New Webinar: The Power of a Theory of Change

As I’ve said many times before, it’s no longer enough for nonprofits to do “good work.” Funders, policy makers, board members are increasingly demanding that nonprofits explain what change they exist to create. With increasing competition for social change dollars it is absolutely crucial that nonprofit organizations develop their own theory of change. This Social Velocity webinar “The Power of a Theory of Change” can help you do just that.

A theory of change is basically an argument for why a nonprofit exists. It describes how an organization uses community resources (money, volunteers, clients) to perform a set of activities which result in changes to the clients’ lives (outcomes) and changes to broader communities, institutions, or systems (impact).

Essentially a theory of change describes how a nonprofit creates social change.

It used to be enough for a nonprofit to talk about what it produced (or outputs), such as meals served in a soup kitchen, hours spent reading to a child, beds provided in a homeless shelter, but that just doesn’t cut it anymore. In a world where there are fewer and fewer dollars and more and more nonprofits fighting for those dollars, people are increasingly asking the question “To What End?” So what if you created outputs, did anything really change because of your work? Did the lives of those in your program change and did the community change?

That’s where a theory of change comes in. If you can articulate what change you hope your organization is creating, then with that fundamental building block in place you can:

• Chart a strategic direction
• Prove your results
• Secure more support for your organization

And ultimately achieve the holy grail of the nonprofit sector: sustainable community change.

The “Power of a Theory of Change” webinar will help you:

• Understand what a theory of change is and how it can help your nonprofit
• Develop your nonprofit’s own theory of change
• Connect your mission to your new theory of change
• Learn how to use your theory of change to chart a strategic direction
• Use your theory of change to attract more funding
• Help your board understand its power

Webinar Details:
Recorded
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And remember, all Social Velocity webinars are available as recorded downloads, so even if you can’t make this date and time you can still register for the webinar and get access to all of the content.

Photo Credit: frank.itlab.us

Tags: nonprofit competition, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit logic model, nonprofit outcomes, nonprofit performance measurement, nonprofit strategy, nonprofit webinars, social change, strategic planning, theory of change

New Consulting Video

One of my resolutions this new year is to add more video to the Social Velocity site. I love watching video, and I’d love to see more nonprofits using the medium, so I thought I should probably follow suit. A few months ago I created a Social Velocity YouTube channel and will continue to add video to it over the course of the year. I also plan to do some video blogging this year, which I’m pretty excited about.

But today I want to introduce my new consulting video. Here I discuss how I consult with nonprofit clients. If you are reading this in an email, you can see the video by clicking here. Take a look!

Tags: board development, Board of Directors, Fundraising, fundraising plan, fundraising strategy, nonprofit consulting, nonprofit management, nonprofit strategy, strategic planning

Coaching a Nonprofit Leader to Success

I’ve been talking about strategic planning a lot lately (here and here) because I think it is so critically important to the success of a nonprofit organization. But it’s not enough to create a great strategic plan on paper, you have to implement and monitor it. This is why I insist that the strategic plans I help create have a detailed, measurable operational plan that describes the day-to-day work that will bring the strategic plan to fruition.

But sometimes a strategic plan calls for so much change to a nonprofit organization that they need follow-up staff coaching to make the plan a reality. This was the case for one of my clients, ACE: A Community for Education.

ACE is an early childhood literacy tutoring program, with a proven model that really works to get children to grade level in reading by 3rd grade. The outcomes of the program were so impressive that they wanted to expand it to many more schools. But, the program was a well-kept secret. A small advisory board and limited external connections left the organization struggling to build the kind of community, funder, and school district support they need to dramatically grow.

ACE hired me to create a 3-year strategic plan for growth. ACE assembled a working group of staff, advisory board members, funders and other key stakeholders, and I led them through a 5-month process analyzing the internal and external environment, creating the goals and objectives of the strategic plan for growth, determining the projected budget required to get there, and creating a detailed annual operational plan to bring the plan to fruition.

