What You Missed at The Nonprofit Congress (the what?)

Small nonprofits gather in Washington to affirm with a single voice:  support ME!

With little notice last week (October 16-17), under 400 representatives of small nonprofits met in Washington for something called the Nonprofit Congress.  I was unable to find any mainstream press coverage of this event—only this coverage in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, whose editor Stacy Palmer moderated one of the sessions (see page 12 of the program).

Not that there wasn't a lot of effort put into this event, which was an idea hatched by Robert Egger of the DC Central Kitchen (EIN 52-1584936 Form 990) and Audrey Alvarado of the National Council of Nonprofit Associations (EIN 52-1689643 Form 990).  The Congress was the culmination of extensive brainstorming sessions conducted in around the US (but with more in Montana than in New York).  That process produced this briefing book that summarizes all the points.

The attendees were overwhelmingly from small nonprofits, with groups in the range $500,000 to $5 million overrepresented compared with overall nonprofit numbers.  (These are groups with roughly 10 to 100 employees.)  Of course, WMN often notes that these groups, while very numerous, only account for a small percentage of the overall income (and employment) of nonprofits as a whole.

Income Range	Share of nonprofit numbers	Nonprofit Congress attendees	Share of nonprofit Income
$25,000 – 99,000	44%	20%	1%
$100,000 – 499,000	29%	26%	2%
$500,000 – 999,000	8%	10%	2%
$1 Mil - $ 5 mil	12%	21%	7%
$5 mil - $10 mil	3%	5%	5%
$10 mil plus	4%	8%	83%

The big result of the conference was an agreement on priorities from the points made in the local meetings.  The winners:

• Organizational Effectiveness, leadership and accountability
• Public Awareness and Support of the Nonprofit Sector
• Advocacy and Grassroots Community Activities

What's interesting are the principles that were not given a priority:

• nonprofit collaboration,
• partnership with government and business, and
• social change. 

This feels right to me as a reflection of the mindset of small nonprofits:

• The small groups are preoccupied with the nuts and bolts of just keeping an organization running.  In many respects, society as a whole has the same expectations of an organization with 10 or 100 people as one with 1,000—but they are too small to afford the skills they need. 
• So they are constantly in need of more support and more attention. 
• Their preferred mode of action are small scale community activities and events that help people feel good about themselves, without seriously challenging the status quo. 

And the leaders of small groups are loath to collaborate.  So, you can get a few hundred nonprofit leaders to come to Washington to agree on general principles.  But they still won't work with other groups in their own community, much less agree to affiliate with each other in a way that would alleviate some of the adminstrative burden. 

Comments

[janinsanfran]

In my experience, groups of this size hesitate to collaborate because of the real (as opposed to ostensible) demands of their funders: funders insist that each little entity sell itself in its proposals as a "unique" solution to its definition of the problem. You can't playing well with others when you are required to show you are the best, only, proper investment for the well-meaning.

[Eric Fitts]

I agree that the absence of collaboration and social change as priorities of the Nonprofit Congress is conspicuous.

I agree that there are probably a lot of small nonprofits out there spinning their wheels.

I would add that there is an incredible amount of waste in large nonprofits (i.e. how could the stealing of $30 million-dollars go unnoticed (American Cancer Society of Ohio)) unless there was already incredible amounts of waste?

I sense a bias in this post against small nonprofits.

I do not agree that the increased efficiency of larger nonprofits always outweighs the benefits of small nonprofits. There are numerous problems on the local level that simply would not get addressed if not for small nonprofits. A large nonprofit is not going to simply spring out of the ground to address an issue simply because it is there. It often takes local people coming together, however awkward and inefficient their means are, to work out local problems.

I would also suggest that many of the large nonprofits are actually universities and hospitals, which are hardly comparable in a meaningful way to small local nonprofits.

Since universities and hospitals have their own associations, it would seem predictable that they would go underrepresented at the Nonprofit Congress, since they already have their clout.

[Esther Baker]

I attended the Nonprofit Congress as a delegate of Virginia and I made a film of the event. You can view ithttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1155972865972827013 on google video

It's called The Nonprofit Congress National Meeting 2006