Only
30% of the organizations received federal funds. About ½ of the organizations received state
and local funds. Of those who received
state and local funding, 63% received the same or more funding in 2012 as they
did in 2011. The % was about the same
for federal monies. I had expected
government funding to decrease. Based on
the federal debt and looming state pension benefit funding requirements, I
suspect these figures will go down in the future.
I had
also expected that more nonprofits would have less cash on hand. However 44% had 4 or more month’s expenses on
hand and 32% had 2-3 months. It is not good—especially for those
organizations that are likely to experience cuts in government funding. And 25% of those responding to the survey
had one month or less, which is very sobering.
But considering how lean the last
few years have been, the nonprofits have really worked hard to hang onto some
reserves.
The
section of the survey on organizational management actions related to finance
and operations asked respondents to check off actions they had taken from a
list of prepared actions (in other words—it was not an open ended
question). I would have expected the
highest responses to include changing the way funds were raised and spent. However, that was actually the 4th
most frequent response (39%) compared to attending conferences and networking
(58%); advocating to the government on behalf of cause (46%) and upgrading
technology to increase efficiency (46%).
Many nonprofits had already pursued funding differently and cut expenses
in prior years. Nonprofits had cut
back and even eliminating attending training.
We see a lot of great networking and collaboration come out of seminars. It is great to see that nonprofits are able
to get out again for training and networking.
The
statistic that jumped out at me the most was on measuring impact—that is a
whole post in itself so I will address that next time.
