By Barry McLeish
Our country is in trouble and the needs many of you are providing help and care for are important and of great value. Some reading this are working with international nonprofit organizations where the need is even greater.
In the face of overwhelming need, when it comes to choosing a strategy to help fund and promote the cause your organization has chosen to work in, what criteria do you use to select the strategies you will use to fund the projects your nonprofit agency has chosen to undertake?
I try to use the following five questions to help me decide what I should do, how I should execute the plan, and the means by which I should do it:
- First, I need to know if I can afford to promote the service my organization is offering in a way that will allow it to be sustainable. If the cost the cause is excessive it matters little how important the work is. Either you have to rethink your promotional strategy or you have to decide that it is simply not feasible to promote the cause. Some of the services our nonprofit organizations provide simply are so obscure and the donor base is so small, that the question of cost becomes a real issue in our planning.
- Second we need to know if this is a commodity service we are providing or is it something unique that allows us to have a sustainable advantage over other organizations not involved in the same type of service. Your competitive advantage goes right to the heart of whether your service is sustainable over time or whether at some point in the future you are simply not going to be able to afford to provide the service.
- Third, perhaps this is obvious, but you really need to know if your strategy is going to be successful or not. Is this a strategy that will be easy for competitors to imitate or not, will it potentially have a long life or will it have to be changed in 12 months, is it adaptable to marketplace changes as they occur – all of these issues go to the heart of your strategy’s success.
- Fourth, can I implement the strategy or does it only look good on paper. Many brilliant strategies are stunning on paper but they are simply not feasible. Your strategy should be within the financial and human resources of your organization if it stands a hope of being implemented.
- Finally, does the strategy fit within the portfolio of other organizational strategies that are currently operating or will the suggested strategy’s implementation put other strategies at risk by its overwhelming needs?
Given the choice, build a strategy that has the possibility of providing a significant long-term impact upon your organization. Ensure you have the competencies to make the strategy succeed over time. Challenge the organization’s thinking to make sure it is the right strategy. And don’t ever be afraid to say that the choice of strategy was wrong and you need to start over.
Good luck on the road ahead.
