strategic plan
Strategic planning: does the executive director have a role?
Heading into strategic planning season can be a confusing time for a non-profit executive director. Strategic planning can feel like it is all about the board who will be spending time reviewing and interpreting the wants and needs of clients, members, and stakeholders. The same wants and needs...
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...
Governing Policies: The Primary Role of a Non-Profit Board
Governing policies are probably one of the most challenging set of rules a non-profit will have. The policies themselves are not that difficult to understand, but it is the role of the governing policies and their place between the bylaws and the operational policies that...
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...
The Strategic Plan IS a Non-Profit’s Road Map for the Year
The new calendar year has us all writing new year’s resolutions, spending some time reflecting on the past year, and making plans for the new year. We spend time in the office supply store sorting through planners and deciding the system we want to use to map out our goals for the coming year....
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...
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...
The Board Works for the Stakeholders
The nominations committee is hard at work looking for new board members. But there are differing opinions. Some committee members want to look for accountants, and lawyers, and doctors to try and build a board of business professionals. Other committee members want to look to the...
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...
Planning for Next Year
Last month I wrapped up strategic planning. Last week I wrapped up operations planning. Normally I prep the budget later, on my own, but we got talking and I quickly pulled together a budget plan. We’re going to meet in a few weeks to fine tune everything, but basically, it’s all done. The...
Mapping
I spent the last month writing my year-end report for a major funder. I know - a whole month?? Yeah, it's a big report. There’s so much data that’s required and it takes a lot of planning to ensure everything is collected and reported. As is often the case, an evaluation question was...