This is the last of my three-part video series on challenges and pitfalls facing nonprofits and other mission-driven organizations.

This segment focuses on the problem of waste:

As an independent consultant with no real apparatus to speak of (which is by design), it’s easy to spot expenditures in organizations that simply don’t need to be made. Nice conference rooms, class A office space, behemoth IT departments — often it seems to just accrete over time and become part of how the organization values itself.

But, these dollars don’t flow out to the mission, they get diverted into organization-building. Some amount of that, when done strategically and thoughtfully, is important. But at the same time, many expenditures don’t need to be made.

The trick is, as I say in the video, to think about how you would manage if you had only five years left before you disbanded. How would you pursue your mission then?