Nonprofits in General

admin — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:54:10 +0000

Nonprofit, or Non-Profit, or Not-for-Profit, organizations are entities that are formed for a public purpose or mutual benefit and not the pursuit or accumulation of wealth. A true nonprofit is one that has been granted a 501(c)3 designation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)---organizations must apply for this exemption. 501(c)3 is a specific tax-code that has been created by congress to allow public purpose or mutually beneficial organizations to function with different tax-rules than standard for-profit organizations or corporations. The two main benefits of nonprofit organizations are:

Exemption from Revenue Taxes: Nonprofit organizations are not required to pay Federal taxes on their revenue. Note that nonprofit ''employees'' must still pay income tax.

Tax Deductible Donations: A major encouragement for individuals to donate to nonprofit organizations is that their charitable gifts are tax deductible on personal income taxes.

Nonprofit organizations are formed for a wide variety of functions, and while the standard idea of the social service (soup kitchen, food bank, early education) predominates, those are by no means the only purpose nonprofit organizations are formed.

Nonprofit organizations are ''prohibited''from political campaign activities to influence elections to public office, though they can perform limited lobbying to influence legislation.

=== Nonprofit Management ===

The primary structure and management of a Nonprofit Organization is determined by it's ''Articles of Incorporation'' or ''bylaws''. This document usually describes the organization's ''Mission'' and sets out general rules for oversight and management of the organization. These bylaws are usually written by the ''Founder'', who may wield considerable influence throughout the organization's lifespan.

Most nonprofits have a ''Board of Directors'' that oversees the long term, and strategic vision of the organizations. They usually meet several times a year in "Board Meetings" to set these long term goals. The Board of Directors is usually made up of socially influential persons, though sometimes there will be "diversity" positions in which other people from the community, youth or program participants can serve.

A practical function of the Board of Directors is to fundraise and perform outreach, using their influence and connections to raise money and awareness of the organization. This fundraising need is sometimes referred to as the Three-Gs: "Give, Get, or Get Out", the idea that members of the Board of Directors have minimal value if they are not actively fundraising, either through their own donations or acquiring the donations of others.

The Board of Directors is ultimately responsible for the functioning and legality of the organization. In this respect, they assume liability for the organization, and in some cases can be directly sued. In response to this, most boards carry ''Board Insurance'' that removes some of the personal financial liability of the members of the board.

Beneath the Board of Directors, most nonprofit organizations have an ''Executive Director'' that acts as a liason between the long term priorities of the Board and the day-to-day activities of staff. The Executive Director is usually ultimately responsible for ensuring that the Nonprofit is operating properly and effectively---though ultimate accountability rests with the Board.

FINALLY blogging!

Jessica McCoy — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 00:53:33 +0000

Wow, I haven't blogged since November.

I've been meaning to do it. Thinking about doing it. Feeling like I should do it. But now I'm actually doing it. A nice quiet Friday afternoon presents the perfect time to blog.

So, what have I been up to? Planning workshops, teaching workshops, going to meetings, working on curriculum materials, and helping with a website project for digital storytelling facilitators. That's the past few months in a nutshell.

To expand on a few aspects:

Workshops: I guess that teaching workshops begins to cross over into the "direct service" category, but workshops are the heart of what we do at Center for Digital Storytelling, so if I didn't participate in some of them I wouldn't be very helpful to the organization. Teaching in the workshops has shown me what stuff people consistently trip over in the software, which helps me know how to structure our new software guides. It also has shown me how much work is involved in putting on workshops, especially those customized for a specific group. There's literally months of email exchanges, meetings, logistics planning, and recruiting before the workshop takes place. Then there's three incredibly intense days of work, and maybe a week or so of tying up the loose ends. (More if the project involves special curriculum materials or a custom DVD)

Anyway, you all don't really care about all of that. What I think may be relevant is the point that I'm sure all of you are observing on your own: nonprofits are hard work. It seems that there's never enough time, money, expertise, or staff to get everything done. Now I understand why CDS has tutorials that are probably 3 years old and full of typos. It's because just running the day-to-day operations of the organization takes so much work that there's not much energy left over for creating the tools that would actually make our work easier. I'm still trying to figure out how to balance that. Example: If I take three hours of my day today, I can get one rough-draft tutorial fully edited, printed, and ready to use. That means I'll be three hours behind on everything else, but I won't have to scramble at the next workshop to print out a half-done tutorial (and neither will my coworkers.) If I take three days to get all of our lab computers in tip-top shape, we'll probably be set for the next couple months. But I'll never have three free days because of meetings, phone calls, deadlines, etc.

To solve some of these problems, my very supportive supervisors suggested that I hire some volunteer interns to help with the more basic tasks so I could focus on the tutorials and other capacity building that requires some know-how. This seemed like a great idea, but now I've spent a good chunk of time soliciting interns, interviewing candidates, and training the three that I selected. And the one day a week that they are here, I get less done because they have a lot of questions. I'm hoping that this is because they are new, and as they get more experienced they will be more self-sufficient.

So, to sum up, I'm feeling a bit overworked. I think I need to start a yoga class or something to destress a bit. The good news is I'm learning lots, even if sometimes I'm learning it the hard way.

Digital Arts Service Corps - nonprofits

Nonprofits in General

FINALLY blogging!