Nonprofit Sustainability Strategies

[Mike Burns]

For a growing nonprofit with a small board, those interested summer students are a crucial revenue stream. And getting the Academy’s studios ready by the first day of the program was imperative.

“We don’t have board members donating $100,000,” said board chair Andre Tchelistcheff, an architect who led the renovation. “The school is financially viable.”

These three sentences in a Wall Street Journal article on the Gelsey Kirlkland Academy's new space and future highlights that having a well-healed board need not be the end-all for a nonprofit. It certainly helps however that the nonprofit's director has her own connections (from what I can glean) and that what the nonprofit offers, "prestigious dance instruction" attracts a paying student.

But with the departure of the director and a board that is not that well-healed. Should not more work be put into developing a board, say from the student's parents, that can be equally passionate and raise money?

Nonprofit sustainability planning is not for the faint of heart nor for the immediate. What might work well now might not work well in the future. There are variables to be considered. One of those variables is what board composition will help ensure a future.

Of course future is a goal that needs be established by the current board. But maybe it really doesn't matter that there might not be a future? Capable qualified and talented students who love what they do may be enough