I got another tough question last week, and it’s gnawing at my brain. “Robin – how do you define sustainability?” That’s really a loaded question because it doesn’t matter how I define sustainability – it matters how funders (broadly) define sustainability. (Ah, the power.)
The question came to me from a colleague who is struggling to put together a business plan for a funder. She is being challenged to define sustainable streams of revenue, mission appropriate investment strategies and so on. In the meantime, she’s got programs to run and people to serve.
Basically, sustainability is something you can keep going. (I really like to boil things down as simply as possible.) If you’re going to have to struggle and stretch every year to find the money to keep something running, chances are it’s not highly sustainable. It comes down to the value of the thing: not just the actual value, but the perceived value.
Sustainability means that somebody believes in The Thing enough to put money behind it and keep it going. You need to decide who the ‘somebodies’ are or should be. Sometimes it’s the customers or recipients of service; sometimes it’s a foundation; sometimes it’s local businesses and residents that benefit from a stronger, healthier neighborhood. There are many variables and I can’t answer the question for anybody else.
It occurred to me that she was asking the question of the wrong person. Defining sustainability isn’t so much of an FAQ as an ongoing conversation between interested parties. The world we live in is far too dynamic and uncertain to assume there are any guarantees – a business plan is nice and all, but it’s nebulous. Relationships and shared values are hard to define on paper, but they are at the heart of sustainability. They may be the heart of it all.
Submitted by Robin Lynn Grinnell
Filed under: General | Tagged: nonprofit business plan, nonprofit sustainability
