I spend time with nonprofit organizations and churches, helping them get unstuck and moving forward. A critical exercise we do together is identifying the top one or two problems facing the organization. We cross of anything that we can’t fix, like state or federal legislation, demographic changes, etc. The initial list of problems always has at the top phrases about money, like finances or contributions or revenue. The challenge is your financial position is a lagging indicator of organizational performance. It’s the report card for your organization looking backwards, not forward. When the books are closed at the end of the month, the revenue is counted, expenses subtracted and you get your grade, i.e., whether you made a profit or not. The focus needs to be on something else, what will help get a better grade.

I’m reminded of a time in my career when our organization was experiencing higher expenses than revenues. It wasn’t pretty. Maybe you’ve been there before too. This time there was something different in the approach to correcting our situation. The directive to every leader was to look through their operation with their team and come up with a correction plan. In the series of meetings that followed to review those plans, leader after leader would present a long list of expenses they wanted to cut, which often included staff positions they would reluctantly eliminate.

In my past experiences, the finance team would be thankful and then eliminate those expenses from future budget allocations (that’s what finance people do). But this time our Senior VP of Finance went a step further and asked more questions about how they were going to grow their operation; how could they increase revenue on current business. He pushed them, “How can you increase revenue?” or “Are there new revenue opportunities that need to be considered?” His questions were often followed by blank faces of the two or three people in the room (an indication they hadn’t thought about that or had no ideas), to which he would say, “People”, his favorite opening line, followed by his favorite line,

You can’t shrink to greatness!

I’ve heard it so many times it’s stuck in my head, but it’s true. You must find ways to continue growing your organization.

Think of your organization (for profit, nonprofit or church) as a sailboat. If your sailboat has some holes in it, you’ll need to fix them, or the boat will go down. That’s what cutting expense are, fixing the holes in the boat to stay afloat. It’s a short-term solution that only keeps you floating.

With those fixed, you won’t go anywhere without air. The sails on your organizational boat represent revenue, it’s what captures the air and will move you forward. One small sail will get you moving, but what if you can increase the air by getting a bigger sail or multiple sails. That’s revenue growth.

If you want to grow start asking growth questions:

• Why aren’t we selling more?
• Why aren’t people contributing to our nonprofit?
• Is our product not meeting the needs of our customers?
• Do people know what our agency does and how their contributions help?
• Do we need to charge more for our products or services?
• Do we need more products to sell or services for which we can get paid?

I can go on and on with questions like these, but you get the idea. Stop thinking about ways to shrink and begin focusing on ways to grow.

 “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities. Isaiah 54:2-3