Marc Chardon, the bright and inquisitive former leader of Blackbaud Inc, and I wrote several pieces together that will be featured on this site. One theme we call, “Riding for the brand.” Brands we note, do not establish a class or cohort of groups. They exist to define and protect the distinctiveness of an organization, whether a cattle ranch in Wyoming or a drug treatment organization in New York. Where’s our beef? It’s underneath our brand!
As foundations move from funding programs to investing in results, they shift from sprinkling money among many organizations to investing more on those organizations that achieve the strongest human gain for the dollars available. Yet when I ask many nonprofits where they think they stand on achievement relative to other groups in their field and geography, most do not know. And a few shrink from the question—suggesting that this means having to at least implicitly call attention to differences with colleague groups. My advice is to get over that. You need a way to move from blending in to standing out.
No need to badmouth other groups. You simply show your results relative to those of other organizations taken as a whole. You let the viewer draw his and her own conclusions. And if you are interactive with other groups to the point that shared action determines your success, say so. Be clear about how collaborations with other high achieving groups lets you together create results that are well beyond those that sum from your separable activities. Then supporting each party to the collaboration makes good sense to investors.
