Nonprofits Spending Bare Minimum on Infrastructure, Report Finds

• Strained budgets leave little room for back-office investment — 48 percent of respondents reported they struggle with funding core programs, making nonprogram infrastructure investments difficult to justify to donors, boards and institutional contributors, and 38 percent said that a lack of infrastructure to support service delivery was the top programmatic challenge.
• Volunteers represent half of nonprofit human capital — 50 percent of all human capital comes from volunteers, but 24 percent of nonprofits have no one in charge of managing volunteers. Making matters worse, one in three volunteers drops out of service each year.
• Human resource management sets some apart — High-potential nonprofits manage human resources differently, according to the study, investing more and approaching the management of internal resources with greater rigor. When asked if their organizations invest enough in HR to meet their missions, 67 percent of high-potential organizations said yes, while only 38 percent of overall respondents said yes.

To download the entire study, click here.