Operational constraints: Does the charity have enough administrative bandwidth to hire staff or expand programs without straining their systems so much that their effectiveness suffers?
I would think if an organization had operational constraints, it would still have room for more funding, just the funding would be spent on expanding operations (e.g., hiring more operations staff, buying operations software, etc.)
One relevant constraint I can think of that would (hopefully temporarily) affect room for more funding are issues around management / culture / strategy capacity around the speed of hiring—an organization can only spend money to hire and expand so quickly and maybe they are already saturated. Typing this out now, I realize this is probably what you meant anyway.
tl;dr: I don’t think “slow and steady” growth is a problem, only “slow and unsteady” growth.
speed of hiring—an organization can only spend money to hire and expand so quickly and maybe they are already saturated
Actually, I don’t think expansion speed alone should be considered a factor in room for more funding. If there are no mission constraints or relative timing constraints, should it matter to me when the organization spends my money? If not, why not donate now so they’ll have more to use once they are no longer saturated?
I was trying to define operational constraints more narrowly, to include only the kind of growth that actually threatens the effectiveness of the org. I’m not sure exactly what this would look like. Perhaps if an org currently has promising programs, but is growing in a way that I think will create problems for them, then I would worry they won’t be effective by the time they are no longer saturated.
Yeah, I think it certainly would be fine to donate to an organization that can make use of your money but not for a year or two. I think this would actually be very helpful to the org as a signal of support and for removing some uncertainty for them, to allow them to actually grow (steadily).
I would think if an organization had operational constraints, it would still have room for more funding, just the funding would be spent on expanding operations.
I would think if an organization had operational constraints, it would still have room for more funding, just the funding would be spent on expanding operations (e.g., hiring more operations staff, buying operations software, etc.)
One relevant constraint I can think of that would (hopefully temporarily) affect room for more funding are issues around management / culture / strategy capacity around the speed of hiring—an organization can only spend money to hire and expand so quickly and maybe they are already saturated. Typing this out now, I realize this is probably what you meant anyway.
tl;dr: I don’t think “slow and steady” growth is a problem, only “slow and unsteady” growth.
Actually, I don’t think expansion speed alone should be considered a factor in room for more funding. If there are no mission constraints or relative timing constraints, should it matter to me when the organization spends my money? If not, why not donate now so they’ll have more to use once they are no longer saturated?
I was trying to define operational constraints more narrowly, to include only the kind of growth that actually threatens the effectiveness of the org. I’m not sure exactly what this would look like. Perhaps if an org currently has promising programs, but is growing in a way that I think will create problems for them, then I would worry they won’t be effective by the time they are no longer saturated.
Yeah, I think it certainly would be fine to donate to an organization that can make use of your money but not for a year or two. I think this would actually be very helpful to the org as a signal of support and for removing some uncertainty for them, to allow them to actually grow (steadily).
Great point!