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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I'd never heard of Feynman School before this thread, but this just screams some couple's passion project. I see this all the time. They have no or little business experience, find a couple friends and family to round out the Board they are legally required to have, and proceed to operate their nonprofit like an absolute dumpster fire all while proclaiming how committed they are to their given cause. They think they're unique and special and doing someone no one else is doing, except there's 5 other well-established nonprofits already doing the same work (2 of those are well run, the other 3 have enough inertia to keep going despite batpoop governance and financial practices). And no amount of presenting market research, best practices, or even going over their financials will convince them otherwise. They all think some angel donor is going to magically appear and drop huge donations on them. Meanwhile, their finances are a mess, there's no oversight by the board, and they're loving in law la land until the harsh reality of "we can't pay this month's bills and there's no more money coming in" hits them square in the face.[/quote]

Are you sure you aren't a Feynman parent? Because you couldn't have been more accurate. All of it down to the thinking an angel donor will magically appear. It is 100% their passion project. The head of school is a great educator, loves the kids, and definitely passionate, but has no executive function whatsoever. But we all put up with it because our kids were getting a great education tailored to his/her needs and were loving school. It also didn't start appearing like the dumpster fire of no executive function was a real problem until we were ambushed at back-to-school night with some aggressive fundraising pleas.[/quote]

Nope, it's just an all-too-familiar story in the nonprofit world. There's a lot of people out there with good hearts and have great intentions. I don't doubt their commitment to what they're doing; bad actors out to make financial gains under the guise of nonprofits are thankfully exceedingly rare in my experience. But all the good hearts and great intentions in the world can't compensate for poor management, unfortunately.

When I do board trainings and tell them they are responsible for this business, the most frequent reaction I get is utter confusion. "But we're not a business!" Yes, you are. You're just a nonprofit business. And, yes, there is often a charity component, but at the end of the day, still a business.

It's actually fairly easy to conceal the dumpster fire from view for a surprisingly long time. Boards that don't exercise their legally mandated fiduciary duties are a huge part of the problem (often because the board members are friends and family of the founder). Plus, it's not like the average person goes hunting for 990s to review them before making decisions to make a gift or send their child to a school, let alone combs through websites to see if Board and leadership staff is listed (let alone hunting to see who has served in what positions and for how long!). Most of us are trusting that nonprofit charities, schools, etc are doing to right thing, we're not looking for red flags. It's not until the smack-in-the-face moment that such issues usually burst into the public sphere. (See: Eagle Academy Public Charter School. A little different, but unless you were looking for potential red flags, none of it was easy to see until they were already over the cliff)

Sometimes I drive my husband crazy because I review 990s and websites of any nonprofit we consider supporting. Local little league asks for donations to support field repairs? I'm going to be combing through 5 years of 990s before I make a decision. Currently were exploring independent school.options for our child and I'm pouring over these things in addition to "normal" things like academics, facilities, special programming, etc. At our church I insisted we needed to be transparent about who the trustees are by posting it online, announcing meetings well in advance,  providing a high-level budget to the congregation, and making sure people understand where their gifts are going--especially since we have a growing non-religious outreach programming department. People who don't attend the church participate and make gifts supporting that program, they should feel welcome to ask about how those funds are being spent, who is in charge of those decisions, and they we are transparent and honest with them. These are all fairly easy and straightforward things to do, yet so many nonprofits don't.[/quote]

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