VIEWPOINT: Working with nonprofits benefits businesses beyond the bottom line
Angela Bovill
When I was a CFO in business, I was truly for-profit. After all, profit meant survival and growth.
But when I became CFO for a charitable organization, I expected concepts like profit and ROI to be secondary.
I quickly learned otherwise. My job was to make our nonprofit more business-like than many businesses. We cut costs, streamlined programs, improved our services and increased accountability.
Today, as president and CEO of Ascentria Care Alliance, I know well that efficiency is not enough. As one of the largest nonprofits in New England, we have to be more innovative and results-driven in our many services. Our strategic goals have to be much more ambitious, just as they typically are in the entrepreneurial world.
Our new goal is indeed ambitious: to break the cycle of poverty.
To that end, we are developing a new, holistic, client-centered model that helps empower people to respond to life's challenges. Instead of just treating one aspect of a person's needs – whether it's training, learning English, or finding a job, housing or transportation – we are coordinating our multiple services in more effective ways. Most importantly, we're measuring impact.
Equally, we understand we must partner with businesses if we are to help people not just survive, but truly thrive.
So, we're becoming very ambitious about “social enterprise.” We are partnering with businesses to create opportunities for people who struggle to provide for their families. For example, to help new Americans start their own businesses, we created a Microenterprise Development Program. And, collaborating with Wells Fargo, we're launching a financial literacy program.
Next month, we're expanding our interpretation services business, Language Bank, from New Hampshire to Massachusetts. This enables us to use our culture and language knowledge to provide critically needed services to the community and employ refugees in the process.
In evaluating the benefits of social enterprise for participating businesses, the CFO side of my brain realized there was much more to this equation than just “businesses can help transform lives and thus improve their local economies.” The “bottom line” for these companies was more promising than that.
Business partners told us – with some surprise – about numerous benefits. Their employees felt a renewed sense of purpose in sharing their knowhow. Their morale was up. Their own job skills improved as they taught others about customer service, sales, job interviews, accounting, investing and networking.
These businesses found future employees, vendors and customers. In addition, they discovered new ways to compete in multicultural markets.
Profit is a simple word. But the way we profit, as individuals and enterprises, is not so simple. Sometimes it's indirect and unexpected.
Above all, when we profit together by helping others, it can be surprisingly rewarding. n
Angela Bovill is president and CEO of Ascentria Care Alliance, formerly Lutheran Social Services of New England, Inc. The organization is based in Worcester.
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