Steven Sanderson’s business-like philosophy helped this nonprofit organization triple in size in a little more than a decade.

The Wildlife Conservation Society, created as a chartered nonprofit organization by New York City and the state of New York, has been around since 1895. The organization shortly thereafter created the Bronx Zoo, for the purposes of educating and entertaining the citizens of New York, while providing for the conservation of wildlife, in the US and overseas.

Through the years, the organization has grown significantly. Twenty-five years ago, the Wildlife Conservation Society was approached by the city of New York to ultimately take over the redesign and management of several city zoos, which were considered to be in rough shape. In return, the Wildlife Conservation Society runs them according to its standards, and the city reimburses it for the cost. Today, the Wildlife Conservation Society now operates five facilities: the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Zoo, Prospect Park Zoo, and the Queens Zoo, all of which host 1,200 employees—not to mention 20,000 animals.

These living institutions receive an estimated 4 million visitors per year. In its conservation efforts, the organization has programs in more than 60 countries with 3,000 employees. “In New York, we’ve become a big attraction, and there’s a business that goes with that,” said Steven Sanderson, president and CEO. “Our core business has also shifted to a global one. Although we are headquartered in New York and are historically rooted here, we’re proud of that.”

Steven Sanderson

Leveraging assets
Business has been booming for the Wildlife Conservation Society; in the last dozen years, it has tripled in size, and its global conservation budget has gone from $5 million to $60 million. The organization’s annual budget is about $170 million, with a $500 million endowment.

The organization has achieved this growth through aggressive fundraising, tightening its management, and strategic planning. “We’ve had the Bronx Zoo and 2 million visitors for the past 100 years, and that has been a solid and predictable model,” Sanderson said. However, several years ago, the chief executive chose to put together a robust fiscal system and financial management plan and decided to leverage the organization’s assets by taking on a little debt.

“We did that very carefully and conservatively, and we’re happy to say we received a double-A rating, and we stayed within all of the set ratios for our debt obligations. We know our comfort zone and have stayed nicely inside those ratios for four years, which has enabled us to do more,” Sanderson said.

With expansion, however, comes new challenges, and one of the most difficult is maintaining growth while scaling up business capacity. “We don’t want to outgrow ourselves anymore. Over the last six years, we’ve introduced a lot of management practices that are best practices going from good to better to best. And that includes all the fiduciary oversight that a nonprofit or any other enterprise needs. We’re getting ahead of the curve,” he said.

Business developments
Much of what has made the Wildlife Conser-vation Society so successful is Sanderson’s philosophy of operating it more like a business rather than a traditional nonprofit. In addition to good financial planning and budget management, Sanderson and his team work to establish a business plan or a business-like way of thinking when it comes to projects.

“If we get a grant to do something and it lasts for three years, we want to determine whether or not it fits into our core mission, what its true cost is, and the strategy for funding it or ending it after the grant stops before we even apply for it,” Sanderson said. “Sun-setting and thinking through a project lifecycle or a program of activities in a business-like way is extremely important to us.”

The chief executive also works to develop a set of value propositions and products that business communities and donor communities understand. “It’s lovely to say we want to save the world,” he said. “But ultimately, if you can’t specify what it is you’re managing to do with the support you receive, you’re not going about things in a business-like manner.”

Consequently, the organization steers away from the typical nonprofit internal management practices and personnel policies. For example, it has a professional benchmarked salary schedule, with promotional criteria and regular evaluations. Sanderson takes that before a compensation committee and benchmarks it against competitors and the New York market so he knows where the organization is regarding recruiting and retaining. “We’re fastidious about that as well as our audits,” he said. “We have a tight conflict-of-interest policy for both the board and staff, and those are business-like practices that we do more carefully perhaps than other nonprofit organizations.”

Unlike many nonprofits, the Wildlife Conservation Society includes a real business as it caters to more than 4 million guests visiting the city zoos and brings in an estimated $40 million in net revenue every year from admissions, parking, memberships, merchandise, and food. “We have to monitor internal controls, cash management, risk management, and retail employees and managers. That’s a lot different from conservation organizations elsewhere who don’t have this kind of responsibility to the visiting population,” Sanderson concluded.