Posts Tagged ‘Building Nonprofit Capacity’

Are your nonprofit decisions age-appropriate?

If you’ve ever cared for a child, you may have found yourself asking if something is age-appropriate. These days it feels like that question surfaces more often with how sophisticated caregiving has become. You no longer have your child join a club; your child has 25 different clubs for which s/he “can apply.” Your child simply can’t join the local team; your child has a dozen leagues with varying levels of competitiveness for which s/he can “try out.” You’re getting the idea and we haven’t even discussed entertainment, hobbies, summer camps, curriculum and schools yet cs2 herunterladen. The list goes on and on. It’s just plain complicated sometimes.

Thankfully, I found the prospect of evaluating the maturity of nonprofits much easier thanks to John Brothers and Anne Sherman’s new book, Building Nonprofit Capacity: A Guide to Managing Change Through Organizational Lifecycles.

The decisions you make in all aspects of nonprofit management, including governance, planning, fundraising and marketing, are impacted by the maturity of your organization legal music download mp3. Brothers and Sherman say the purpose of their book is to help nonprofits become stronger in their decision-making by using the organizational lifecycle continuum as a form of change management. The authors make a case for deliberately engaging in change management through understanding each phase of a nonprofit’s cycle so you can efficiently weather transitions herunterladen.

One of the three models they refer to throughout the book is by Susan Kenny Stevens and builds upon the 1970s article written by Larry Greiner in the Harvard Business Review. Stevens wrote about lifecycles in the 1990s and then published a book on the topic in 2001, Nonprofit Lifecycles: Stage-Based Wisdom for Nonprofit Capacity herunterladen.

The cycles include:

1)   Idea: “There is no organization, only an idea to form one.”

2)   Start-Up: “An organization that is in the beginning phase of operation.”

3)   Adolescent (or Growth): “An organization whose services are established in the marketplace but whose operations are not yet stabilized.”

4)   Mature: “An organization that is well established and operating smoothly.”

5)   Decline: “An organization that is operating smoothly but is beginning to lose market share.”

6)   Turnaround: “An organization that is losing money, is short of cash, and is in a state of crisis.”

7)   Terminal: “An organization that no longer has a reason to exist.”

 

In our CausePlanet interview, I asked the authors about the book’s relevance for new and seasoned nonprofits alike as well as about the value in revisiting certain stages.

CausePlanet: Will you revisit why this book is essential for start-ups, declining organizations and everyone in between herunterladen?

Brothers

Brothers and Sherman: In this book, we tried to provide a framework that would offer something for any nonprofit, regardless of where it is in its lifecycle. The nonprofit sector in the U.S. is remarkably diverse, and of course there is no one-size-fits-all. However, there is a set of characteristics that applies to most, if not all, nonprofits: mission, vision, values and the imperative to maximize impact fotobox bilder herunterladen. Our goal in this book was to visit some of those core features at different lifecycle stages.

 

CausePlanet: Under what circumstances is it appropriate for seasoned organizations to go back to the basics (where mission, vision, values, etc. are formed)?

 

Sherman

Brothers and Sherman: One of the points we tried to make is that no organization should ever lose sight of the basics—mission, vision, values, program strategy herunterladen. Just like it’s good to get your teeth cleaned or your car tuned up on a regular basis, nonprofit leaders are well-served by reviewing and assessing the core elements of their strategy. That said, sometimes a more intensive review or “step back” is warranted. Whenever there is reason to believe program effectiveness is at risk or there is a growing sense they are far removed from the comfort zone of their missions, a real look in the mirror is important herunterladen. It’s often when that organization is assessing where it is that we find whether there will be positive forward momentum or it has not really confronted the image in the mirror and a decline begins.

Learn more about John Brothers at www.quidooconsulting.com, where he is the principal of his consulting firm, or Anne Sherman www.growthphilanthropy.org where she is the vice president of nonprofit strategy netflix offline movies.

If you enjoyed this excerpt of our Page to Practice™ summary, find out more about our summary library and store or purchase the book.

Based on Stevens’ stages above, ask yourself in what phase your nonprofit exists and if you need to revisit the “start-up” phase.

CausePlanet members: Don’t forget to register for our live author interview with Tom Wolff on Thurs, August 22 to learn more about high-performance collaborations fonts.

See other books about change management:

Buy-In: Saving Your Good Ideas From Getting Shot Down

Repeatability: Build Enduring Businesses for a World of Constant Change

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