Question: I am the interested in starting a public charity, and I want to legally protect my influence and ability to control the affairs of the organization.  How can I do this?

I get this question or some variation of it fairly regularly, and my response is a quite lengthy description on the nature of public charities and the reality that nonprofit organizations of this type do not have owners, by design, making it impossible to legally protect an individual’s control of an organization.

Short answer:  You can’t.

Long answer: Public charities are an IRS designation of organizations that are organized and operated for exempt purposes.  Exempt purposes can span a wide variety of activities intended to improve the common good.  The organized and operated requirements for charitable organizations are very specific, including a prohibition of private benefit, so private ownership is not an option.

That being said, I can empathize with the desire to control the affairs of an organization as a founder who has the initiative and follow through to turn a vision into a reality…

I make my living working for an organization that is used as a metaphor in business writing all the time – the symphony orchestra. Most of the time the orchestra metaphor is used as an example of a high functioning team made up of specialists in pursuit of excellence.

Sometimes it is pointed to as an example of the limits of hyper specialization and silos (because, for instance, the timpanist cannot offer much to the cellist in terms of solving playing problems and vice versa).

Today the metaphor is a little out of fashion and, as more than one observer has wryly noted, as a metaphor for organizations it is probably most enjoyed by those who see themselves as conductors of organizations. Nonetheless, as it relates to organizations I am pretty confident that the metaphor of the symphony orchestra will persist.

Why?

Because the show – the performance work that an orchestra does – is a pretty amazing feat of human coordination. It’s a stage full of people, putting years of training and practice on display in a complex and often dazzling dance of sound over time – all in order to tell a story together.

It really is, as I sometimes call it, ‘the human coordination show’. But behind the human coordination show of an orchestra are real organizations with all the challenges of complexity and human fumbling that any organization faces. Sometimes these organizations are high functioning, sometimes they are not.

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Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing series, we invite a nonprofit scholar, student, or professional to highlight current research reports or studies and discuss how they can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice.

In the coming decades, over 40 trillion dollars will change hands. While a large portion of this wealth will be designated for charitable giving, the people who will inherit this wealth—and direct the charitable giving—are relatively small in number. They are called "next gen major donors," and according to a recent report issued by the Johnson Center at Grand Valley State University and 21/64, they will "have tremendous influence on the direction of and support for efforts to improve local communities and solve global problems over the next several decades."

"Next gen major donors" are defined as people aged 21 to 40 who are persons of wealth and are involved with their families' philanthropic activities. The report, titled…

“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare” (Patrick Lencioni).

I believe teamwork is rare because our organizations are built in opposition to working as a team. The key to maximizing community impact is making sure everyone in the organization is pulling in the same direction. This requires clarity, commitment, and focus.

Management philosophy is stuck in the past
Every manager knows the value of teamwork. The problem is the organizational structure in most nonprofits prevents it. Most organizations are hierarchical. This structure is derived from the industrial age when mass production transformed the workplace. It has been the foundation of organizational structure for the last 100 years. Each individual is given a small piece of the work to be completed. The worker only sees his/her part with the emphasis placed on speed of production. Assembly line concepts are so ingrained in our society that they find their way into management theory as well. We assign roles, divide the work and get started. The problem is that with the quickly changing landscape of today’s challenges the assembly line concept is not agile enough to adapt to those changes.

Management philosophy for today
Several decades ago software developers faced this same problem. Work requirements often changed…

Marketing doesn't have to be painful for nonprofit organizations with limited resources. Here are four ways nonprofit organizations can improve their marketing efforts while also spending less money and less time on the issue:

Do Your Research

Know your audience. Who makes up your audience? Analyze your nonprofit organization using Facebook Insights data to understand your core audience and its wants and needs. Examine the data on individual posts to determine which status updates and which photos have been shared the most. Also take the time to understand your organization’s Google Analytics data to get a better idea about who is visiting your site. Make sure to use Google’s Social Value graph to learn more about the correlation between your nonprofit’s Facebook and Twitter traffic with your sales and donations.

Define your goals. Once you've figured out who your audience is, articulate what it is you want from your supporters. Do you want your supporters to buy your merchandise? Donate their time at volunteer events? Donate money to support your operations? Once you’ve figured out why you matter to your audience and what your goals are, use this information to develop your nonprofit organization’s marketing strategies.