Community Profits on Strength of Nonprofit Sector

Community profits on strength of nonprofit sector
Business First by Tracey Drury, Buffalo Business First Reporter
Date: Wednesday, November 2, 2011, 3:13pm EDT.
Tracey DruryBuffalo Business First Reporter - Business FirstEmail

Today’s the day I finally exhale, as the final pieces of our Million Dollar Nonprofits research report go out the door to the printer.
But by day’s end, I’ll be holding my breath once again - waiting for the report to land in the hands of the region’s nonprofit community. The report, to many, represents sort of a report card on how those execs are doing in their daily jobs of running a $2 billion sector.
The report is a compilation of several months of research into the region’s largest nonprofit organizations, each with revenue of at least $1 million. The 282 agencies on the list this year have a major economic impact in the eight-county region, employing nearly 53,000 people and providing services to hundreds of thousands.
And they do it all without profits in mind.
Our list includes a wide variety of organiations, including human service agencies providing programs for poor, individuals with disabilities and seniors, as well as cultural and arts groups, health-related organizations and others that work on business or economic development issues. Narrowing the field on what types of organizations to include has been a work in progress over the past 10 years, as we’ve included, then taken out again such groups as hospitals and health systems and health insurers - despite their status as nonprofit corporations.
Our list is part of the All About Nonprofits special publication, which also includes a list of the top corporate philanthropists in the region; foundations ranked by total grants paid; and a list of nonprofit fundraising events for 2012.
One of the most closely watched pieces of this report every year is the salary listings. Though we don’t get as many complaints any more about why we list them, I almost always hear from people thanking us for helping shed some light on compensation. As we said before, these agencies operate without profits in mind, but that doesn’t mean the executives working there are doing it for free.