group reading project, when you’re not out raking leaves.
There are arguments, particularly from the foundation sector, about the proliferation of nonprofit organizations. Since 1996, the number of 501(c)(3) organizations has increased by 81 percent to nearly 1.2 million – is that too many or is that in proportion to the unmet needs of society? Speaking of unmet needs, foundations provide only 13 percent of charitable dollars, usually highly restrictive dollars, often only partial funding, over short periods of time, with burdensome application and reporting requirements.
The Lodestar Foundation takes a carrot approach to overlapping nonprofit interests -- they've created the Collaboration Prize ($250,000) to inspire mergers, acquisitions and collaborations among nonprofit organizations that provide “the same or similar programs or services and compete for clients, financial resources, or staff.” The Museum of Nature and Science won this year for merging three museums in Dallas: The Science Place, Dallas Children’s Museum, and Dallas Museum of Natural History. Lodestar contends the new entity is an “all-encompassing museum with greater attendance and quality of education content. The staff consolidation saved $600,000 in the first year and the ratio of benefits to salaries went from 17.6% to 10.5%, without reducing quality.” YMCA/JCC Integration also won for their merger of the Jewish Community Center and the Young Men’s Christian Association in Toledo. “As a result of combining, the organizations did not build a new YMCA which realized savings of $5-8 million. Staff consolidation alone saved $300,000 and there was administrative savings of $130,000.”
If you are having serious financial problems, for the greater good, should your organization consider a merger? Mergers have to make sense. They are painful, disruptive, expensive and there is no guarantee of a stronger entity. However, because of market forces, merging may be the best way to sustain services. Nonprofit Mergers Workbook Part I: The Leaders Guide to Considering, Negotiating, and Executing a Merger, Updated Edition by David La Piana, might be a good group reading project, when you’re not out raking leaves.
posted by Kathy Miller @ 1:54 AM
0 Comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home