But ACE realized that their strategic plan was so ambitious that they would need some guidance and regular coaching to make it a reality. So once the strategic plan was created and adopted by the advisory board and other stakeholders, ACE hired me to coach their staff on:

• Restructuring the advisory board to lend more strategic support and expand community connections to ACE
• Expanding their fundraising efforts in order to support the new goals of the strategic plan
• Growing the staff and program infrastructure to implement the plan

So over a 10-month period I met regularly with the Executive Director and the Development Director to coach them on:

• Restructuring the advisory board
• Creating a major donor fundraising campaign
• Implementing the strategic plan
• Using the strategic plan to filter future decisions
• Effectively using staff resources

The result is that ACE has moved quickly to grow their program. They plan to triple the number of students served by the program by 2016. They have already secured a significantly increased financial commitment from participating school districts to do so. They have also completely restructured their advisory board and expanded its membership. They have hired new staff positions to make growth a reality. They have begun involving the advisory board in their new major donor campaign efforts and have already enjoyed new and renewed interest from funders. Staff and advisory board are energized and focused on their plans for growth.

As ACE Executive Director Mary Ellen Isaacs put it recently:

“Our work with Nell has been critical to developing a viable growth strategy and plan for ACE. The process helped us clarify our core competencies, engage stakeholders, and articulate exactly how and why ACE should grow. As a result of Nell’s strategic planning and follow-up coaching, my staff and I, and our advisory board, have the tools and confidence to reach our larger vision for ACE. This was one of the best investments we have made in ACE!”

If you are interested in learning more about how I coach nonprofit staff to strengthen or grow their organizations, check out my Staff Coaching consulting service.

Photo Credit: VarsityLife
 

Tags: executive director coaching, nonprofit board of directors, nonprofit coaching, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit growth, nonprofit strategic plan, strategic planning

5 Hard Questions Every Nonprofit Should Ask

Note: I’m heading out of the office for the next week and a half, but in my absence I want to offer a couple of blog posts from the Social Velocity archives. The one below appeared on the blog in February 2011. Enjoy!

I’m a huge believer in questions. Sometimes asking good, hard questions is the only way to get to the bottom of something, to analyze potential options, to find the right path.

So too in the nonprofit sector hard questions can play a pivotal role. It is critically important that we move away from an unwritten rule that “charities” are doing good things that shouldn’t be questioned, to a place where nonprofits are continually asking themselves whether they are making most effective use of resources and providing real solutions.

These are the 5 questions I’d like to see nonprofits asking themselves:

1. Do we know if we are accomplishing anything? Because nonprofit organizations can’t simply look at a profit and loss statement to see progress, determining success is much more difficult than in the for-profit world. Yet a nonprofit organization cannot just translate community resources into activities and call it a day. Nonprofits are increasingly forced to demonstrate the change their work creates in the community. I’m not suggesting that every nonprofit must conduct large evaluation projects. Rather, I’m arguing that a nonprofit must create a solid strategy for creating change and then find a way (as cheaply and simply as possible) to determine whether they are delivering on that strategy.




2. Are we adapting to our external environment? Gone are the days when a nonprofit enjoyed a core group of donors that funded delivery of the same services to the community year after year. In this ever-changing, increasingly fast-paced world, nonprofits must constantly analyze the trends in their external environment (funding, competitors, community needs) and effectively adapt to those trends in order to survive and thrive.




3. Is our board helping or hurting? A board of directors can be a nonprofit’s most important asset, expanding its footprint in the community, bringing in resources, driving a bold direction, ensuring accountability and transparency. Or it can be a group of people who show up to network, meddle in minutiae, and bog the organization down. A nonprofit’s board needs to take a hard look at itself, as individual members and as a group, to determine if they are an effective governing body or not, whether they are moving the mission forward, or just getting in the way.




4. Do we really need that new building? Time and again nonprofit organizations launch a capital campaign as a way to get their name out in the community, get the board motivated, bring big donors in the door, and seek significance and importance. But the result is often an organization crippled by resources draining away from the mission. Board and leadership needs to ask themselves if a new building is directly tied to achievement of mission. There are other, better ways to build your brand, rally the board and donors, and raise big dollars, like a growth or capacity capital campaign, which can actually result in more social impact and financial sustainability over the long term.




