Challenges & Opportunities of Being a Small Nonprofit

Notes by Starr Peterson

Panelists: Jen Brandon: Community Voice Mail; Mabel Fatiafola-Magalei, White Center Samoan Assembly of God.  Moderated by Steve Smith

How can small nonprofits take advantage of their small size to be “agile & nimble” and to overcome size disadvantages (i.e. small boards, lack of staff etc)?

Small nonprofits are seen as being closer to the community, but is this really the case?  How do small nonprofits really differ from their larger counterparts?

Jen Brandon:

Community Voice Mail has four full time employees and a budget of $500,000 spread over their Seattle site as well as other sites.  Being small gives them the ability to turn on a dime. 

How to survive:

·      In order to survive as a small nonprofit you must have a purpose, a mission, and idea, that excites you and others as well.  This gives you the ability to inspire others to develop and interested community surrounding your work. 

·      You can’t underestimate networking and the power of telling your story.  Crafting your idea to really “light a fire” in other people is the key to survival.

·      Among all of your daily practices it is sometimes difficult to think about advocacy, but it can’t be cut out of your program.  Advocacy is imperative to survival because you have to give your project meaning to the community.

·      If you can get a couple of eggs, in a couple of baskets, you can focus on your community instead of always having to worry about community.  Corporate sponsors are a great way to get more out of the community.   Do they have extra office space?  Could they shoulder some of the overhead of your small organization?

Benefits:

·      If you have a flat hierarchy when you have a small staff it allows people the opportunity to work together, and strategize together and make decisions.  Multiple authorizers allows for quick decision making and a ability to keep the organization going.  When everything doesn’t have to be approved by several supervisors, more can get done.  It is worth it to invest a little more money to hire strategic thinkers. . .they are key to functioning with limited staff.

·      Flexibility from a small staff allows you to grow and incites passion and dedication in individuals and the community.

Challenges:

·        Informality of a small organization often times makes turnover and training difficult because one individual holds so much information internally, and there is limited paper trail.

Mabel Fatiafola-Magalei

Co-pastor of Samoan church with her husband.  The church offers not just religion, but social services and community opportunities for islanders.  Starting small they realized they weren’t tapping into local resources so they started 501(c) 3 to help with funding etc.  The organization runs with an all-volunteer staff.  All of their programs are reliant on volunteers.

Benefits:

·      Challenges can turn to opportunities when you do get funds they can go straight to programs because overhead costs are low.

·      They receive funding help through a large foundation which has allowed them to partner with other organizations and build capacity throughout the community.

·      You can tailor programs to fit specific needs of constituents.

·      Provide good opportunity to bring cohesion to community, give civic and cultural pride while advocating for betterment of the community.

·      Volunteers are motivated, passionate and committed, otherwise they wouldn’t be there

·      Small organizations are better representatives of the community and as such, have better buy-in from the community and this can help with fundraising.

·      When a few people are doing everything there is more motivation to involve the community

·      Opportunity to partner with other organizations in the community who are in similar situations.

Challenges:

·      Difficult to find volunteers within the community who have nonprofit skills in areas such as funding and management.

·      Funding

Q&A

Steve:  Is it difficult to partner with other nonprofits in a community like White Center where there are so many nonprofits?

Mabel:  The Annie E CaseyFoundation brought together different ethnic groups as “Trusted Advocate” and this helped the groups understand each other and see how migration experiences are similar cross-culturally.  It has actually brought them to fundraise together, to partner with each other, ever across demographic and geographic funding boundaries.  Partners who come together as equal partners at the table gain through collaboration.

Steve:  Did you refer to advocacy in a general sense of spreading your mission/vision?  Or in the political sense?

Jen:  All nonprofits have to advocate to an extent.  We contacted senators regarding possible state funding.  Though it was a solitary effort at first, eventually through telling the story, we motivated enough others to help advocate in Olympia and eventually access state funds.  Community Voice Mail stopped funding cuts through advocacy and spreading the word.  They told people to call city council members if they cared about having their funding cut.  Eventually the city council called and asked CVM to rescind their message and stop having constituents call.  Being small allows you to be gutsy.