Clara Miller from the Nonprofit Finance Fund reported on a survey of 900 nonprofit leaders to the New York Times:
Only 12 percent of those organizations expect to end the year with an operating surplus, compared with 40 percent who ended their most recent fiscal years with money on hand, according to the survey by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a charity that provides loans and other financial services to nonprofit groups.
Almost a third said they did not have enough cash on hand to cover more than one month’s expenses, while roughly another third said they only had enough money to get them through the next three months.
Clara suggests that part of the problem lies in nonprofit's not having a strong capacity in telling about their financial condition (presuming I think that the public would be more responsive if they fully understood the problem).
I have no doubt that Clara is correct but I propose there are additional challenges (beyond the glaring economic conditions). I propose that nonprofit execs are working much of these challenges on their own and their boards are not as helpful in coming to a rescue and perhaps have not been very strategic in their thinking about the long term financial conditions of their nonprofits -- not mindful of the duty of care. And, one strategy that nonprofit boards should really be thinking about in these times is partnerships and mergers -- maybe right now there's just too many nonprofits to really weather a much smaller pool of available money.