December 8, 2016 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Independent Sector, a national coalition of 500 charities and foundations, has cut its staff by a quarter, from 44 to 33 employees, the association said Thursday. The move comes as nonprofits look to their representatives in Washington for leadership amid transitions of power in the White House and Congress that spell huge changes in tax policy and federal spending.
The 11 positions, held by workers at senior, middle, and junior levels, were eliminated after Independent Sector adopted a new strategic plan designed to make a “fundamental shift” in the organization, said Dan Cardinali, the group’s chief executive. He said he hoped a leaner staff, plus a restructuring designed to reduce hierarchy at the organization, would make Independent Sector “a little bit more agile” in responding to the three main challenges the strategic plan identified as facing nonprofits and the world: globalization, technology, and damage to the environment, such as global warming.
The organization’s finances also played a role in the decision, its leaders said. Independent Sector had revenue of more than $5.9 million for the first nine months of 2016, a decline of about 23 percent from the same period in 2015, which saw revenue of about $7.75 million, according to an unaudited financial summary provided to members at its conference in November. The organization predicts a deficit of $1.8 million at the end of 2016. Independent Sector spent $7.2 million on program services that year, including $2.2 million on public-policy work.
“Like all organizations, we need to be good stewards of our financial resources,” Mr. Cardinali said in his statement announcing the cuts.
Government Relations
While focusing on big challenges such as technology will be Independent Sector’s main goal, Mr. Cardinali said the organization would also maintain its commitment to “trying to figure out how to be the best partner with government.” At Independent Sector’s annual conference in November, Mr. Cardinali said that nonprofits may be uniquely suited to address the anxiety many Americans feel after the presidential election because of the trust the public has in the nonprofit world.
Those who lost jobs at Independent Sector were notified Thursday. The organization declined to release their names.
“These things are always difficult,” Mr. Cardinali said in an interview. “Those folks who have transitioned out of Independent Sector, we uniformly hold them in immensely high regard.”
The cuts come less than a year after a change in leadership at the membership organization. Mr. Cardinali was named the new executive in February after the 2015 departure of longtime leader Diana Aviv, who now heads Feeding America.
Mr. Cardinali suggested that the cuts were partly intended to reduce redundancy in the work done among the big associations, including the Philanthropy Roundtable, the Council on Foundations, and the National Council of Nonprofits. “We are definitely trying to be economical, trying to identify what we can do well and where there might be a gap in the marketplace,” he said. “If others are doing things well, we would partner with them.”
