P O S T E D B Y A L B E R T
Some people say a nonprofit organization is “successful” if* …
- it manages to do its work entirely with volunteers.
- it has an inspiring brochure.
- it has paid staff and an annual operating budget of over $1 million.
- it’s “scalable.”
- it maximizes its social benefit-to-cost ratio.
- it minimizes its cost per client per unit of social utility produced.
- it provides a high quality service to a few of our most vulnerable neighbors.
- it provides a fairly low quality service to many of our most vulnerable neighbors.
- it’s replicable.
- it operates in more than one city.
- it operates in Nambia.
- it operates in more than one country.
- it has branch offices on other planets.
- it’s “sustainable.”
- it requires no subsidy to pay for its operations.
- its operating budget is over $100 million.
- it has a president/CEO who’s a household name.
- the organization is a household name.
- it’s not currently embroiled in scandal.
- it’s funded by the Ford Foundation.
- it’s funded by the Ford Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.
- Betsy DeVos is a board member.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson is a board member.
- Bill Clinton is board member.
- Colin Kaepernick is a board member.
- God is a board member.
- Beyoncé is a board member.
- its work “disrupts” traditional models.
- it fosters a strategic, integrated competence in a pro-active, extended paradigm to create digital, re-engineered synergies that affect its double bottom line.
- it accomplishes its mission.
- at least 51 percent of its funders agree that it has accomplished its mission.
- at least 51 percent of clients served agree that it has accomplished its mission.
- it accomplishes its mission then goes out of business.
- building on previous success, it expands its mission.
- the organization is important to a marginalized segment of the population.
- year after year, in its own quiet way, it manages to scrape enough money and volunteers together to serve a community largely ignored by other brand name nonprofits.
- the organization changes the basic equations of power in favor of the oppressed.
- it works toward a vision of the Good shared by an enlightened elite.
- it works toward a commonly shared vision of the Good.
- it helps focus our minds on eternal things.
- it has been roundly criticized in one of the President’s tweets.
* This is an updated version of a post published a little more than a decade ago.
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