The Power of (In)Kindness
written by Mazi Mutafa
Have you ever wondered what the differences are between “not for profit” and “for-profit” businesses? Well depending on who you ask, and what their experience is in the non-profit sector, answers will vary. If you ask my mentor Cylde Valentin, Executive Director of Ignite/Arts Dallas, he will tell you that nonprofits are actually FOR mission a.k.a., they are mission-driven businesses. I definitely agree, and it is also important that you understand the technical difference between the two. First, a non-profit is a business that can not survive solely on profits. Nonprofits need a subsidy. They need revenue and donations. Those donations will in many instances take the form of grants, and a lot of times, individual donations from supporters. [I plan to write a future article about individual donation and their real value to non-profits and a second article about grant writing.] These are key forms of revenue for every subsidized business. To be clear, nonprofits also can sell products and secure contracts to provide services.
I know, for most people that start or work in nonprofits thinking about the money is usually not a priority. Still, it is key to the survival of any organization not run by volunteers. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and talking about money because it's how we hire people to improve the world. Understand that labor can be free work from people that can afford to give away labor but virtually no artists are making enough to be able to give away their labor. Pay Artists. Period. The world is filled with well-paid professionals that want to give in the form of time. An act of kindness, if you will. As a nonprofit leader, it’s up to you to think through how to make the receipt of this labor as easy as possible for the donor.
For 18 years I have directed and operated a nonprofit organization like a for-profit business in the sense that I have left one major source of “revenue” on the table. Beginning in our 19th year, we received our first two major in-kind donations. One was an ad grant from google worth $120,000 per year. That grant might actually be why you know this blog post exists. The second was a set of pro bono consultants that work with us on some major projects through an organization called Compass. Compass provided a group of 9 consultants, whose labor was valued at $210,000. So in one year, we received $330,000 of in-kind support. Why does that matter? Well, this is part of the real value of being a non-profit: getting things for free or at a discounted rate that our for-profit peers would have to pay for.
Being able to secure these two major donations for the first time in our 19 year history was a major accomplishment and a new milestone for our organization, but, it also meant, we had a budget of more than a million dollars for the first time.
To be honest, for most of our history I looked down on in-kind support because it usually took the form of someone donating $200 worth of records or DJ equipment. It didn't make an immediate difference in our bottom line and oftentimes the donated materials were not very useful. In the case of the two in-kind forms of support from Google and Compass, they were game-changer. How did they change the game? By generating web traffic globally, and developing targeted marketing for particular projects or events, the Google ads grant to support expanded our reach. The same was true for the consultants. They were instrumental in supporting our volunteer Board of directors in some critical decision-making that led to the betterment of the organization.
We are following up on one of our most successful years of in-kind support to secure $500,000 in in-kind support. Because we did so well with the google ads grant, it has been renewed so we began the year with $120,000 in in-kind support. Second, one of our foundation partners, the Cafritz Foundation, has given us access to a website called Catch A Fire for one year which in some ways is a continuation of our in-kind consultant support that we got from Compass last year. Our goal is to complete $400,000 in projects by February 2022. The best thing about Catch A Fire is that different members of our team are taking the lead on different projects and we are using it as a kind of professional development and expanding the circle of experts contributing to our work.
The platform is a constant reminder of the fact that the world is filled with kind experts who want to support the work they believe in with their time, talent, and expertise. Many of those volunteers are actually in countries we have traveled to as part of our cultural diplomacy work. They provide us with the opportunity to tell those same professionals about organizations like ours in their countries' communities who they could also consider helping. This process of securing services that we would normally pay for allows us to prioritize the use of our financial resources. In our case, our finances can be redirected to pay more artists, scholars, and activists in our city and around the country. This has been transformational to our work. It makes it easier to invest in our mission and the people that are responsible for changing individual lives and whole communities.
In the era of covid, now is the time to focus more on in-kind support and see it truly as an opportunity for people and companies to be kind. I have mentioned some companies that are either city-based or national resources that you can take advantage of. They have each made a tremendous difference in our work, our budget, and our sustainability as an organization. If you are a small team, this is also a great priority for your Board of Directors to work on. It is a key way to get them involved in growing your budget using your Board’s in-kind time to support building the capacity of your organization.