Strategic Planning for Nonprofits: 4 Tips for Success

​For-profit businesses tend to get most of the attention when it comes to developing a business strategy, but it’s just as important (if not more important) for nonprofits to develop and maintain a business strategy. First, because nonprofits are still businesses, even if they’re nonprofit businesses. Second, because nonprofits are often working with fewer resources and more regulations than for-profit businesses, it’s especially important for them to have a strategic plan in place so they can be sure to use all those resources to the fullest, while abiding by the rules and regulations that apply to them. Here are 4 tips to help you get started with your strategic planning for nonprofits:

​Identify Your Nonprofit’s Vision

​Every business needs a vision of the kind of business it ultimately wants to become. That vision can change as the business grows and evolves, but the importance of having a vision every staff member and volunteer can work towards is not to be underestimated. Any time you or someone on your team has a question about what to do, you can look at your vision and think about which action would get you closer to making it a reality.

​Identify What Your Nonprofit Needs

Once you’ve outlined your vision for your nonprofit organization, you can take stock of the resources you need to get you there. What do you currently have available to you, and what do you need to add?

Once you’ve identified what you need to add, whether it’s staff or software, it’s time to think about how you can obtain what you need. For example, if you don’t have the budget to pay for another salary, could you get some volunteers to do the job? Where can you find volunteers? Or which volunteers do you already have on your team that you could recruit to help you with this project?

​The same goes for software/tools/materials/real estate. Almost anything you don’t currently have access to can either be bought, borrowed, bartered, or donated, and sometimes it really is as simple as just asking for what you need.

​Learn from Best Practices

​The more time you spend operating a nonprofit organization, the more you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t. If you have experience working for different nonprofits, you might find that what works for one nonprofit organization doesn’t always work for another, which is why it’s so important to regularly assess which nonprofit strategies are working and which ones need some work. Don’t forget to reassess this from time to time because sometimes you’ll find that what worked last year, or even last month, is no longer bringing in results (for example, many of us found that strategies that worked in a pre-pandemic world did not hold up during a global pandemic).

​Prioritize Your Goals and Strategies for Your Nonprofit Organization

Many businesses struggle with wanting to achieve a lot of big goals and try many different strategies all at once, but not only is that a recipe for burnout, it also makes it difficult, if not impossible, to identify what’s working and what’s a waste of time and resources. Prioritizing the goals you need to achieve and the nonprofit strategies you need to implement over the ones you want to try is key to making progress. That’s not to say you can’t experiment and play around with different nonprofit strategies. It simply means that most of your resources should be focused on achieving your primary goals before you start going after your secondary and tertiary goals.

​Need Help with Your Strategic Planning for Nonprofits?

​Michelle Smith is a Strategy Rockstar with decades of experience helping small businesses (including nonprofits) develop and refine their strategies so they can produce stronger results. You can get started by scheduling your FREE consultation.