About a week ago I was in Kansas City speaking at the twentieth anniversary of the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership and UMKC. I was very flattered to be asked and as I looked out from the podium over the crowd, it struck me again, what untapped wisdom was contained in each person. It takes, sometimes a wild creative sense married to a grounded practical knowledge, to know how to address some of the roadblocks and opportunities we all face right now.
 
Part of what we must deal with as managers, of course, is “resource dependency” which often translates to the amount of control our revenue sources have over us. The amount of resource dependency we have can affect so many other things in the organization – the ability to adjust a program quickly, the ability to invest in a capital need, the ability to set salaries at the right levels – you name it, the degree of flexibility we have is dependent on the degree of control held by a funder.

That is why I consider this article “Financial Independence: Six Approaches” by Jon Pratt to be so important. He has taken what sometimes seems to be an unassailable hill and made the pathways up it quite clear.
 
I think the article is a must read for nonprofit execs and boards. Feel free to circulate it and distribute it around your own agency. And, as always, let us know what you think.