Gallatin Valley Nonprofit Profile Series

Local Nonprofits Come Together Tonight at Emerson

By David Nolt, 9-13-07

The Gallatin Valley is home to a plethora of nonprofits. From American Indians to biomimicry to cottonwoods, Gallatin Valley nonprofits have their bases covered. This Thursday night, September 13th, nonprofit executive directors from across the county will be meeting in the Weaver Room of the Emerson Cultural Center from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in hopes of forming a common group to bring more communication and networking between the many nonprofits.

There are 5,677 certified 501(c)(3) nonprofits in Montana and nearly 500 in the Gallatin Valley alone. Next week NewWest.Net/Bozeman will begin profiling one non-profit each week. Groups will be randomly selected from our magic hat and subjected to a fixed set of grueling and not-so grueling questions about their organizations’ operations and missions.

As Brian Magee, executive director of the Montana Nonprofit Association (MNA) explains, despite a wide array of groups and missions, there is much in common among community nonprofits.

“Whether you’re an art museum, a fire department or a group helping children with disabilities, although there is immense diversity in mission, there is immense commonality in challenges and hopes for their community,” Magee says.

Cassie Carter, executive director of the Montana Outdoor Science School, says the group behind the Thursday night meeting at the Emerson is a “loosely organized group of [nonprofit] executive directors” who have been meeting for about a year.

“It started initially as a way for the executive directors to get collaborative support,” Carter explains. “We’re trying to coordinate our activities so we don’t step on what each other is doing…The bottom line is we are working to provide resources and services that are not being provided by the municipalities or the business sector. We’re filling in the gaps.”

Brian Magee says groups similar to the one being formed in Bozeman are beginning to take shape in a community across the state.

“We find with the conversations the local groups are coming together to find connections, education, are sharing ideas, learning from each other and finding camaraderie,” Magee observes.

Magee says resources for nonprofits in Montana are limited in many ways and pose significant challenges to fundraising efforts. Montana does not have the large corporate tax base of many other areas and as such does not attract resources from larger organizations. Magee says Montanans in general are “tremendously giving,” though, and a strong spirit of volunteer efforts—“the lifeblood of these organizations”—helps make up for monetary deficits. Still, the fact that smaller organizations are more reliant on contributions coupled with limited donors still creates a fundraising bottleneck in the state.

The MNA helps nonprofits on their fundraising techniques with tools like grant writing education and training to help organizations look at their economic situations differently. The association also helps with policy development, such as the newly created Montana Charitable Endowment Tax Credit, which gives tax credits for planned gifts within Montana. Magee says his organization is also working on a national level to encourage national foundations to donate more in Montana, something he says they have largely ignored.

When it comes to the national nonprofit community, Magee describes the term “nonprofit” as misleading and says there is significant discussion across the country to change the term.

“We’re the only sector that defines itself by what it is not,” Magee says. “There is nothing that says a nonprofit can’t make money. Any profit made by a nonprofit cannot inure to a private individual or interest. The money just stays with the organization on their books.”

Magee encourages nonprofits to take “a good honest look at your organization and the landscape in which you work” to find out if there are other nonprofits a group can partner, collaborate or even merge and consolidate with, if necessary. He also says groups must consistently ask themselves if they are fully and effectively pursuing their mission, which means assessing what a group should be working on and what it should not.

The Montana Association of Nonprofits will be holding its Sixth Annual Conference September 24th, 25th and 26th in Billings. Magee says the conference is a great learning experience for nonprofits as well as a chance to form better networks such as the one forming in Bozeman.

“This is a tremendous trend in development that nonprofit professionals are joining together in their communities,” Magee says.

Statewide, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit sector is the third largest economic sector in the state, according to the MNA. From July 2005 to June 2006, 501(c)(3) nonprofits employed 37,000 people, which produced $1 billion in wages.

And don’t forget to join NewWest.Net/Bozeman next week for our first installment in the Gallatin Valley Nonprofit Profile Series.

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