Minnesota Council on Foundations Blog – Philanthropy Potluck

Has your organization made any New Year’s Resolutions? Some might call this “2010 Goal Setting” or “Long-Range Strategic Thinking” or “Short-Term Planning,” but for many of us, this is essentially fine-tuning organizational resolutions for the new year.

In December, I attended a few holiday gatherings that doubled as “look-back-and-look-forward” year-end meetings for some organizations for which I volunteer. As the topic of “So, what are we going to do next year?” arose, I heard on more than one occasion, my fellow attendees commenting that they wish our meetings were run more like a business’, or that we should operate more like a business, or we should have more businesspeople on our board, and so on.

So this got me thinking about a few articles I’d stashed in my idea file that discussed the whole notion of what nonprofits can learn from businesses and vice versa.

Here they are:

In his blog Advisor to Superheroes, Carlo Cuesta of Creation In Common suggests that it’s more important that nonprofits know their business than act like one.

In a Forbes article from May 2009, nonprofit communications consultant Terry Barber illustrates how businesses can strive to inspire as nonprofits do.

In last week’s Chicago Tribune, the headline of Ann Meyer’s article caught my eye: “Nonprofits benefit from for-profit practices.”

And, then I came across this article today via Google, “Should Nonprofits Be More Business-Like?” (pdf) from the Georgia Center for Nonprofits.

What do you think? What attributes of nonprofitdom could the for-profit world use a little more of? How about the other way around? What aspects or traits of your organization or business will you take on by way of a New Year’s Resolution, and will you use nonprofits or for-profits as a guide?

- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate