5 Tips for Setting Goals for Nonprofit Organizations

​If you’re a nonprofit executive, you know what your organization needs to stay afloat, but what about going beyond that? What if you could expand your organization’s reach to help even more people? What would that look like? What would you need to do to accomplish that goal?

​Just because you’re a nonprofit doesn’t mean you can’t set goals for your organization to grow just like for-profit organizations set goals for their businesses. Let’s go over some tips you can use to set realistic goals for nonprofit organizations.

​Analyze Your Starting Point Before Setting Goals for Nonprofit Organizations

​You can’t create a roadmap to where you want to go until you know your starting point. That’s as true of setting goals for nonprofit organizations as it is of planning a roadtrip, so start by analyzing where you are. How much money are you raising? How big is your team? How big is the community you’re serving?

​Identify Your Resources to Achieve Your Goals for Nonprofit Organizations

​When setting goals for nonprofit organizations, it can help to identify everything you have to help you reach that goal. Your resources are not limited to the funds you raised last year - it includes you, your staff, your volunteers, your potential volunteers, your larger community, your network. When you start to list all the resources available to help you reach your goal, you just might be surprised at how far you can go, which leads me to my next point.

Identify Your Goals for Nonprofit Organizations

There’s a saying that if you shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. I love that saying, and it’s why I encourage my clients to dream big. So, for this step in setting goals for nonprofit organizations, I want you to set the biggest goal for yourself that you can. Don’t think about obstacles or limitations because we’ll get to those later. This may or may not be a realistic goal for your organization, and it’s OK if it’s not. This is the dreaming phase, and it is the most fun stage, so let your imagination run wild.

​Identify the Resources You Need to Achieve Your Goals for Nonprofit Organizations

​List every, single thing you’ll need in order to achieve that really big goal. Then go back to Step 2 and look at all the resources you already have so you can identify the gap between what you have and what you need. Once you identify that gap, figure out a plan to get what you need. If you don’t have the funds to buy the things you need or hire more team members, that’s OK. This is where it’s time to get creative and see if there are things you can borrow, or opportunities to recruit volunteers that you have not yet tapped into.

​Create Your Roadmap to Achieving Your Goals for Nonprofit Organizations

​Once you’ve identified the gap between where you are and where you want to be, as well as the gap between the resources you have and the resources you’ll need to achieve your goals for nonprofit organizations, it’s time to create your roadmap. This is where you might need to scale back your goal if you’re not yet at the point where you can achieve your biggest goal, and that’s OK. Do what you can now and save the biggest goal for after you’ve achieved your more realistic goal.

​Need Some Help Motivating Your Team to Achieve Your Goals for Nonprofit Organizations?

​I love speaking to groups of people about teamwork and goal setting, so if you think your team might be an untapped asset for your nonprofit organization, it might help to bring in a professional speaker with years of experience achieving massive goals for nonprofit organizations.