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Strategy
October 30, 2019
The Other Side of the Strategy Coin
Recently, I participated in a brief online discussion that was prompted by an article titled, “Why Strategic Planning Sucks the Life Out of Nonprofits”. (The author could have stopped after the first four words and made a much stronger point. But I digress.). A contributor to the discussion shared an exchange she had with a […]
September 03, 2019
Are Your SMART Goals the Right Goals?
It is human nature to short-cut our thinking by simplifying complicated or multi-dimensional ideas into bite-sized, digestible bits. Such is the case with SMART goals, an acronym for…well, that’s part of the problem: no one seems to know exactly what it stands for. A cursory search of the term “SMART goals” revealed some disorder in […]
February 01, 2019
A Nose for Strategy
Strategy is all around us. We are conditioned to look for strategy in the formal strategic plan. Sometimes, however, strategy is embedded in other documents that we don’t think of as being strategic in nature. A budget, for example, reveals priorities; and priorities are the stuff of strategy. There must be a reason that you […]
January 22, 2019
When is it Strategy?
I often struggle to help nonprofits differentiate between what is important and what is strategic. I know from experience that recognizing that is one is not synonymous with the other can be the difference between a positive experience and yet another frustrating attempt at strategic planning. But how do you help someone whose daily existence […]
August 29, 2017
Strategy Made Simple
There is a certain elegance in the simple presentation of a complex idea. From science, we know that E equals MC squared. And from the Old Testament were are instructed to love kindness, seek justice, and walk humbly. Easy to understand in both cases, but equally profound in their implications. When it comes to strategic planning, I doubt […]
August 01, 2017
The Most Misunderstood Word in the Nonprofit Sector
Okay, I’ll spare you the drama. The word is STRATEGY. Too many nonprofit boards and executives do not know what it is, why it matters, or how it works in the nonprofit sector. Consequently, the terms strategy, along with its adjective cousin strategic, lack the fixed meaning that prevents them from being employed as a […]
August 07, 2016
Vulnerability: A Deeper Dive Into the Nonprofit Funding Challenge
Sustainability is understood generally as a measure of the ability of an organization to create mission impact without depleting its human and financial resources. As noted by Masaoka and her colleagues, sustainability is not a destination, but an orientation. In other words, there is no finish line in the journey toward financial viability. To appreciate […]
June 28, 2016
“I Don’t Know Quite How to Say This”: The Language of Strategy
Words matter. More specifically, the meaning that we attach to words matter. The psychologist Lev Vygotsky, in a seminal work in the area of cognitive science, first introduced the idea that language – the words we use to communicate – shapes the form and scope of our internal thoughts. While there have been variations on […]
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 […]
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