Dear business leader.

Note to Streetsmart Nonprofit Managers: Save a copy of this article. When the time is appropriate--you'll know when that is--clip on the line below and give it to the appropriate person or persons.

Dear: --Banker
      --Insurance executive
      --Retailer
      --Distributor
      --Other (specify:--)

Your comments --At the board meeting
              --In your email
              --In our recent conversation
              --Other (specify:--)

indicated that you feel it is important for --our organization
                                            --organizations like ours
                                            --all nonprofits
                                            --other (specify:--)

to act more like a business and to become more efficient. I, too,
believe that improving our efficiency is a worthwhile goal, and I want
to assure you that we are always trying to find ways of doing so.
However, I want to point out to you some very important differences
between the kind of businesses you deal with in your professional life
and nonprofit organizations such as ours.

To begin with, your --Bank
                    --Insurance company/agency
                    --Store
                    --Distribution business
                    --Other (specify:--)

is designed to produce large quantities of the same kind of
  --product
  --service
  --other (specify:--)

As a result, you have a distinct advantage. You already know what
kind of --product
        --service
        --other (specify:--)

you supply. More important, so do your customers. You both agree on
what it is that your customer wants you to do, and you both agree
that if you do it you will be providing value for your customer.
Consequently, all you have to do is figure out how to do it well.

I don't want to minimize the difficulty of what your
  --corporation
  --partnership
  --limited liability corporation
  --other (specify:--)

has to do in order to survive as an entity. I am sure that you
encounter the same kind of obstacles and frustrations that we
encounter.

What I really want you to understand is that your business exists
to do a different kind of thing than our nonprofit is asked to do. You
must identify a well-known and understood answer to a common need and
then you have to set up systems that will replicate that answer
thousands of times in a given year. And you have to be sure that you
are doing the same kind of thing each and every time you deal
with a customer.

In that kind of environment, efficiency is very important. Saving just
a few pennies on every transaction can add up to thousands or even
millions of dollars during the course of a year. Since consumers may
think your --Bank
           --Insurance company/agency
           --Store
           --Distribution business
           --Other (specify:--)

looks just like every other one, you also have to find a way to convince
them that you're special.

We have a very different job to do. In our world, we often don't even
know what the right thing is to do, let alone how we can provide
massive quantities of it. This is because we generally only try to
solve a problem after it's clear that the traditional commercial
approach either can't work or doesn't make sense. Take the beginning
of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's for example. For a long time we
didn't know much about the disease itself, and for a longer time we
didn't know what worked and what didn't work. But it was obvious
that a normal buyer-seller relationship wasn't going to help and that
we needed to try something else. So we did, and thousands of nonprofits
of all kinds and sizes went to work on the problem and eventually came
up with a fair number of solutions or responses.

So when you say we should become more "like a business," it sounds very
responsible but the sentiment doesn't easily apply to the programs and
services we offer. If we truly acted like a business in an overall
sense we wouldn't even get involved in a lot of things that everyone
wants us to get involved in.

Here's the ironic thing. Most businesses are based on being able to
provide the same or very similar services over and over again. The
only place in our operations where we perform large quantities of the
same service over and over again is in our back room--our
administrative operations. And do you remember what you tell us about
that? You say all the time that we should spend as little as possible
on our administration.

Please forgive the use of this form letter, but I have to answer this
question so often that I needed to find a more efficient way of
getting my message across. I hope you --don't mind
                                      --understand
                                      --agree
                                      --other (specify:--)

Thomas A. McLaughlin is a national nonprofit management consultant with Grant Thornton in Boston. He is the author of the hook Nonprofit Strategic Positioning (John Wiley and Sons, 2006). His e-mail address is [e-mail]. Email him for a Word file of this article. Honest.