Benefits thinking: ideas and tools for practice

Conceivably, application of benefits theory to shape and fine-tune the financing of social purpose organizations could become an exact science. This would require development of precise ways of identifying beneficiaries, measuring the benefits they receive, and calibrating the various mechanisms to collect income from those beneficiaries, or their agents, in proportion to received benefits. Indeed, some SPOs do try to measure the benefits they produce and to convince funders of the value of supporting them for providing those benefits. For example, this is the tack taken recently by Lincoln Center in its effort to convince New York City that it should help fund the renovation of one of its concert halls (Cooper, 2016). However, it is early days in the learning trajectory for this approach and such precision is not easily achievable, especially for busy leaders of organizations with modest analytical capacities. Nonetheless, the real value of benefits theory lies in applying its principles to current resource development practice in a conceptual way, even if this just helps to move organizations in the right direction from one year to the next or to identify new sources of support. The purpose of this last chapter is to crystallize the key lessons and ideas and offer some tools to apply benefits theory to practice without having to rely on sophisticated technology or complex data analysis techniques. KEY LESSONS AND IDEAS Benefits theory is built on a number of key ideas. First, that the financing of SPOs should be driven by the mission of the organization. Second, that there is a logic that connects the mission of the organization, its programs, the benefits that it produces and the beneficiaries it serves, to its sources of income. This logic is transactional – an exchange of resources for benefits provided. Third, that multiple sources of finance are potentially available to SPOs and that their exploitation depends on the nature of benefits provided. The latter might be understood as alternative possible “business models.†Fourth, unless current and potential benefits and beneficiaries are consciously assessed, SPOs may miss important sources of income support. Fifth, alternative sources of income require alternative skill sets and involve different costs of cultivation and administration or “transactions costs†which must be considered before SPOs include or expand them in their income portfolios. Finally, SPOs may sometimes be well advised to fine-tune the cultivation of income sources for which they already have experience but from which additional income or mission impact might be developed.