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Not-for-Profits Can Still Mean Business

By KRISTIN MAJESKA, Executive Director, Common Good
Edited by Fritz Weidner  (June 2000)

A new organization in Waterville is helping Maine nonprofits stretch their dollars. Common Good encourages nonprofits to apply tactics from the business world to accomplish their social missions. The Maine Community Foundation created Common Good, a supporting organization of the Foundation, to support entrepreneurial nonprofits in their efforts to improve lives in Maine.

Nonprofits face both increasing competition for traditional funding dollars and lower levels of reimbursement from government agencies. The nonprofits that will survive, says Common Good Executive Director, Kristin Majeska, will be the ones that perform and truly deliver the most results for each dollar spent. Those who fund no longer want to hear how many people attended a job-training program. Instead, they want to know how many program graduates still have full-time jobs two years later and what that cost per person.

Common Good believes that nonprofits should be given the same incentives and capital as businesses to deliver the best value to their customers and the best return to the investors. "Good management is good management," says Majeska. But most nonprofits don't have the resources to make real investments in their staff and in a three-five year strategy, because they are too busy scrambling to cover their current year budget.

Common Good addresses this challenge by (1) investing in a small number of nonprofit partners, (2) providing significant capital, business coaching and access to a network of resource people who are committed to the nonprofit partners' long-term success, and (3) focusing on social purpose enterprises, nonprofits with businesses whose day-to-day operations accomplish their social mission.

For example, the Ken-A-Set Association offers supported employment to its clients in the City of Waterville's recycling center.  Revenues from the City contract cover the costs of those wages. The City lowers its costs by contracting the service out; Ken-A-Set doesn't need to raise money to subsidize this employment; and the community gains jobs for members who have few opportunities for productive work. Like most social purpose enterprises, it's a win-win-win.

Not only do nonprofits serve an essential role in improving the quality of life in Mid-Maine, they are also big contributors to the local economy, helping create new jobs and bringing important resources into the community. Helping nonprofits evolve to succeed in the new funding environment is essential to a vibrant local economy.

Armed with a Stanford MBA, seven years of consulting to Fortune 500 companies, and having run a nonprofit, social purpose enterprise herself, Majeska applies lessons learned in business to improving the quality of life in Maine through selected nonprofits.

You can help - join and be one of the resource people.  Whether you've got 20 minutes for phone consultation or can provide ongoing advice to a fast-growing enterprise, "we'd like you in our Rolodex," says Majeska. You can reach her at Common Good by phone, (207) 861-4669 or e-mail to info@commongoodventures.org.