Interesting article in today's Hartford Courant about two area municipalities and their building overhauls for the next generation of libraries.

Yes, in the parlance of Sally Field, Libraries can say "You like me!"  But who is the "you".  Libraries were often started by rich folks like Carnegie.  Shortly thereafter libraries became publicly supported entities, recognizing their benefit to all classes of folk. 

In the last few dozen years, Libraries have been slipping down the ranks of publicly supported priorities forced to go dig up their own resources, especially through private foundations.  Some have done especially good raising millions and keeping alive and even remaking what might otherwise have been albatrosses.

Best thing for everyone or should have gone the way of old public school buildings?  Wining through individual donor votes or should still command a public financial commitment?  These are questions for the future library 'cause once the buildings are refurbished, someone has to pay for the utilities and staff.  Will the someone be the public?

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation announced earlier this week that it was making a $39 million commitment to grantee capacity building.  In addition, it attracted another $49 million for this effort.

While congratulations and thanks are due, McConnell Clark has always recognized the value of capacity building as an early pioneer in making the tough choices of not just throwing money at good ideas but working to ensure that the providers of the good ideas had the management, governance and sustainability potential to excel.

Kudos to the members of this capacity building effort.  May these investments be used wisely to have a sustaining impact on both the providers of services and the outcomes.

Interesting article in a couple of papers today about Proton Centers sponsored at University Hospitals.  Proton therapy is a special form of radiation therapy that is expensive and like much of modern medicine requires something special and expensive to make it happen.

Today's story focused on how proton centers are financed and the delicate relationships that result between doctors, universities and for-profits.  The article concluded with what I believe is a lesson for all nonprofits considering social enterprise ventures:

Timothy R. Williams, former co-chairman of the radiation oncology society’s health policy committee, said in a talk at the October conference that "the profession was threatening to debase itself if doctors were building centers for the money or competitive advantage."

There is a delicate balance in all that the sector does.

“Plenty of programs,” Dr. Williams said, “are doing it for the wrong reasons.”

The New Haven Community Action Agency was raided by the FBI (yea, the guys with guns and fancy badges and vests and lots more better things to do like fight international terrorists) to secure documents to prove that the agency had been really bad and was handing out fuel vouchers to aliens (and I don't mean the folks with the antennae).

A disgruntled employee blew the whistle and the FBI is diverting their good energy to raid a pretty mismanaged relic from the anti-poverty days all to prove that the agency has not followed the rules and has enabled some illegal aliens to get fuel.  And no, the CAP agency didn't really mean to keep illegal aliens warm -- just so happens that along with folks who were "legal" there might have been some folks who were illegal.  Wow -- how could the CAP let that happen?

Come-on public, we all know better than this!  Call your Congressman and ask them to let the FBI get back to their real jobs and maybe we should get some help for the disgruntled employee oh and perhaps, at this time of year, think of loving our illegal and legal aliens.  Wait, that's all of us.

Santa Clause Inc. -- yup, that's the name of Santa's nonprofit.  He had to incorporate to protect him from a variety of near-liability threats you can imagine.

I thought I would do a brief audit to see how Santa stacks up (Guidestar hasn't done a check).

Using the four pillars of a nonprofit:

Program -- the place gets it done but not 100% - more like 60% but this depends on what you consider getting it done.  If one refers to ensuring that every child experiences the love of humanity, this ain't happening.  We have huge poverty rates that vary in degree around the world.  Not all these kids receive even a morsel of food which to them might be the equivalent of a Wii.

Sustainability -- what the place does certainly seems to be sustainable, been doing it for years with a huge number of institutional and individual donors plus humongous numbers of volunteers -- probably one of the most sustainable models around.

Management -- hard to tell but the only complaints from staff and volunteers seem to be around one night, but everyone admits knowing that that's the game going into it.

Governance -- who knows -- probably need some strengthening here -- these folks are invisible.

Well, that's my report.  For those who celebrate, may this be the best!

I love my auto dashboard.  Without it I would have little or no idea how my oil, coolant, battery or even my speed is doing.  From my dashboard I know starting points and have reality checks and understand if action should be taken.

Entrepreneur's latest issue offers a peak at "Business Performance Dashboards".  Entrepreneur's Dashboard uses a database of nearly 20 million US companies to help provide benchmarks for 14 industries (see entrepreneur.com/benchmark).

