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Planning for Long-Term Stability printer-friendly

By Jeremy White, RestoreHope Consulting

Non-profit organizations across the country often look for funding and resources to help their organization grow and develop. In many cases, these organizations look for funding to help them move from one month to another or from one quarter to another. In these times of economic uncertainty, it’s even more increasingly prevalent for organizations to look for emergency funding.

However even in such times, it’s imperative that organizations find and develop ways to create long term stability and sustainability regarding their organizations and resources. Organizations that are constantly identifying monthly resources, and relying upon will find themselves in more difficult situations when those funding sources dry up.

Non-profits should therefore focus on casting as wide a funding net as possible with regards to diverse sources. This should include local foundations, perhaps government grants, corporations and local businesses as well as donors from the community. Relying on these sectors will help to diversify your streams of income and protect against lags or lulls in giving or grants.

It is important to identify both short-term and long-term sources of funding and to categorize them. That way sources are in place so that interruptions in cash flow do not occur. If much of this terminology smacks of a corporate environment, that is intentional. Non-profit organizations can benefit from thinking of themselves in some ways as businesses.

In the end, effective planning of proper support for an organization’s leaders and the diversification of reliable funding streams have become essential factors for successful and sustainable organizations. Develop a long-term approach to obtain these goals.

For questions or more information about long term stability please contact us at www.restorehopeconsulting.com

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