Successful Nonprofits Podcast

The board retreat is among the most important steps of your strategic planning process. This episode shares techniques to ensure your board retreat fully engages participants in the planning process.

At this point in the planning process, the work group has spent two to three months to research and fully understand the organization’s history, constituencies, strengths, challenges, and opportunities. So now it’s time to focus on strategic goal setting. Specifically, the work group needs to identify one or two strategic goals - you might call them big bold goals, big hairy audacious goals, or cathedral goals.

As noted in the first two parts of this series, there is a lot of work involved in the environmental scan and reviewing the mission. In this segment, we discuss the role of the strategic planning work group and how to recruit high performing people to volunteer for it.

This bonus break is the third installment of a multi-part series about strategic planning. This episode focuses on developing a mission, vision, and core values that is both memorable and inspirational. 

This Bonus Break is the second installment of a multi-part series about strategic planning. This series is based on a lunch and learned that I presented last month, and I am breaking the lunchtime presentation into several Bonus Break podcasts.  The first part of the series was released last week, and it focused on determining if you need a new strategic plan and wheter your organization is ready to actually begin the planning process. Once you are ready to roll up your sleeves and begin planning, it’s good idea to understand the stages of strategic planning.  There are four distinct stages of strategic planning that we will discuss over the next several segments in this series, and these stages are: The environmental scan, drafting the initial strategy, board feedback, and finalizing the plan. This bonus break dives into the first stage of planning process: The Environmental Scan

As a consultant, I get a lot of questions about strategic planning: What is a strategic plan? Do we need a strategic plan? How does an organization actually write a strategic plan? How long will it take? If we start now can we have a strategic plan next week (next month, next year)? If we want a consultant to manage the process, how do we find the money to hire that person. And what does this consultant actually do? What components should be in a strategic plan How can I overcome objections to strategic planning Last month, I answered these questions at a presentation at The Commerce Club in Atlanta. I felt it would be worthwhile to turn this into a series of blog posts. These posts might anger some nonprofit consultants because the isn’t always “go ask a consultant”

Nothing kills enthusiasm like long, disorganized, unproductive meetings, and this goes for all meetings. Whether a staff meeting or one on ones, we must make sure that all of our interfaces are productive and worth our time. Learn how a commitment to attendance, communication, shared agendas, inclusion, participation, and more will warrant more productive meetings for your nonprofit.

Are your gift acknowledgement letters connecting donors to your mission? Do you feel that donors cherish your thank you letters? Listen to this bonus break to learn some of the techniques necessary to craft and send sincere thank you letters that strengthen the relationship between you and your donor. 

January is a great time to cultivate all the donors who gave to your organization in 2017. And one way to cultivate those who gave last year is by sending a thank you letter that shares the many accomplishments their 2017 gifts made possible. As an added benefit for your donors, this letter should also include a summary of all 2017 gifts that can be used for tax purposes.   Listen to this week’s bonus break to learn more about this best practice.

We offered tips on how to raise more money at the end of the year (and next year) by:   #1: Reminding board members of their annual financial commitments #2: Calling board members who met their annual financial commitments to say “thank you” #3: Calling your largest 10 donors and thanking them for supporting your organization #4: Sending thank you letters for all gifts received in the past few weeks #5: Soliciting 2016 donors who haven’t given yet this year