Social Currency

Attendance at the TCG Fall Forum on Governance is comprised of primarily executive directors and board members, with a sprinkling of representation from artists and staff members from the nonprofit theater world.  So, after a day of terrific conversations, it was with great pleasure that I gathered a handful of them together for a panel discussion: “So You Have a Deficit, Now What?”  What followed was a refreshingly frank discussion punctuated with practical lessons applicable to the work of any nonprofit administrator: 

Preliminaries
We began with a few general concepts:

• Talk of deficits demands a consideration of assets, but some valuable assets don’t appear on a balance sheet.   Assets can also include intangibles such as:  audiences, knowledge, staff members, a board of directors, openness to change, technological tools and savvy, diversity of background and age among your staff, board and stakeholders, civic and business partners, your “brand”, organizational self awareness, and, critically, when seeking to overcome deficits, knowing your impact. 
• When considering “health” metrics at NFF, we think in terms of “months of cash” on an Unrestricted Liquid Net Assets (ULNA) basis.  If you strip away all of the buildings, property, equipment, temporarily restricted, and permanently restricted items from your Net Assets, how much cash is left for operations?  It can vary, but a rough starting point for an ideal is a 3 month cash/ULNA reserve.  
• Deficits can be “financed” through a variety of means including: accounts payable, mortgage debt, drawing on reserves, foregone wages, employee furloughs, and over-extended lines of credit.  It can be difficult to ascertain whether an organization is operating at a deficit, and structural operating deficits can be masked by a period of operating at sub-par capacity levels in order to keep expenses in-line. This will not be sustainable.

Managing Costs and Revenue

Tracy E. Long, General Manager of Adirondack Theatre Festival started off the panel by describing an initiative to overcome a $29,000 shortfall on a prior year’s performance, an 8% deficit on the annual budget.  While the scale may seem relatively small, the deficit posed a significant challenge to their cash flow and was an ongoing concern.  Long took on the deficit by addressing both revenue and costs: 

Revenue side

• Increase ticket revenue on the margin by raising ticket prices by $3 each.
• Develop theater projects with partners to share costs but generate new and increased revenue.
• Respond to board member interest in hosting a “Brewfest” with board member spouses and another nonprofit to generate fundraising revenue. 

Cost Side

• Decrease rehearsal periods for plays that could still be produced effectively with shorter advance time,.
• Change the design on printed materials to result in lower printing costs.
• Cut the full-time production manager and move to a “variable” staffing method – hiring as needed for theater tech and sharing the management tasks among the remaining staff.

Accumulated vs. Structural Deficits
Michael Gennaro, Executive Director, Trinity Repertory Company, began by making two important points:

• Even well managed companies are beginning to fail.
• Accumulated deficits and structural deficits are different and managing them requires different strategies. 

Michael drew from his experience with the Pennsylvania Ballet as his first example.  When he went there he found an accumulated deficit of $2 million on a $6 million operating budget.  In that instance Michael suggests the first step is to analyze what makes up the debt you are inheriting and evaluate any creative strategies you can employ to get rid of it.  At the Pennsylvania Ballet, the debt was almost completely financed through accounts payable, so Michael negotiated a “work-out” with the vendors to pay a percentage on the dollar of outstanding bills and thus retire the deficit.

In his current tenure as the Executive Director at Trinity Rep, he inherited a more challenging scenario:  Three separate lines of credit were maxed out or frozen, and the building required an expensive update to meet fire code standards.  Together, they amounted to more than $3 million dollars of accumulated deficit with the cost of deferred upgrades to the building generating a structural deficit.  In this instance he took the following steps:

Twenty-five percent of annual operating expenses. That’s what the National Center for Charitable Statistics recommended in it's Operating Reserve Policy Toolkit for Nonprofit Organizations, published in September 2010 in partnership with the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute and United Way Worldwide.  Grantmakers in the Arts, in January 2010, launched their National Capitalization Project and at their October meeting in Chicago released a summary document which stressed the importance of well capitalized organizations and added, “…we repeatedly came back to the fact that the most common source of capital is accumulated surpluses. We agreed that getting organizations to achieve a surplus would require encouraging a significant shift in nonprofit practice and culture, a challenge we thought well worth undertaking.”

Nonprofit Finance Fund has long been a proponent of healthy balance sheets, but as the reports and recommendations mount, it’s clear that NFF is not alone in suggesting a course of action that considers the creation of reserves.  While reserves alone do not comprise total capital structure, they are an indicator of the degree to which an organization is prepared for the day to day and long term challenges they may face.   Capital structure is the nature, composition and magnitude of the assets, liabilities and net assets comprising the balance sheet – or in other words the financial and physical platform from which the organization’s mission is accomplished.

