Reimagining Nonprofit Leadership: When the Money Doesn’t Match the Mahi

A Reimagining Nonprofit Leadership kōrerorero

Thursday 17 September | 11.00am–12.00pm NZST

At the end of our last Reimagining Nonprofit Leadership kōrerorero, I asked where people wanted us to go next.

Funding and sustainability came through loud and clear. And perhaps that's not surprising. Community need keeps growing. Costs keep rising. Funding is increasingly uncertain. And nonprofit leaders are somehow expected to keep making it all work.

We might secure funding for another programme or piece of mahi, but what about everything that sits behind it? The finance. The reporting. The HR. The systems. The management. The fundraising. The infrastructure that keeps the organisation itself going.

So this time, I want us to talk about what happens when the money simply doesn't match the mahi.

Some of the questions we might explore

• What does sustainable actually mean for a nonprofit?

• What happens when funding pays for the mahi, but not what it takes to support the work?

• How do we make decisions when community need is greater than our capacity?

• When do we say no to funding, programmes or opportunities?

• What are we expecting leaders to absorb when the numbers don't add up?

• Are there different ways we could think about organisational sustainability?

This isn't a funding workshop

I'm not going to teach you how to write a better funding application or arrive with a list of places to find money. This is a facilitated kōrerorero about the bigger questions sitting underneath funding and sustainability.

We'll bring our own experiences into the room, hear how others are navigating similar pressures, challenge some of the assumptions we've inherited and explore what we might do differently.

What people are saying about these kōrerorero

“I'm personally finding so much value having this opportunity to talk to others who just get it and you facilitate this so well.”

“Knowing that I'm not the only one with the overloaded role...”

“The session encouraged me to be more intentional about working on the organisation, not just in it.”

Who is this for?

Nonprofit CEOs, Executive Directors, senior leaders, managers, founders, board members and trustees who are thinking about how we build organisations that are genuinely sustainable — for our communities and for the people doing the mahi.

You don't need to have joined either of the previous kōrerorero. New people are very welcome.

Come curious. You don't need to have the answers. Neither do I. We're learning from each other how to work differently.