Making merger work for your nonprofit
Impactful nonprofits are always collaborating - but what do you do when the collaboration gets...serious? Nonprofit merger announcements are on the rise as staffing and economic pressures, leadership transitions, and pandemic recovery put added pressure on nonprofits.
Strategic affiliation is one way organizations are combining forces to access new or better funding sources, improve staff benefits and retention, achieve administrative efficiencies, and most importantly - increase mission impact.
For those of you just getting started, here are a few tips:
Do your homework - There are more and more resources for leaders wanting to learn about sustained collaboration opportunities - and it’s getting less stigmatized, too. Funders even are stepping up to the plate with capacity building money for merger explorations. Start by learning about the variety of sustained collaboration models available to nonprofits. Talk to people in your community who have been involved with a nonprofit merger - you can ask about their experience without divulging your emerging plans. If they’ve really been through a merger, they will understand why you’re keeping it quiet for now.
Keep it to yourself, for now - There’s a reason leaders wait for the right time to make announcements about major restructuring. Mergers are big decisions and while you want to be transparent with your supporters and communities, waiting until you have a bit more information means that when the time is right, you’ll be able to explain more clearly what’s driving the decision and what kind of impact it will have. You want to share information in ways that build trust and confidence in your organization. So, choose wisely when confiding in friends and colleagues (even family!) early on, and let them know you’re sharing your ideas in confidence. There are also consultants with experience in mergers who can offer confidential consultations and help you answer some key questions early on.
Start with why - Like Simon Sinek says: start with why. What’s driving this for you? You might be trying to solve a problem or seize an opportunity. Or maybe you have a growth mindset and expanding programmatically or geographically is exactly what you need to scale your impact. If you know your reasons for wanting to explore deeper collaboration, you’ll be better prepared to take the next step.
Start small - You don’t have to go for the big merger conversation right out of the gate (although you can!) In most cases, it’s best to collaborate with an organization you already know. So, start with some smaller stakes commitments. Share information, calendars, events, or supplies and see how that goes. It’s okay to float an idea on a short term basis or only commit yourself to co-hosting a single event together to test the waters.
Reach out - If you already know an organization that seems like a good fit for deeper collaboration, reach out. It can feel awkward at first and they might have a lot of questions like why us? And why now? If you’ve been working together for a while (which I highly recommend. See point #4!), it might feel natural to ask “What else can we do together?” You can tell them how pleased you’ve been with how you’ve worked together thus far - point to specific outcomes you were able to achieve that you couldn’t have done alone. Then ask if you can have a confidential conversation about an emerging idea.