I mention Entrepreneur's Dashboard as a backdrop for thinking about how we in the nonprofit sector can improve our understanding of what works and what might not work and to help set standards of performance.  Perhaps most poised to initiate community-wide and sectoral dashboards is the foundation community which is familiar with many of the nonprofit players and has great concern about performance as well as the size of the sector. 

Meanwhile, a Dashboard is useful internally for every nonprofit board and exec.  Think of how helpful your auto dashboard is in helping you know how "well" your vehicle is performing.  Now think about which indicators might tell you the same about your nonprofit.  Set a goal for each of these indicators and start a quarterly report that tells you the status of these items.  You might even have a few indicators for each of your nonprofit's pillars: program (e.g. number served vs. target); management (staff turnover or facility repair); governance (board meeting attendance); and sustainability (diversity of funding).

Interesting New York Times article today on Pura Vida and more importantly addressing the question: for-profit or nonprofit?

The article seems to emphasize the issue of financing that nonprofit ventures face and does not focus on the issue that I believe really drives the to-be or not-to-be question about being a nonprofit.  That is if neither the government nor the for-profit market has demand or incentive to pursue the mission (i.e. there's not enough something in it for either sector).

In the case of Pura Vida, there certainly are plenty of coffee distributors, not as many of this ilk when Pura Vida kicked off.  But there were few if any venues for the beneficiaries (kids) to have many opportunities and neither "market" was interested.  Hence, Pura Vida.  This is the real story -- an unresponsive market.  Financing is a means not an end.

Interesting article in Washington Post discussing the nonprofit One Laptop Project (laptops for $100 to countries where technology is not affordable/accessible).

The article stressing the obstacles to success that the Project is experiencing, especially the for-profit competitive market place.

Again I must challenge that if the purpose of the nonprofit is to address market failures, when the for-profit market is actually trying to make-up for failures, the need for the nonprofit is in question. 

Maybe the One Laptop Project has succeeded and should raise the "Mission Accomplished" flag as we now have the for-profit market pursuing the goal of distributing accessible technology around the world.

Perhaps it goes without saying that there's something not quite right when school boards have to create a nonprofit to achieve financial projects not otherwise in the school budget.  From my observation, most of these projects fall into two categories: sports and arts; and, the money raised is generally spent on facilities, supplies and trips.

Just today I caught wind of a story about a school system in a pretty affluent town that needs bucks for "press boxes" for the sports field.  One strategy to achieve this goal will include creating a nonprofit that can be a pass-through for the money raised.

The proliferation of nonprofits is a phenomenon that is a pain to many, including grant makers and regulators.  And there's no real reason.  Community Foundations and bank trust departments (the philanthropic section) can fill the role without creating all these one-shot organizations.  On the other hand, if a school is creating a sister institution, maybe this makes sense but let's stop first, and check-out the alternatives before using the nonprofit shell as a home for subsidizing the taxpayer.

GREAT lessons for nonprofit governance in this month's Conference Board Review on the role, no, the necessity, of boardroom debate as, dare I pose it, a fiduciary responsibility. 

Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove (editors of The Financial Times Handbook of Management) do a great job of painting the typical for-profit board scenario of effectively a "love-fest" with a bunch of Directors nodding in agreement to whatever the company CEO and managers put in front of them.  Absent: smart conversation and intelligent disagreement.

Funny thing is that "polite" pretty much represents what goes on in nonprofit board rooms.  Absence of intelligent debate and strategic thinking is not the first and foremost rule of thumb for a nonprofit board.  Nope, under the guise of supporting management, nonprofit boards are pretty paralell to the for-profit board room, based on Crainer and Dearlove's description.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.

The reasons for this phenomenon are nicely put forth but more interesting to me, and the rationale for why good debate becomes a board responsibility, is Crainer and Dearlove's description of what board's should focus on in their discussions (aka, their agenda).  This comes after a reminder that the board's job is to govern the corporation and a reminder that the board is a political arena, a political forum.

So, four focii:

1. strategy: long term strategy and execution

2. performance management: how is it going against goals and what are the resource needs

3. talent discussion: leadership and management and exec succession

4. risk management: compliance and sound financial practice.

Good stuff!