Largest species of bird…or feather duster?

Perhaps this isn’t fair to say, but I do believe that there are some things that we can afford to ignore—at least for a while—and other things that we cannot—not even for a nanosecond.   Something that falls into the latter group is all matters financial:  your own, your organization’s, the country’s, etc.  Recently, a subscriber to our e-mail notices asked to be removed from the list because she had received a notice of two upcoming workshops—one on the basics of financial management, the other on financial planning—and found these topics too depressing given the state of the economy. 

Whoa!   If ever there was a time not to be playing ostrich, that time is now.  And if it is depressing now, wait to how it feels when you avoid careful financial oversight. Now is the time to be paying heightened attention to your organization’s financial position.  Watching it closely.  Lining up contingency plans while cool heads still prevail.  The executive director, program directors, the CFO, the board—all need to be playing a role.  If your board has, like far too many other boards, simply gone through the motions of reviewing the financial statements at every board meeting, now is the time for it to step up to the plate, learn how to execute this all important fiduciary responsibility, and do its job! The reality is income is going to take a hit at some point before the economy is well on the road to recovery.  We are already seeing it.  I’ve run out of fingers to count the stories of corporate sponsors needing to back out on promises made.  My toes are spent with funders saying “money is tight.”  And there is no way that as individuals watch the cost of their daily lives rise, that they, too, won’t need to cut back.  So, where is the sense in ignoring the reality? Nonprofits with their eyes wide open will weather this storm—by cutting back, by merging, by being creative.  Those fleeing reality with the speed of an ostrich or choosing to hunker down, with heads dug deeply into the sand, not so much.