From my list of 15 Fraught, Flinch-Worthy Phrases from the Nonprofit Arts World comes #5: “Fiscal responsibility.” Especially as it relates to the mission statement of your organization. Let’s first be clear: all companies should be fiscally responsible to the level of their capacity. Arts organizations are no different from Amazon in that regard. Neither are they different about having bathrooms that work, air to breathe and staff members that receive paychecks. Fiscal responsibility is no different than breathing in this sense: it’s what a thing does to live, not what it does to make an impact on society.
2 comments:
I have two separate thoughts on this article. The first is in regard to the idea that people think charities should ideally be spending as little money on overhead as possible. I think that mentality also ties into the idea that people who work for non-profits should be earning very little money because they shouldn’t be in it for the money, they should be in it for their commitment to the organization. The problem with that is that qualified people who might want to work for that non-profit can likely get a higher paying job in the for profit sector. Obviously a non-profit might not be able to afford to pay as much, but if they decide having high enough salaries to attract and keep skilled employees, I don’t think the charity should be judged for that. Having those employees and having lower turnover by making jobs more financially feasible in the long term could easily increase the amount of good a company can do.
The second thought is that these seem like good suggestions for mission statements, and I also wonder how much mission statements really matter. I can’t tell you the mission statements of the non-profits I tend to try to give money to when I can, I’ve picked them by the work they do and if it seems like they have been effectively doing that work in the past. I wonder if there have been any studies on if mission statements really make a difference in terms of participation and contribution.
Having never had the capital to make a major donation to non-profit, I’ve never really looked at the ratios and all that fun stuff. I don’t know what they are or what they mean, so the first half of this article was mostly jargon. I did however enjoy the second half of the article about writing an effective mission statement. I particularly thought the symbols part was particularly influential. Because a turnover of leaders many times symbolises instability. Although I wonder if you are discounting arts that are based in a historic building, I personally don’t see the issue with mentioning the historic building you are conserving as part of your mission. I think these aspects can be applied to mission statements outside of the arts as well. Overall this article gave me a new perspective on mission statements in general and gave me a new lense in order to take them with a grain of salt.
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