photo courtesy Pexels

Ah, spring! April and May might bring spring showers and flowers. For a nonprofit leader, spring is also a time of struggle – to prepare a budget that can cover rising costs in a new fiscal year.

At the very least, spring budget planning is complicated. At its very best, it is a thoughtful exercise in creativity and courage. Like gardening, it is often not a pretty process.

So how does a leader prepare for this wonderful new birth, digging in the fresh earth for sustainable funding and gorgeous growth? The stark reality is daunting: increases in health care costs, salaries, funding cuts and fiscal needs for program development. In this day and age, the layers of political and societal “mulch” are killing the fiscal ground into which good works and services for those in need are planted.

Next year’s planning is even more stressful if the past year’s finances were lean or if a state or federal grant is ending. In those times, the word “sustainability” haunts my waking (and sleeping) moments. In truth, I question the ethics of placing the burden of sustainability solely on any one nonprofit organization – none of us can possibly achieve it alone. Not only are we expected to get a new idea and project up, running and producing positive results within a very short time period, but also to find a way for our society to pay for it. Our innovations need to impact 360 degrees; they have to benefit our consumers, and change the larger social system.

In for-profit business innovation, the business plan anticipates piloting, production and sales. A market that will pay for the new product is defined. The product or service is brought up to scale, and if it is successful, the business has a market ready to buy. If there were no anticipation of a paying market, the product would never get past initial investments.

In the nonprofit world, we have another layer of planning responsibility. Yes, we have to make sure the consumer finds our product valuable, but here’s the catch – often the consumer we are serving cannot pay for the product. We have to find a third party buyer. If our service is innovative and impactful enough, we have to convince the long entrenched and hardly fiscally sound social system to pay for it. This takes convincing legislators, foundations and/or the government to find dollars for us to sustain the project long-term. All of this takes limited time and energy away from running the amazing program.

There is no guidebook for this; just passion, ingenuity and luck.

Spring budget planning is not for cowards. To continue the spring metaphor, we trim programs, relocate services and dig up dollars to make our budget balance. But it is the core of the work; we have to show up, serve those in need, show good outcomes, and convince those less in need that they have a responsibility to support the work. Time passes, the seasons change, and soon the spring of budget planning returns again.

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