Does Your Nonprofit Need Money?

In a recent column for Bloomberg Businessweek, the Drucker Institute’s Rick Wartzman discussed the idea that “overhead” shouldn’t be considered a dirty word when it comes to nonprofit organizations.

Wartzman noted that, in his book Managing the Nonprofit Organization, Peter Drucker “advocated implementing a range of actions aimed at ‘converting good intentions into results’: conducting deep market research, incubating new ideas, and training and developing staff and volunteers. None of these undertakings . . . happen magically,” Wartzman added. “They require talented employees, procedures, and technology to accomplish—all of it costly activity that could be classified as ‘overhead.’”

We highlight the phrase “costly activity” above to acknowledge the fact that running nonprofits requires funding.

As such, we also want to remind you of our 2011 CALL FOR APPLICATIONS for the PETER F. DRUCKER AWARD FOR NONPROFIT INNOVATION. This award gives nonprofit organizations the opportunity to win up to $100,000 of unrestricted funds for support of their innovative programs.

The award application period closes on July 1, 2011.