The provocative question is, how will nonprofits develop healthier balance sheets?  And perhaps more pointedly, how patient are we willing to be?  While generating operating surpluses may be ideal, it will take time and patience to realize a well capitalized sector utilizing this approach.  Our third annual national survey of over 1900 nonprofit leaders (funded by Bank of America) is telling on this point: 

So, is capitalization via accumulation of operating surpluses the answer?  In simple terms, if we are waiting for the sector to build (or re-build) balance sheets independent of new philanthropic dollars, it will take a minimum of five years for those functioning at the 5% surplus level to generate even the equivalent of three months of additional cash reserves.

At NFF our recently released paper, The Case for Change Capital in the Arts, sets out a series of definitions, strategies, and sample cases from our work with Leading for the Future (funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) that can inform the conversation about capitalization.  In today’s economic environment, in the midst of the conversations and changing dynamics in the field about capitalization for nonprofits, the time for an equity ethic, an embrace of philanthropic equity if you will has arrived.   While we have many tools to teach nonprofits how to create new strategies for operating that generate surpluses, the sector has been struggling for a long time with inadequate capitalization.   Asking nonprofit leaders to generate operating surpluses to build healthy balance sheets will also require asking ourselves if we are providing the proper support for that expectation to be realized.

Last week, we published a series of documents stemming from the early results of our Leading For the Future initiative, funded by Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.  You can download the Case for Change Capital in the Arts here and the companion document, Financial Reporting Done Right, right here.  Together they showcase the lessons of the work done so far and provide a road map for foundations and their grantees who might like to put some of the lessons into practice themselves.  The Case for Change Capital in the Arts made Nell Edgington's 10 Great Social Innovation Reads for May and got a thorough airing on Andrew Taylor's Artful Manager blog as well.   

In late April, we gathered the participants in the initiative together in New York City to talk about how their capitalization experiments are going.  We had a chance to interview two of the organizations in greater depth.  Earlier this week, we posted Rebecca Thomas' interview with Charles Dillingham of Center Theatre Group.   Below, you'll find Rodney Christopher's interview with Polly Carl and Martha Lavey of Steppenwolf Theatre Company who share how they've invested their change capital over the last two years.  

Nonprofits need capital to plan for and invest in strategies that will help them prepare for future growth and make changes to the way they operate. They also need reliable and recurring revenue to sustain themselves year in and year out after the change has happened.

Through our Leading for the Future Initiative, Nonprofit Finance Fund is directing more than $10 million of a specific kind of capital -- change capital -- to ten performing arts organizations* that are adapting their programming, operations and finances to ensure long-term health and vibrancy.

With funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, these ten nonprofits are working with NFF over five years to develop and implement plans for achieving this transformation. The goal is to provide these organizations with the flexibility to test new ideas, explore new business approaches, resist distraction, and even risk failure. While each participant is investing its capital differently, all seek to reaffirm the value of their art, while increasing reliable net revenue and building more liquid and adaptable capital structures.

NFF is excited to share with our readers and clients a series of new publications on the need for and uses of capital in the arts. The written and video materials convey stories and lessons learned from the Initiative thus far. Nearly three years into the program, we now have much to share with the field, both funders and nonprofits alike.

Please check out our new publications:

1. The Case for Change Capital in the Arts shares the philosophy governing the Leading for the Future Initiative and discusses the need for and application of change capital in the arts. It also outlines core principles and practices that can improve capitalization in the sector but that will require changes in behavior by both nonprofits and funders alike. The piece tells how each of the participating organizations is applying change capital to undertake meaningful artistic, organizational and financial change.

2. Financial Reporting Done Right introduces a new way of financial reporting that improves transparency around how organizations manage their capital resources. While conventional accounting and reporting treat capital and revenue in the same way, NFF recommends that nonprofits make straightforward adjustments for capital that better reveal their true operating performance and progress.

3. Change Capital in Action: Hear how three organizations are applying change capital to realize their artistic and organizational ambitions! Center Theatre Group, National Black Arts Festival and Steppenwolf Theatre Company share their stories in these short videos.

NFF has long advocated for greater access to capital for nonprofits, particularly as they invest in growth or change. We’re excited to share these real-life examples of change capital in action in the arts. To learn more about the Initiative, please check out our other recent writings:

Envisioning Success: How Funders and Nonprofits Can Lead for the Future

Chronicle of Philanthropy: Four-part Interview Series with Ben Cameron, Program Director for the Arts at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

* Participants in the LFF Initiative include :

Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, New York, NY
Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles, CA
Cunningham Dance Foundation, New York, NY 
Jacob's Pillow Dance, Becket, MA 
Misnomer Dance Theater, New York, NY 
National Black Arts Festival, Atlanta, GA
Ping Chong & Company, New York, NY
SITI Company, New York, NY 
Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, IL 
The Wooster Group, New York, NY