Success Planning for Nonprofits: Evidence-Based Strategic Planning

By Rebecca Staton-Reinstein and Ellen Bristol

Stop wandering in the wilderness. Put your nonprofit on the road to predictable success.

Nonprofits are the engines of the social safety net, preservation and innovation in arts and culture, supporters of causes people care about, and a necessary part of every community. Yet large or small, nonprofits all struggle with translating their compelling visions and missions into reality. We all know the old saw, Fail to Plan; Plan to Fail. Nonprofits are especially vulnerable as boards and staffs tend to focus more on the day-to-day, serving their constituents, and raising money. Strategic planning is THE proven mechanism to translate and sustain the noble goals of the organization. Success Planning is the blueprint for crafting a metrics-driven, evidence-based planning process that gets concrete results.

• Get the results your organization needs with a robust strategic plan,
• Become more efficient and effective with a focused Board and Staff,
• Deliver services to your constituents with greater Return on Effort,
• Delight your funders with concrete evidence of your results,
• Build a sustainable organization predictably reaching your goals

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Oct 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642378061

Book preview

more.

INTRODUCTION: THE VALUE OF STRATEGIC PLANNING

The good news is strategic planning is making a comeback. The bad news is it declined in the first place. Even more bad news: strategic planning is still not easy to do, not a quick fix, and not a substitute for good management. But if you want to run a successful nonprofit in the twenty-first century, it’s a necessity.

The pressure is on for nonprofit organizations of all types and sizes to grapple with the strategic planning process. Funding for nonprofits is increasingly difficult to get and often comes with strings attached. Foundations and major philanthropists demand ever higher levels of accountability, and, for those nonprofits lucky enough, the agency’s governing board wants proof the staff is achieving the mission while honoring appropriate constraints. As tough as these new conditions may be, they are a good thing in the long run.

As a result, the time is right for a book to help nonprofit leaders, executives, and board members understand what it takes to create a meaningful strategic plan and use it to manage the future of their organizations, as well as the present.

Strategic planning helps you achieve the results you want when you plan and implement well. It can also show you:

• Where you are reaching your desired results,

• Where you are not reaching them,

• Where you are exceeding them, and

• Where you must act to either sustain or improve the results.

In each case the contents and metrics of the plan provide insights allowing you to lock in the results you want or modify your tactics to achieve different ones. Who wouldn’t want to make the effort to create such reliable and effective guidance?

The strategic planning methodology:

• Counters the urge to react to today’s dynamic environment and encourages a more proactive stance,

• Supports a strategic (top down, big picture) approach rather than a tactical (bottom up, narrow) approach,

• Requires a thorough analysis of the current situation and the expectations of all constituencies, including clients, volunteers, funders, staff, and board.

• Requires establishing direction through a vision of the future, a mission for the present, and goals to accomplish the mission,

• Establishes concrete objectives and desired results to facilitate reaching the goals,

• Provides the basis for the agency’s operational plan and the context for its comprehensive fundraising plan,

• Drives a tactical plan to guide daily action, providing the basis for tracking progress, and take corrective action where necessary, and

• Clarifies the difference between the board’s role of governance and leadership, and the staff’s role of implementation.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

If you need to:

• Get results

• Track results

• Guide your organization through challenging times

• Manage your organization day-to-day

• Meet the challenges of change

• Know when and what to change

Then, to be successful, you must:

• Plan,

• Implement, and

• Manage strategically.

Strategic planning techniques have been forged in the crucible of experience and have stood the test of time. This is no quick fix, new buzzword, fad, or panacea. Instead, strategic planning is a sound, thoughtful, dynamic, and established approach for organizational success, with particular relevance for the nonprofit venture.

A note about nonprofit terminology: For the sake of simplicity, we have used the following terms consistently throughout this book:

• CEO . Some organizations use terms such as executive director, administrative director, chief administration officer, or other titles to refer to the most senior staff person. We will use the term Chief Executive Officer, CEO.

• CDO . Some organizations refer to the executive in charge of fundraising as the director of development, vice president of advancement, chief executive for institutional relations, and a host of other titles. We will refer to that position as the Chief Development Officer, CDO.

• CFO . The executive in charge of keeping track of the money goes by a wide variety of titles. We’ll use Chief Financial Officer, CFO.

• Funder . While your organization may raise money from government, individual and major donors, grant-making organizations, corporate philanthropy, and/or corporate sponsorship, we will use the term funder unless the situation calls for a more specific term.

Why Nonprofits and NGO’s Need Strategic Planning So Much

While every type of business needs strategic planning, the nonprofit organization has some unique nuances. In the for-profit world, businesses have a simple two-part dynamic: we, the business, make goods and services for you, the customer; you pay us to make those goods and deliver those services. I give my products to you and you give your money back to me.

In the nonprofit world, it’s a little more complicated. We, the nonprofit, give you, the client, goods and services to benefit you. But, in many cases, you don’t pay for them. A third party, the funder, pays. So nonprofit organizations must plan and implement in ways satisfactory and motivating to two markets: the direct market of clients who consume or benefit from goods and services, and the indirect market of those who fund the goods and services, all in support of the organizational mission. So I, the funder, give my money to you, the nonprofit, you give your products and services to them, the clients, and I, the funder, get satisfaction from seeing the mission fulfilled.

The existence of this indirect market of funders makes effective strategic planning even more important. Funders want evidence that the organizations they underwrite have clear direction and levels of accountability. North American nonprofits are required by law and tax regulations to seat a formal governing board, which holds fiduciary responsibilities.* Without good strategic planning, it’s far more difficult if not impossible to govern wisely. These two factors make strategic planning a necessity for the nonprofit