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Challenge 46 in the series 50 Reasons Why It Is Hard to Run a Nonprofit
A reentry program helps formerly incarcerated people find housing and employment. Its recidivism rate is half the state average. Its cost per participant is a third of what the state spends on re-incarceration.
At a community meeting, a resident asks: "Why are we spending taxpayer money helping criminals?"
That question — born from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the organization does and why — captures one of the most persistent challenges in nonprofit work. The people who need to understand your mission often don't. And the ones who misunderstand it the most can be the loudest. (I pause to shake my head here because I have worked with a lot of re-entry programs and this question always comes up.)
Jargon. The sector talks to itself in language that means nothing to outsiders. "Capacity building." "Evidence-based interventions." "Trauma-informed care." Each of these terms represents something real and important. To a legislator, a donor, or a neighbor, they're empty phrases. If your elevator pitch requires a glossary, you don't have an elevator pitch.
Complexity. Many nonprofits do complicated work that doesn't reduce to a bumper sticker. A community development organization might manage affordable housing, run a financial literacy program, operate a small business incubator, and provide legal services — all under one roof. Explaining that in 30 seconds is genuinely hard. But if you can't, people will fill in the blanks with their own assumptions.
The overhead myth. Despite a 2013 joint letter from GuideStar (now Candid), Charity Navigator, and the BBB Wise Giving Alliance urging donors to stop using overhead ratios as a measure of effectiveness, many donors and policymakers still judge nonprofits primarily by their overhead ratio. They misunderstand administrative costs as waste rather than infrastructure. This misunderstanding directly reduces funding and distorts organizational behavior — nonprofits starve their back offices to hit an arbitrary overhead target that has nothing to do with effectiveness.
Political framing. As I covered in Challenge 40, nonprofits increasingly get caught in political narratives that misrepresent their work. A refugee resettlement agency becomes "an organization that helps illegal immigrants." A harm reduction program becomes "a group that gives free needles to drug addicts." The political label replaces the reality, and the organization's actual outcomes disappear from the conversation.
When I was writing Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience, I placed misunderstandings in the "market failures" section because they represent a breakdown in the information system that's supposed to connect nonprofits to the resources they need. When funders and communities operate on bad information about what your organization does, good work gets defunded and bad assumptions go uncorrected.
Misunderstanding costs money. A funder who doesn't understand your model won't fund it. A policymaker who doesn't understand your impact won't protect your funding. A community member who doesn't understand your work won't support it — and may actively oppose it.
You can't control what people think. You can control what you give them to think about.
Lead with outcomes, not process. "We help formerly incarcerated people find housing and employment" tells people what you do. "Our participants' recidivism rate is 18%, compared to the state average of 38%, and every dollar we spend saves the state an estimated three dollars in incarceration costs" tells them why it matters. Outcomes beat descriptions every time.
Kill the jargon. Read your website's "About" page out loud to someone who doesn't work in nonprofits. If they can't summarize what you do in one sentence afterward, rewrite it. Your communications should be clear to a smart 16-year-old, not just to a program officer.
Tell one story, then back it up. Humans understand stories before they understand data. Lead with a specific person whose life changed. Then anchor the story in numbers that show it's not a one-off. "Maria found housing within 30 days of entering our program. She's one of 200 participants who did the same thing last year."
Anticipate the misunderstanding. If your work is politically sensitive or easy to mischaracterize, don't wait for someone else to frame it. Name the common misconception yourself and correct it — on your website, in your annual report, and in every public presentation.
And designate someone to own the message. Most small nonprofits have no one responsible for how the organization is described to the outside world. The ED writes the grant reports. A volunteer updates the website occasionally. Putting one person in charge of external communications — even if it's 20% of someone's existing role — changes the trajectory.
Making your work understandable to people who've never set foot in your building is a skill that takes practice. It's also one of the most effective ways to protect your funding. I write about it regularly in Nonprofit Good News Premium.
Ask three people who don't work at your organization to visit your website and tell you what you do. Not what your mission statement says. What you actually do. If they can't answer clearly — or if their answer surprises you — you've found the gap.
This is part of an ongoing series based on the 50 challenges outlined in Appendix 1 of Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience (Wiley, 2023). Each post names one challenge clearly and offers a practical reframe with steps you can take this week. For deeper coverage of nonprofit strategy, risk, and resilience — including tools you can put to work immediately — check out Nonprofit Good News Premium.