operations plan
But why make it so complicated?
Turning a non-profit strategic plan into an operational plan can feel like you are trying to decode the Rosetta Stone. The strategic goals are in a language you don’t quite understand. The plan is for 5 years but operations are only for one year. The process used for strategic planning feels...
Mastering your follow-up report
Your non-profit received a grant. Congratulations! Grant writing is a lot of hard work and succeeding in the application process is no small task. In the excitement of running a new program and paying the bills, you might find time has gone by so quickly and you are not as prepared to write...
Skip the staff meeting reports and minutes.
You are happily running a program and you get a question from a client. The question, though, is about a workshop that is happening next month, and you aren’t the staffer planning or running the event. You take a minute to think if you have the information to answer. Stay in the know without...
Is it too much?
The current year is wrapping up. Planning is well underway for next year. Non-profit boards will meet to write their strategic plan and then hand it to the staff team to turn into programs and services for the next operating year. Sometimes, in the excitement of operational brainstorming...
3 steps to keep a non-profit chart of accounts simple...
A chart of accounts is a numbering system to organize a non-profit’s financial transactions. You can compare a chart of accounts to the Dewey Decimal System at your local library, where different groups of books have different number codes. In a non-profit, revenues have different number codes...
Keep Your Cool with Negative Feedback
We’ve all been there. A participant didn’t like the way a program was handled. An evaluation is filled with negative comments. A volunteer doesn’t agree with the new direction the organization is headed. An anonymous survey seems to bring out the nastiest responses. A client makes a snap...
Write a Report for the Board Without Creating Anything New
In the relationship between governance (the board of directors) and operations (usually the executive director and staff team), there is a nice balance. The board, using their linkage to the stakeholders, creates a governing vision for the organization, called the strategic plan. The...
Good Old-Fashioned Survey
Each year, a non-profit will create a strategic plan that is responsive to the needs of clients, members, and stakeholders. But, how do you know what those needs are? You ask, and here’s how. Throughout its operating year, a non-profit will offer all different kinds of programs and...
Create a Program Evaluation to Gather Useable Information
Evaluation, measurement, KPIs and assessment are all part of the work of a non-profit. Feedback is collected to help determine if the organization is meeting its strategic priorities. But that flow from strategic plan to program to feedback and back around, can feel overwhelming and the creation...
Non-Profit Budget Basics
A non-profit budget is a partner to the operational plan. Together they provide the road map for what the organization aims to work on for its operating year. It sounds so simple, but when it comes time to sit down at the computer to create a new budget, that blank spread sheet can make the...
The Impact of a Non-Profit’s Vision and Mission Statements
When a non-profit first starts up, a handful of strategic documents are created to chart the course for the road it will travel over the years. Each year after that, the non-profit will hold a strategic planning session to examine the needs of clients/stakeholders/members and adjust the...
Can you describe what your non-profit does, in ONE sentence?
Non-profits are complex organizations. There are usually many programs, many services, different clients, and a complicated set of strategic priorities and outcomes driving the work. If you had to condense all of it into one simple sentence, could you do it? Not a marketing ploy. There...
How to debrief, well, …anything
In the heat of the moment, everyone has a comment (or 15) about the workshop/event/meeting they are experiencing (usually about the bad coffee). A week later, at the official debriefing meeting, the comments have dried up and no one really has anything to share. Don’t waste an opportunity for...
One Metric Your Non-profit Should Track
Maybe you’ve heard the term key performance indicators. Did it make your head spin? Maybe you looked at all the outcomes in your non-profit’s strategic plan and THAT made your head spin. Non-profits need to track stats but when the organization is small, or there is a long history of doing the...
Easily Create Evaluations Questions for Your Non-Profit Programs
Does this sound familiar? You’ve got a great program that’s about to wrap up. Maybe this is a program you’ve offered a few times over the years. You start wondering if the program was successful. You collect a few pieces of information about the program, such as participation numbers,...
Is Your Strategic Plan a Little Dusty?
Have you ever wondered how a non-profit’s strategic plan ties into its operations plan? Where does the information come from? How does it all tie together? Would it surprise you to learn that a non-profit’s strategic plan and operations plan are pieces in the circle of data flowing through...
Are you keeping secrets? I am. I’m sorry. I’ll do better.
I’ve been with my organization for almost 10 years and while I have no thoughts of leaving, a nagging question keeps coming up, am I doing tasks that might be hard for someone to take over when I retire. I’ll give you two examples. I handle all the bookkeeping* using Sage50 Pro. I know...