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Nonprofit organizations and the government agencies and funders that finance them need to think more creatively in the face of lean budgets and a sagging economy. That was the theme running through the Commonwealth Forum, “Innovation and Economy: The Role of the Nonprofit Sector in Tight Fiscal Times,” held March 7 at the Omni Parker House in Boston. James Jennings, professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, moderated the panel.
Nonprofits “are experiencing dicey times,” said Joanne Jaxtimer, first vice president and director of corporate affairs at Mellon New England. “Just as we advise clients to diversify their portfolios, we advise clients in the nonprofit sector to think creatively about how they diversify their funding sources.”
Ronald P. Preston, the state’s secretary of health and human services, was even tougher in his comments. Nonprofit providers often think that they’re “on a mission from God” and that “they don’t have to keep books well,” he said. “They need to start getting responsible in terms of business.”
“Yes, there are some nonprofits that are mismanaged, just as there are some for-profits that are mismanaged,” said Jackie Jenkins-Scott, president and CEO of the Dimock Community Health Center in Roxbury. But she conceded that times have changed. “We have not resolved how we reconcile mission-driven organizations with the [need] to be bottom-line organizations.”
Peter Dobkin Hall, Hauser lecturer on nonprofit organizations at Harvard University, pointed out that philanthropic efforts have traditionally been borne by large foundations, but more responsibility is now falling on individual citizens, who have shown themselves to be up to the task. “The proportion of income given by taxpayers to charity has declined significantly,” he warned. “We need a much bigger conversation about what do citizens owe the most needy people in their society.”
“There has been an increase in individual giving” recently, asserted Angel H. Bermudez, director of grantmaking at the Boston Foundation. He directed his philanthropic challenge toward the business sector. “There are still some major corporate players in this town that don’t have a well-defined corporate giving plan.”
Jennings asked the panelists how to increase the capacity of service-based organizations. “Nonprofits need to think more civically,” said Hall. “When resources are scarce, agencies get into a feeding frenzy and are not operating as a united front. We compete for donations and grants and contracts… Nonprofits need to work harder to think about how not to be one another’s worst enemies.”
The Commonwealth Forums are a joint project of MassINC and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. A transcript of this forum provided by State House News Service can be found here.