Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants

With the Holidays setting in, there weren't many submissions to the Carnival this week, though a surprising number of deposed Nigerian princes and former banking magnates wrote to the Carnival this week. The good news: Several newcomers to the conversation that you'll find worth checking out:

• At Ted Grigg's Reflections about Direct Marketing, a look at direct-marketing basics: Leveraging the 4 Human Behavior Characteristics for More Powerful DM Creative.
  
• From Sox First, Six keys for more effective charities.
  
• Marketing & Fundraising Ideas tells fundraisers Why You Need to Ask.
  
• American Consumer News offers Creative Fundraising Ideas for Your Non-Profit (for very small nonprofits, it seems).
  
• And finally, as host, I get to slide in with a post of my own: Take the good fundraising copy test.
  

And just so you don't go away all under-blogged, here are 5 blogs I enjoy that have nothing to do with fundraising:

• The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
  
• Strange Maps
  
• Presentation Zen
  
• The Comics Curmudgeon
  
• AdVerbatims
  

The Carnival now takes three weeks off. It starts up again January 7, 2008 (deadline January 4) at RedBoots Digital Rodeo.

Comments

[robert guinto]

I challenge the myth of larger nonprofits being overall more efficient than the smaller organizations. I do this to help donors better understand that statements and reality of the perception are not necessarily true. The more something is stated and the more one remembers something does not necessarily make it true. It is human nature to think it is true and to generalize. The larger nonprofits would like funders and donors to believe it more. The larger the nonprofits funding the larger their ability to pay higher salaries, multiple layers of administrative costs and keep the administrative percentage lower.

As a donor making choices within their day-to-day experiences what variables are important to you when making your donation? As a donor what purpose do you want your donation to serve? As a donor whom may donate constantly, periodically or almost never what is the motivation? The sample of the nonprofits below are those from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts whom contracted in 2002 to provide human services and reported their full financials to the Commonwealth.

Out of a sample of 217 nonprofit providers with revenues under 2.5 million the administrative costs were calculated on FY02 costs.

23 providers, 25% plus admin, average revenue $701,219
20 providers, 20% -24% admin, average revenue $1.024M
65 providers, 15% -19% admin, average revenue $1.167M
83 providers, 10%-14% admin, average revenue $1.48M
26 providers, 8%-9% admin, average revenue $1.491M

Out of a sample of 220 nonprofit providers with revenues over 2.5 million the administrative costs were calculated on FY02 costs.

2 providers, 25% plus admin, average revenue $8.008M
14 providers, 20% -24% admin, average revenue $23.863M
45 providers, 15% -19% admin, average revenue $12.609M
92 providers, 10%-14% admin, average revenue $11.564M
67 providers, 8%-9% admin, average revenue $12.095M

Image the savings if outsourcing and capping the costs at 10% what the impact would be. It was estimated that the potential savings for the entities below 2.5 million was 18 million dollars. The potential savings for the entities over 2.5 million was 143 million dollars. Therefore, I ask you to think about where the real savings can be realized.