Once upon a time, the question of the ‘sustainability’ of a nonprofit — the ability to deliver services over a long period — was largely limited to foundations and mega-donors concerned that their funds were being put to long and lasting use.

In recent years, the question has migrated to the minds of more and more donors.

Of course, there’s one school of thought that argues most nonprofits should be figuring out how to put themselves out of business. But that assumes they meet their mission and the reason for their being is over.

Assuming the fix for hunger, homelessness, abuse, addiction, war, environmental degradation and inequality isn’t on the short-term or medium-term horizon, it’s a solid leadership and management practice to understand where your organization stands on the ‘sustainability’ scale.

Until now, to the best of my knowledge, there’s been no sustainability benchmarking system for nonprofits. And that’s why I was fascinated when last week the fundraising software firm Bloomerang released the Nonprofit Health and Sustainability Benchmark Survey.

Based on a survey of 600 North American nonprofits covering a multitude of size and sectors, Bloomerang has summarized their findings in the Infographic that appears on the left-hand side of this post.

I asked Jay Love, Bloomerang’s co-founder/CEO and a long-time proponent of tracking and guiding organizational decisions by metrics that matter, why this new Benchmark and why now?

“We believe in the future most donors, who are now much more informed about nearly everything in the world, will expect such information. Of course, to raise this without finding a way for technology to help would not be smart for us.”

“Within a few weeks we’re going to announce a revolutionary new addition to Bloomerang’s offerings. It will be called the Sustainability Module. It will pull tons of vital data directly from the CRM, and deliver it in the form a slick new index — free to every existing paying customer.”

The Agitator’s not in the business of promoting one software system over another. But, we are here to call attention to technology that advances solid fundraising practice. When Bloomerang first started, it won my admiration for building ‘retention’ metrics, reminders and best practice education into its software and, for good measure, providing helpful conferences, blogs and webinars to drive home the points on retention.

And now a new, soon to be automated metric: ‘sustainability’.

I’ll let others discuss and debate just what constitutes ‘sustainability’.  For now, verbatim, here are the summary findings from Bloomerang’s Nonprofit Health and Sustainability Benchmark Survey. The survey was open to the public between 2/28/17 and 3/6/17.

The survey consisted of the following questions:

• Have you defined your top 3 organizational priorities for the current calendar/fiscal year?
• Have you defined your top 3 organizational challenges for the current calendar/fiscal year?
• Are job descriptions in place for every role in your organization?
• Did your organization fully utilize a strategic plan last quarter?
• Did your organization fully utilize a marketing plan last quarter?
• Did your organization fully utilize a succession plan last quarter?
• Did your organization fully utilize a fundraising plan last quarter?
• Did your organization fully utilize a communications plan last quarter to make donors aware of planned giving opportunities?
• Did your organization measure program impact last quarter?
• Did the degree of impact increase?
• Was that impact being reported/communicated externally?
• Have 1/3rd of your volunteers given financially in the past year?
• Have all your board members pledged or given a gift in the past year?
• Have 3/4ths of your staff given at personally meaningful levels in personally meaningful ways for the past year’s annual gift?
• Number of months of operating cash on hand (excluding restricted funds)?
• How many total hours were volunteered last quarter?

The Data

• 77% have defined their top 3 organizational priorities for the current calendar/fiscal year
• 66% have defined their top 3 organizational challenges for the current calendar/fiscal year
• 78% have job descriptions in place for every role in their organization
• 46% fully utilized a strategic plan last quarter
• 35% fully utilized a marketing plan last quarter
• 16% fully utilized a succession plan last quarter
• 62% fully utilized a fundraising plan last quarter
• 28% fully utilized a communications plan last quarter to make donors aware of planned giving opportunities
• 59% measured program impact last quarter
  • 47% of those who measured saw that impact increase
  • 49% of those who measured communicated that externally
• 51% saw 1/3rd of their volunteers give financially in the past year
• 59% saw all their board members pledge or give a gift in the past year
• 39% saw 3/4ths of their staff give at personally meaningful levels in personally meaningful ways for the past year’s annual gift
• Number of months of operating cash on hand (excluding restricted funds):
  • Not sure: 28%
  • 1-3 months: 21%
  • 4-7 months: 21%
  • 8-12 months: 12%
  • 12+ months: 18%
• Total hours were volunteered last quarter:
  • Not sure: 24%
  • 0-10: 4%
  • 11-50: 10%
  • 51-100: 19%
  • 101+: 43%

Takeaways

• goal setters: most organizations have organizational priorities and challenges defined
• know your role: most organizations have written job descriptions in place
• not-so-future-proof: few organizations have a succession plan in place
• what gets measured gets improved: almost half of those who measured impact saw that impact increase
• pitching in: almost half of organizations reported at least 101 total hours volunteered last quarter
• room for improvement: board giving is present in more than half of organizations, but just over a third reported healthy staff giving

Which ‘sustainability’ factors do you think are most important and are there others you’d add?

Roger