(Community Matters) Greenlight’s has completed a study on the number of nonprofits in Austin. They’ve identified 6,309 public charities in Central Texas and have compared them by size and subindustry to other Texas cities and peer communities. Fascinating report which is being finalized and was only previewed to a group of friends over lunch yesterday at the Leadership Austin offices. In attendance included Matt Kouri, Deborah Edwards, Chris Earthman, Dave Shaw, Heather McKissick, Andy White, KDK-Harman Foundation’s Jennifer Esterline & Erica Ekwurzel, Lucy Glenn and several other foundation reps and founders. excellent information and good debate on interpretation – look forward to the full report publicly very soon. I’ve promised not to publish details since still being completed and not yet released publicly.
Should more be retired by their boards, merge with others or at least participate collaboratively? Absolutely. And, it’s especially incumbent upon those of us on the boards of more mature – even institutional – nonprofits to look and push for opportunities to merge, collaborate and “acquire” other nonprofits. I find comparisons between peer communities enlightening.