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MBAs and Nonprofits: A Match Made In Heaven

As consultants working exclusively in the nonprofit sector, we at Zimmerman Lehman often have our patience tested by staff and board members who think that the for-profit world has little to teach those of us who champion the higher ideals. For example, too many in the nonprofit sector, the term "MBA" conjures up images of power suits, power breakfasts and capitalists with eyes fixed firmly on the main chance.

Enter The MBA-Nonprofit Connection (www.mnconnection.org), a nonprofit based in Palo Alto, CA and dedicated to forging links between MBAs and nonprofits. What The MBA-Nonprofit Connection (MNC) understands is that more and more business school students are dissatisfied with the prospect of careers in banking and finance and are instead looking to do the right thing in the nonprofit sector.

Executive Director Alison Davis and her staff offer students and alums of business schools a variety of services, including:

• Information on job opportunities in nonprofits nationwide
• Summer job opportunities with nonprofits
• One-on-one counseling to help MBAs focus their job searches and, as the website says, "identify opportunities suited to your skills and experience"

  And nonprofits get the opportunity to interview MBA students and alums with the experience and savvy to make a huge difference to their organizations.

At Zimmerman Lehman we are well aware that many small and medium-sized nonprofits worry that, if they start "behaving too much like a business," they will somehow lose their souls. This appears to us a classic case of mistaking form for content. As we write in our book Boards That Love Fundraising: "Running a nonprofit organization, be it a school, social service agency, cultural organization or church, means running a business, though one with a charitable purpose."

You will unquestionably not have made a pact with the devil if you:

• Present funders with timely, comprehensive budgets and financial statements
• Prepare thoughtful, long-range business plans that emphasize the development of earned income possibilities
• Develop the means to market your services to clients and to alert the press about the importance of your efforts

In our forthcoming book on nonprofit boards of directors, we write: "Nonprofits have been shy about embracing marketing for the same reasons that they hesitate to utilize business folk. They fear that they will be like "for-profit" business and lose their moral "high ground." But this attitude lacks strategic thinking. If businesses have developed strategies that could help nonprofits implement their vision and keep their mission and values, it would be foolish not to use them. Nonprofits, just like for-profits, are selling a message; they don't call it "selling" because they don't want to sound like for-profits, but that is what they are doing every day. Nonprofits want to influence the public to do something (make an investment in our organizations, volunteer, use a service or think about something differently)."

It's really very simple: professional management means a well-run organization, which leads to a higher profile in the community and more money for the programs that are so important to your clients. Whether or not you hire an MBA, if you make a commitment to strong management, your organization will thrive.

Copyright 2007 Zimmerman Lehman.

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