Resource Library
February 20, 2015
How Nonprofit Strategy is Different
Nonprofits are bombarded with books (and consultants!) presenting a range of approaches to strategy development, many of them in the form of boilerplate templates imported from the for-profit sector. But lest we throw out the baby with the bathwater, let’s acknowledge the value to nonprofits of the traditional for-profit approaches to strategy. For-profit strategy reminds […]
April 17, 2013
Beyond the Obvious: What a “Funding Problem” May Reveal about a Nonprofit
Note: This article was published on the CausePlanet website on March 31, 2013. Ask any nonprofit board member or executive director what poses the greatest challenge to their organization and you are likely to hear this: “our greatest challenge is lack of adequate funding.” While they may not be able to offer a complex analysis […]
February 08, 2013
Preaching to the Choir: Reaching the Right People with the Right Message
The prevailing wisdom among nonprofits when it comes to fundraising goes something like this: “If more people know about us, we will raise more money.” The reality, however, is more nuanced and goes something like this: If the right people know the right things about you, there is a greater likelihood that you will raise […]
November 07, 2012
Keeping Strategy Alive: The Three Simple Questions
Why is it that, despite our best intentions, the work that goes in to the development of a strategic plan does not pay off in the end? By “not paying off,” I mean the process of strategy development does not evolve into a mindset of ongoing strategic thinking. Why not? The answer is both simple […]
October 01, 2012
Lions, Zebras, and the Law of the Jungle: How Markets Matter to Nonprofits
The law of survival in the jungle is simple: you don’t have to be faster than the lion, just one step faster than the slowest zebra. The mantra of the under-achiever? To the contrary, this is the wisdom of a creature that has figured out what game it is playing – what the threats are, […]
March 27, 2012
If You’ve Seen One Good Board…
I have been asked numerous times by clients to describe what a “good board” looks like. I understand the point of the question – what is the right size, what are the right committees, etc. But asking what a board should look like misses the more important point, which is this: a good board is […]
October 18, 2011
Is Your Strategy Sound?
A few years ago I discovered a framework for evaluating foundation strategy (developed by Peter Frumpkin) that draws attention to three critical features of strategy: its soundness, the quality of its implementation, and the results it produces. The framework has proven to be immensely helpful to me as I work with foundations and has transferred […]
April 18, 2011
1,000 Donors?
I just heard part of an interview with Seth Godin, management trainer and author, in which he talks about the importance of an artist having 1,000 fans. He explains it this way. It is one thing for a musical artist to fill a theater with 10,000 fans for a given performance. But that in itself […]
March 17, 2011
Getting to “No”: The Three Cs of Strategic Consideration
The essence of strategy is deciding what not to do. This idea was presented by Michael Porter in the 1996 Harvard Business Review article titled, “What is Strategy,” and has proven to be prescient in light of the current strain on the core business models of many nonprofits. Nonprofits have plenty of reasons to say […]
June 04, 2010
Best Practices: The Fallacy of “Plug and Play”
The secret to a good golf game is simple: watch the best players in the world, learn what they do, and simply apply those techniques to your own game. That will make you just as good as them, right? Of course not. There are too many other factors at play to make it that simple: […]