Rebecca Leaman is the primary writer for Wild Apricot non-profit technology blog and team member at AssociationJam.org.

In tough economic times, it’s inevitable that associations and non-profits will see their programs and services cut, events canceled or down-sized and every item on the marketing budget given an extra pass under an accountant’s cold eye.

At some point, however, restraint turns into constraint.

And if the net effect of your organization’s internal streamlining is to limit the ways in which your members and donors can easily support your organization — maybe it’s time to look beyond the bottom line.

Three examples came to me in just the past ten days — situations where an organization seems to be so focused on efficiency, it misses the boat on being effective — and no doubt you can add to the list from your own experience:

1. Net Effect: Lost a Donation

Take a case that I wrote about recently at the Wild Apricot Blog, where a deserving charity’s door-to-door fundraising missed the mark and lost a donation — because I didn’t have my checkbook with me when the canvassers came knocking at the door. And a check, collected right then and there, was the only payment method they were equipped to handle.
Why?
Printing costs are sky-high, so mail-in envelopes for donations weren’t in the charity’s budget. Neither, apparently, were simple handouts giving a website address, so prospective donors could follow up and do their giving online.

2. Net Effect: Lost an Audience

My favorite podcast is both entertaining and chock full of useful information — valuable enough for me to be willing to pay for it. When I could download an MP3 file to listen to in the car, I almost never missed an episode. But it’s not quite valuable enough to tie me to my computer for an hour, to listen to it on their Web site. And that’s now the only option for listeners.
Why?
It’s a pay-as-you-go service. To save the small amount of money they were losing by the occasional illicit sharing of audio files, the podcast producers locked up their content. No one will hear it now without paying, by golly! — but how many people are willing to pay to listen, under these new terms?

3. Net Effect: Lost a Member

My alumni association wants me to spend 10 minutes on the phone — at dinner hour, of course — to answer a “member satisfaction” survey.
Why?
I don’t know, frankly. The association has my mailing address and email address on file. Can we not do this by another method, and at my convenience rather than that of the association?

The alumni association could have enclosed a survey form in the mailings they already send out to members. Or, even cheaper, sent out the survey by email. Used one of the many low-cost web tools to embed a questionnaire on their existing website. Talked to members, in person, at the next scheduled event …. Any or all of those options would have cost the association less, in the long run, than the lifetime cost of alienating and possibly losing members.

So we used to do A, B, and C, but now we can’t afford it all?

That’s an economic reality for most of us.

Members understand that.

But instead of throwing out the baby with the bath water — dumping B and C to force our supporters into an A-only model, whether or not that’s what matches their needs — maybe organizations need to concentrate more on looking for low-cost D, E, and F alternatives.

We understand that membership recruitment and retention are greater when we offer a choice of membership packages at different prices points. We know that volunteers are more motivated and easier to retain when they’re able to choose a job that suits their interests and their talents. Why, then, when it comes to deciding where and how to make budget cuts, do we so often seem to lose sight of the importance of choice — of making it easy for people to support our organizations?