Emerging Stronger from the Crisis: Three Ways to Reenvision Your Nonprofit and Maximize Success
By: Soumik Chakraborty
Amid an economic recession, political changes, and a pandemic, a key question emerges: what can nonprofit organizations do now to strengthen their operations and ultimately emerge stronger from this crisis? The Stanford Graduate School of Business estimates that, over the last half-century, the economic impact of the nonprofit sector has grown to $1.7 trillion. However, given all the uncertainty in the current state of our world, there may be concerns that this growth could stagnate during the economic downturn.
Indeed, with the severe loss of money and resources triggered from this crisis, it can seem incredibly challenging to continue operations. Fortunately, there is a way to curb the tide. In this article, I explore three areas that nonprofit organizations can focus on to ultimately emerge stronger from the crisis.
Mission and Impact
Impact is at the heart of every nonprofit organization, and strengthening your nonprofit’s sense of impact can only help. Having a clear vision of what you want your nonprofit’s impact to be is crucial to maximizing its success. But to fully understand this, it’s important to do some internal assessment and reflect on your company’s mission. What is your mission? Has it changed in any way during this crisis? Once you’ve established the mission of your nonprofit, it’s crucial to do a deep dive into how that mission is being played out. Make sure that everything your company does connects to the vision you’ve set. In a time where resources might be strapped, maximizing the effectiveness of all of your company’s operations and priorities is extremely important for solidifying and bolstering its impact. Having trouble figuring out which part of your impact statement to focus on? The Nonprofit Impact System — a comprehensive collection of approaches that you can apply to optimize aspects of your company and maximize impact — might be a good tool to help you discover your focus, strategize, and leverage your company’s strengths.
Finances and Efficiency
Money. We all know how important it is to have cash in our pockets. However, for a nonprofit organization, money plays a much bigger role: it’s what drives all the internal processes and keeps the organization afloat. There are several questions you should ask yourself while reenvisioning your nonprofit. What are the direct and indirect expenses of your organization? Are resources and staff being efficiently assigned to various segments of the organization? How about long-term? Even doing a quick analysis of your organization’s fixed and variable costs could be helpful. In addition to thinking about these financial priorities, it’s important to be on top of your expenses. Having an organized, up-to-date budget sheet is crucial, and you need to know how much you are investing into each segment of your organization. Fortunately, managing your company’s budget isn’t very difficult. By following just five simple rules — setting proper bookkeeping standards, examining income sources, assessing fixed expenses, assessing variable expenses, and analyzing annual budgets — you can help your organization stay financially organized.
People and Potential
While realigning the impact and financial statements should be at the core of your nonprofit’s path to success, it’s just as critical to think about the people in your organization and the collective potential that you can help cultivate in your company. In particular, reenvisioning your nonprofit involves bringing more people and more ideas into the picture, and it’s important to first think about how to promote diversity and inclusion in the process. Who should be involved? How can their opinions be valued? What can be done to keep employees in the loop? Having a strong sense of connection with the people you’re working with — and emphasizing the value and importance of each employee’s opinions — can dramatically enhance not only the effectiveness of your nonprofit but also the satisfaction of your employees. Furthermore, creating a community in your nonprofit can set your company in the right direction.
Focusing on these three areas will help you not only reimagine your nonprofit and its priorities but also maximize its potential for success.
