I strive for this blog to be positive. Even when I raise tough issues, I try to suggest constructive ways of approaching issues.

In that spirit, I want to offer an example that has implications for both today and the future.

Let’s say that a nonprofit organization has lost key funding from state government. Your organization has raised a few thousand dollars in the past from individuals and even secured a foundation grant or two for equipment or other program costs.

The present budget cuts really crimp your budget; so much so that you consider closing a program office in an outlying area. But before you do that, you appeal to several local foundations for grants to keep those doors open. And you get most of those grants, though not at the level you requested. But you raise to keep the doors open for the next year. 

Now, by definition, the foundations that provided this support were ones that are open to accepting applications. As such, they are not generally in the business of making grants year after year to the same organizations to sustain programs. There are foundations that do that—but they are also the ones that either make very few grants to new organizations or that don’t even accept applications from organizations they don’t already support.

As you come to the end of those emergency grants you begin contacting those foundations that provided the emergency grants. One by one you hear back, and not surprisingly, all of your requests for continued support were denied. In the meantime, the state funding you lost has not come back. In fact, other state funding you have is now in danger of being cut. And while you had some experience raising money from individuals, those returns are also down.

When the day of reckoning comes, you have no choice but to close down the program.

How is this closure talked about in the community? Is the story line “the state cut us a year ago and we weren’t able to develop other funding sources so we had to close down” or is the story line “The ABC Foundation wouldn’t renew the funding they gave us last year so we had to close.”?

The cynic in me has always felt there was a grain of truth in the saying “No good deed goes unpunished.” And that is what some grant makers fear as we look at nonprofit plans to weather the coming year while putting into action plans for long-term sustainability.

Grant makers usually don’t choose between good programs and bad. There are very few bad programs that appeal to us for funding. Most often, the choice is between good and better.

Those choices are especially tough this economy where there is, in reality, an economic restructuring that challenges many of our traditional funding models.

Accepting that notion however does not mean you should become negative. It does mean that you may have to rethink the level of services and the funding sources you have to tap to support those services.

Such an assessment may call upon your organization to examine its basic values. What can it do best with the resources it can muster? Should it focus on prevention—helping those who may thrive with just a bit of help—or help those who are most severely impacted by their situation?

Each of those choices can be defended or dismissed. The real choice comes down to the values that your organization, and those stakeholders who support your organization, hold most dear.

The only wrong answer is failing to ask the question and to make a conscious choice.