The other day I blogged about how absurd running a non-profit can be these days . . . yesterday, I had this chart sitting on my desk and I think I stared at it for an hour, trying to figure out how it got so absurd. A death of a thousand cuts, I guess. Check out the real numbers behind the anecdotes about why nonprofits are struggling, at least for one non-profit I am intimately familiar with . . . the Tenant Resource Center. I suspect others are in a similar situations.
Income from Government Sources
(City of Madison – CDBG, ESG and Community Services Funding, Dane County and UW)
2001: $211,048
2011: $207,208
That’s a 2% decrease in 10 years.
At the same time, the inflation rate, or value of a dollar in 2001 vs 2011 decreased 24 – 28% depending upon which calculator you use. So we are about 30% behind in funding.
Costs
Wages – depending upon which position you look at, our wages have gone up at highest 41%. Our office manager position used to get paid $9.25 per hour and now gets paid $13 per hour. Do the math on that and IF it were a full time job, that would be a salary of $27,040. But its no longer a full time job, or 3/4 time job, so it doesn’t get health insurance, dental or vision. Or vacation or sick days. And even in the good ol’ days (see rollercoaster below), none of us ever had retirement.
At those wages, which is also now what my Housing Resource Specialists get paid, my staff qualify to live in WHEDA affordable housing (in fact, one member did for the last year or two). And, other staff with children have qualified for food stamps, childcare assistance and Badgercare while working for us. Yeah, we’re as bad as Walmart.
The only other wages are mine, and I’m probably one of the lowest paid Executive Directors in town given my 16 years experience – I get paid $46,371 and that’s a 35% increase in that time. But remember, while I have healthcare (absolutely critical for me!), no retirement. And also note the wage compression in that my raises were at a lower rate than the other employees. Our now vacant and not to be replace Program Director wages went up 39% in that same period of time, but ended at $39,450.
Healthcare – We used to pay $165 per month in 2001. We now pay $399. There was a day when we were paying $505. Currently, the increase is 142%. And, our copays increased during that time.
Rent – this is the good news. In 2001 our rent was lower, but we moved to the Social Justice Center and when we moved our rent was $17,007. Today, our rent is only $17,543. A mere 3% increase. How is that possible? Simple, we are members of the Social Justice Center and therefore owners of the building and our theory that everyone thought was crazy, has actually worked! Our rents have stabilized due to ownership! Way to go NAN CHENEY!
Other costs – Well, nothing went down . . . but the above is probably about 80% or more of our budget.
Non-profit Rollercoaster
During the time between 2001 – 2011 we had funding from HUD and the State, lost the UW funding and got it back. Our funding fluxated between $172,428 to $294,515. Most of the new programs we started we have managed to keep going. We no longer focus on foreclosures and are closing our Milwaukee office but we have a campus office and still run the Housing Help Desk. We have a Housing Crisis Fund, do the housing vacancy list, do workshops, presentations and outreach, do housing counseling at our main office, help people find housing, maintain our website, have an extensive brochure series, have had it translated to Spanish, do Spanish housing counseling and still have an 800 number that we pay for with fundraising. But those are huge fluxuations in funding over time and deciding whether to stop a program and then expend all the energy and time to restart it when there is funding is difficult.
Our Efforts
How is this all possible? Theoretically, any business person would look at our budget and what we do and tell us to close down shop. In fact, my accountant tells me that regularly – that we need to think about just closing. I smile and nod. People have been telling me that ever since I became Executive Director 16 years ago.
Our magic? VOLUNTEERS! Of course, that means staff time to manage, train and assist them in their work. We have volunteers that help with the housing counseling, mediation and office work (answering phones, housing vacancy list, data entry, folding brochures, mailings, etc) That also means that we have a higher administrative costs, which is usually frowned upon by funders and creates issues for us in various fundraising situations because its hard to comply with certain requirements.
We also have significantly increased our income from book sales, seminar fees and fundraising.
Seminars – From 2001 – 2011 our seminar fees have increased 56% (now) to 122% (better years). Of course, with this economy, the first thing to go in many budget is training . . . so our funding in that category, which can be up to $22,000 in some years, is down.
Fundraising – Our donations through Community Shares of Wisconsin have doubled in this time. They are also down a bit in recent years and expect them to go down more with all the government employees getting cut, because a big percent of the money there comes from workplace donations from government employees.
Our donations from our two annual fundraisers went up 250% (now) – 400% (better years). Again, the economy took a huge bite out of our fundraising a few years ago, but it has been steadily increasing, but not yet back to the levels it was at. And, before I got to the Tenant Resource Center there was no fundraising efforts to speak of and it did take some years to establish fundraising efforts, which is why it increased so dramatically.
Need
Current unmet needs – We can’t help everyone who needs our help. Sometimes it takes up to a week for us to return a phone call (we have that back down to 48 hours thanks to volunteers!). And over the past few years, people have asked for over $1,000,000 in rental assistance to prevent eviction. The amount of eviction prevention dollars we have had has varied from $50,000 in 2009 thanks to stimulus money to a low this year of $13,300. We no longer fundraise for our Housing Crisis Fund because we need the funds for operating.
Population Growth – If its not bad enough . . . I talked about inflation, but I did not talk about growth. During this same period of time, the population alone was 7% in the City of Madison and 14% in Dane County. However, we did not see any increases in funding to cover this growth.
Economy – Um, the needs are greater. I hope I don’t need to explain this one. People don’t have money to pay their rent. Landlords don’t have money to make repairs. People are stressed out and when things aren’t going well, even in their own homes, tempers flare. People make bad decisions – both renters and landlords. And then they come to us – and yes, 10% of the people we help are landlords – especially those who won’t/can’t/don’t want to pay the money to belong to the Apartment Association.
Market – Rents are up nearly 18% May 2010 to 2011 and our vacancy rates are at their lowest since 2005. The rental market is tough! People are being denied for evictions 10 years ago . . . and all kinds of other reasons.
Now what?
Perspective – I started out in 1995 with an $85,000 budget making $20K per year/$10 per hour with one employee 15 hours a week and one at 10 hours per month and we had one program. Housing Counseling. And some outreach (neighborhood presentations, public service announcements, media, newsletters). We’ve added a mediation program, campus office, Housing Help Desk, 800 number, seminars, housing vacancy list, Housing Crisis Fund, website, brochure series, etc, etc etc.
“I don’t know” – I say that a lot. But we figure things out, day by day. That’s what we do. It is the job description of an Executive Director of a small non-profit organization. Volunteers come forward, surprise donations come in (Blogger version of a shout out: THANK YOU EPIC AND EPIC EMPLOYEES! THANK YOU AFSCME Local 60!), and we work harder because it is important. We are, after all, mission driven. Sometimes it is hard. Sometimes it is stressful. But in the end, its still rewarding. And most of all, it is important, people need our help. We’ll figure it out with the help of the community.
