Like you, I've been hearing that many of Santa Fe's most essential service providers are struggling mightily to keep up with increased demand for services while donations and government funding shrinks. Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families and Solace Crisis Treatment Center are just two of many that Mayor David Coss and I talked about this past week.

After that meeting, some trusted colleagues described for me what Santa Fe was like before these organizations came into existence: For victims of domestic violence, it was awful.

These important and wonderful organizations, and others like them — such as St. Elizabeth's Shelter, Girls Inc., The Food Depot, Kitchen Angels, Villa Theresa and so many more — emerged not as a pleasant pastime for some do-gooder in town; they came into being because there was a real unmet need, and someone had the courage and compassion to stand up and do something about it.

Nonprofits are essential to the life of our community for many reasons, but there are rarely any as compelling as the raison d'êtres of our most important service providers. Their collective mission statement could be summed up as something like this: "End the human suffering in Santa Fe caused by poverty, violence and lack of opportunity." I think we, together with our nonprofits, have a moral obligation to work toward ending human suffering.

Given this moral mandate, are there organizations too important to be allowed to fail? Is their struggle really just a question of money? And when they do struggle, what should we do about it? Of course, money helps. And if you feel compelled to give, please do. But it takes more than money to build financial sustainability.

According to experts in nonprofit management, financial sustainability is the sum total of three core competencies in an organization: leadership, adaptability and programmatic capacity.

Some call this The Sustainability Formula. It's not as elegant as Einstein's E=mc2, but according to the experts, this equation optimizes the likelihood of long-term financial viability of nonprofit organizations.

Leadership is all about being visionary, strategic, inclusive, decisive, inspirational, motivational, innovative and accountable. This is required at both staff and board levels.

Adaptability is the ability to monitor, assess and respond to an ever-changing environment of need and available resources.

Programmatic capacity includes both the ability to use resources efficiently and having the skills, experience, knowledge, technologies and facilities to implement strategies successfully and take them to scale.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northern New Mexico seems to have gotten the math right in recent years as they have built upon all three parts of the sustainability formula. The board hired the right executive. The executive team worked hard with the board to get out into the community and listen in order to understand the changing circumstances affecting at-risk. Based on what they learned, they put together strategies to reach out to new volunteers and supporters. On top of that, they ran a top-notch, tightly managed administrative operation. As a result they've recently been named Small Agency of the Year by Big Brothers Big Sisters, U.S.

Solace and Esperanza shelter have the same opportunity now — and I believe they can do it. But they and others like them need our help. Their boards, donors and funders need to make an investment in building their leadership, adaptability and program capacity. They need to be encouraged to take some risks and reach beyond the status quo — and donors and investors need to stick by them as they methodically try new things. Their boards and staff already know that they need to diversify their revenue streams, identify new collaborators and partners, create new strategic alliances with other service organizations, find new efficiencies and continually innovate their models. Most of all, they need to maintain their commitment to listening to their clients and advocating on their behalf for change in the larger system of care.

I'm confident that they are working hard on this already, and, just like Big Brothers Big Sisters, they need our help. By making investments in this kind of capacity-building in your favorite nonprofits, you will begin to see the region's essential organizations not only achieve basic financial sustainability, but come together to create new alliances among like-minded players who can take proven programs to scale.

High-impact organizations, donors, foundations and social entrepreneurs have to innovate their way through this brutal economic environment and continue to provide the best services to the growing number of people who need them.

We've been told that there were banks too big to fail. Our community has to rally around the idea that there are nonprofits here that are too important to fail. Bailing them out won't do the trick in the long term. But building their ability to operate at the edge of their craft will stand all of us, especially those most in need, in very good stead.

Brian Byrnes is the President & CEO of the Santa Fe Community Foundation. Please send him your comments at: givingmatters@santafecf.org.