I just spoke on a fundraising panel at Compasspoint’s Silicon Valley/Peninsula Nonprofit Forum. One takeaway: some California cities are finding that they need to raise private funds to make up for cuts in State and local funding. This means thinking and acting like nonprofits. The city department in question has no board and no staff who know how to solicit donations. The panel responded that the department head needs to devote at least 25% of her scarce time to fundraising and convene a board that’s willing to help. Of course, this means they’ll be competing with local nonprofits for donations.
Robert
This is true. One of the biggest challenges our sector is facing is that government entities now fund raise like nonprofits to keep their doors open. The biggest example of this are public schools. Many public schools have year-round fundraising to pay for arts or sports or new facilities. This puts public schools, which are supposed to be funded by the government, in competition with nonprofits. It’s something as a sector we need to address and think about. Tax policy needs to be reformed. The Conservative Right movement has been very successful over the past 30 years convincing mainstream people that taxes are the enemy. Well, taxes are the money we need to run our government and it’s entities like schools and parks and recs. The current recession has brought this problem front and center, since 2010 and 2011 look to be grim years for government cutbacks.