A new paradigm for nonprofit management: the Goldilocks approach

Resilience requires a broader understanding of efficiency, taking account of the manifold and serious risks that nonprofit organizations face, and the imperative to serve and succeed over the long run. However, managing for resilience is not a trade-off between short term success and long run resilience. Management practices designed for resilience serve to improve functioning and effectiveness in ordinary times as well. Resilience management involves both navigating crises at hand and preparing for future possible challenges. Moreover, resilience strategies are multidimensional, involving not only an organization's finances, but its human resources, network relationships, technologies, entrepreneurial capacity, and informational systems. A prudent level of slack allows an organization to respond to crises in the short term and can be employed in ordinary times to build the organization's long-term effectiveness. Determining prudent levels of slack should follow the Goldilocks principle: not so much to render the organization wasteful or ineffectual but enough to ensure resilience. Funders, raters and regulators, and educators all have important roles in helping nonprofit leaders achieve resilience for their organizations by following a new paradigm of nonprofit resilience management.