5. Are we using money as a tool? Nonprofit boards often shy away from discussions about money, ignoring tools like financial reports, budget reviews and fundraising net-revenue analysis, in order to focus meetings on programs and mission. But money is an incredibly effective tool for making programs and mission happen, and nonprofits need to create and implement an integrated financial strategy that feeds into the overall organization’s plan. Money, if used strategically and effectively, can help your nonprofit do so much more.

To move forward, the nonprofit sector needs to do away with safe, routine conversations and start asking some hard questions. Indeed questions are sometimes the only route to open up possibilities, try new approaches and find a better way.

Photo Credit: Wade Rockett

Tags: Fundraising, logic model, nonprofit board of directors, nonprofit capital campaign, nonprofit market research, nonprofit measurement, nonprofit outcomes, nonprofit strategy, strategic planning, theory of change

Do You Understand Your Nonprofit’s Place in the Market?

Until recently, market research, or understanding the marketplace in which a nonprofit operates, had no place in the nonprofit sector. Once the sole purview of entrepreneurs and corporate brands, market research is quickly (and rightly) becoming a skill set that nonprofits must embrace. Because in an increasingly competitive landscape, if you don’t understand the needs of your clients, who else is addressing those needs, what your funders are looking for, who else they are funding, where policy makers and decision makers are moving, you are sunk. But for many nonprofit leaders market research seems nebulous, inaccessible and expensive. It doesn’t have to be.

Here’s how you can start to wrap your head around market research.

The first step is, with board and staff, to map the marketplace in which your nonprofit operates. A nonprofit is best positioned where their core competencies (those organizational assets they have that cannot be easily taken or replicated) intersect with a community need, apart from where their competitors or collaborators are strongest. Which looks like this:

The idea is that if a nonprofit organization can figure out what part of the solution to a social problem they offer and how that relates to the piece their competitors or collaborators have to offer, then the nonprofit can (for a start):

• Better articulate to funders what their nonprofit is uniquely positioned to accomplish
• Forge partnerships with organizations who supplement weaknesses the organization has
• Stop wasting resources on “doing it all” and focus on the 1-2 things they do exceptionally well
• Reduce competition for funding
• Chart a sustainable future direction

But it is not enough to simply ask board and staff where they think your nonprofit fits in this map. Once they’ve taken a stab at it, you need to get out into the marketplace and see if that assessment holds true. This is where market research comes in. You need to understand current and future trends in your competitors/collaborators and the community need you are trying to address. So you need to find the answers to questions like:

• Is the need within your client population expanding or contracting? In what areas? Why? What does the future hold?
• How else are your clients getting these needs addressed or not addressed?
• What is the future strategy of your competitors and collaborators?
• What are the core competencies of your competitors and collaborators?
• Are there new competitors/collaborators entering the space?
• How do key decision makers (policy makers, funders, etc) feel about your competitors/collaborators? What do they think your role in addressing the problem is?

So how do you go about finding these answers? You can call current funders, friends or other connections and ask them to give you a lay of the land. But you also need to pull some data. And there are lots of free resources out there. Here is a beginning list of things to try:

• Check out these free market research tools
• Ask your local reference librarian for help
• Use the many free databases available at public and university libraries
• Use SurveyMonkey (or other free/cheap survey tools) to ask clients, funders, volunteers what they think
• Ask a market research class at a local college or university to practice their new skills for free on your organization

There really is no excuse for nonprofits not to explore the market in which they operate. The information is out there, you just need to go out and get it. And if you don’t, you will be moving forward in the dark.

Photo Credit: HikingArtist.com

Tags: nonprofit competition, nonprofit competitors, nonprofit market research, nonprofit marketplace, nonprofit strategy, nonprofit surveying, strategic planning

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Nonprofit Financing Plan

In our ongoing effort to develop tools to make nonprofit organizations more effective, more financially sustainable and ultimately able to create more social impact, we are releasing today our Financing Plan Guide. This step-by-step guide provides nonprofit staff and boards a clear, systematic approach to creating a financing plan for their organization.

