After a 20+ year career in the for-profit world, I found my calling in the non-profit world when together with my wife I founded the Miracle League of San Diego. The Miracle League provides children with special needs the opportunity to play baseball in an organized league. We’ve grown over eight seasons (we play in the spring and fall) from 100 players and 120 buddies to over 175 players and 200 buddies per season. We run the Miracle League like a professional organization and it shows in the quality of programming and constituent satisfaction. I like to call our field the “happiest place in San Diego.” If you’re in San Diego on a Saturday when we play stop by and experience for yourself.
I’m also the founding Chairman of the Board of the California Oncology Research Institute and currently vice-chairman. The surgical oncologists who founded CORI are incredibly passionate about caring for their patients and conducting ground-breaking research in a truly collaborative fashion. Having been around the block with many oncologists throughout the country, I have a keen appreciation for just how unique is their approach.
Based on my experience running these two non-profits, I came to appreciate how important it is to focus on cost savings in addition to fund raising. Non-profits need to maximize their resources and too often the concept of cost savings is lost. I believe that most smaller to medium size non-profits just don’t have the capacity and/or bandwidth to seek out discounts where they are available. Hence, I created the Non-Profit Purchasing Group (“NPPG”).
I launched NPPG in January 2010 to help non-profits save on their most commonly purchased goods and services. NPPG is the only one-stop discounted shopping site for non-profits everywhere. We’ve grown from 21 best-in-class vendor partners to over 50 where you can save on average from 15% to 55%.
I’ve decided to create this blog to share with other non-profit professionals, advisors, service providers and board members my thoughts, observations and suggestions for improving non-profit operations.
Project Managers could sign off for an expenditure up to $500, above that the Executive Director needed to approve it, anything above $1,000 needed both the E.D. and Treasurer’s signature.
There was a very detailed budget and planning meeting at the beginning of the fiscal year so the approximate expenses by category were known to the board, but since they were located all over the USA it worked well to just have the ED and Treasurer (who was in the same town as the non-profit) as the required signatures.