Aligned Mission + Revenue = Success?

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-03-12 09:33:00 UTC
Topics:

Nell at Social Velocity has prompted a great discussion about nonprofit organization's need to better align mission, core competencies, and revenue streams to build great engines. Nell writes:

It occurs to me in my work with social impact organizations that the struggles and challenges they face all come down to one key problem:  a misalignment of mission, money and core competencies.  For any organization (nonprofit or social business) three things must be aligned:  1) their mission, or reason for existing 2) their core competencies–what they can do better than anyone else in the world, and 3) their revenue engine–all the ways in which they sustain themselves financially.

Both Sean from Tactical Philanthropy and I quickly jumped into the conversation, particularly around the revenue stream side of things. Sean brought some hard "chicken or egg" questions regarding whether or not re-aligning revenue streams required more short term financial resources, while I tried to bring to the conversation a demonstration that what nonprofits are rewarded for financially is often actually not their core competitencies or on the ground work as much as other "hooks."

Join the conversation over on Social Velocty.

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
PREVIOUS STORY:
The Daily Entrepreneur: Investing Guidelines and Good News
NEXT STORY:
Facing Forward: The End of the Social Entrepreneurship Blog on Change.org

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.