A financing plan, unlike a traditional fundraising plan, is an integrated, thoughtful, and strategic way to help a nonprofit achieve social impact in a more sustainable way. The financing plan is a key element of a nonprofit’s strategic plan. It is critical that an organization understand the cost of achieving the goals set out in the strategic plan (expenses) and how the organization will pay for them (revenue). Fundraising, raising money from private sources (individuals, foundations, and corporations), is just one revenue option available to nonprofits. Additional options include: earned income (selling a product or service), government grants, fee for service, and corporate sponsorships, just to name a few.

A financing plan differs from a fundraising plan in a number of ways. Unlike a fundraising plan, a financing plan:

• Includes ALL activities that bring money in the door in a fully integrated strategy and execution plan.
• Supports the short AND long term goals of the organization.
• Funds the programs AND infrastructure of the organization.
• Employs money-securing activities that are in line with the core competencies of the organization.

With a clear financing plan, your nonprofit will bring more money in the door, in a more sustainable way, ultimately achieving greater social impact.

This 8-part guide is designed to help you build a financing plan for your nonprofit. It is divided into parts and can be completed in a couple of hours, if you have all of the necessary information in front of you. If you would like to include board and staff in the process, you can pause between sections and work through it over a few weeks. The sections of the financing guide are:

1. Align Money, Mission and Competence
2. The Financing Plan Framework
3. Create Revenue Goals
4. Create A Capital Goal
5. Create A Fundraising Infrastructure Goal
6. Operationalize the Plan
7. Monitor the Plan
8. Next Steps

To learn more about the financing guide, click here.

As always, let us know what you think of our tools and what additional tools you would like to see.

Tags: assessing fundraising infrastructure, financing not fundraising, fundraising plan, guide to raising money, how to raise money, nonprofit revenue options, revenue planning for nonprofit, Social Velocity, strategic planning

Where Do You Fit in the Market?

Because nonprofit organizations exist to do good, as opposed to generate profit, they often view their activities as outside of the market economy. But the fact is that nonprofits are very much part of a market economy and the sooner they determine where they are best positioned within that market, the more successful they will be at creating social change.

A nonprofit is best positioned where their core competencies (those organizational assets they have that cannot be easily taken or replicated) intersect with a community need, apart from where their competitors are strongest. Which looks like this:

This may seem simple, but it is rarely articulated in the sector.  And the pressure to collaborate, partner, network and “do as much good as possible,” makes this analysis tricky, if not politically challenging, to undergo. The idea is that if a nonprofit organization can figure out what part of the solution to a social problem they offer and how that relates to the piece their competitors have to offer, then they can start to chart their way forward.

Let me give you an example. Emancipet is a nonprofit that spays and neuters animals in order to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the need to euthanize a growing population of unwanted pets. Their organization is part of an extensive continuum of domestic animal services in their region, which includes animal shelters, vets, pet stores, etc. Over a year ago Emancipet wisely conducted an analysis, with several of their collaborators and competitors, to delineate each group’s role in the overall effort to create a healthy domestic animal population in their region. This marketplace mapping can’t always be so collaborative, but is still very much required.

With a marketplace map in hand, a nonprofit can:

• Better articulate to funders what they are uniquely positioned to do
• Forge partnerships with organizations who supplement weaknesses the organization has
• Stop wasting resources on “doing it all” and focus on the 1-2 things they do exceptionally well
• Reduce competition for resources

To name a few.

So, how do you figure out where you fit in the marketplace? Start by asking your organization some key questions and answering them openly and honestly:

• What do we do better than anyone else?
• What are the community needs/problems we are trying to address?
• Who are our competitors and potential collaborators?
• What do they do better than us?

Simply having these kinds of discussions with your staff and board is a huge step forward. Once you have started to answer these questions and begun to plot your position in the market, you can chart a strategy forward. And that strategy will be infinitely stronger and more achievable because it was not created in a vacuum, but rather informed by the market in which you operate.

Photo Credit: Amy McTigue

Tags: Emancipet, marketplace mapping, nonprofit collaborators, nonprofit competitors, nonprofit core competencies, nonprofit strategy, strategic planning