Episode 8 | Strategic Planning Step Four: Assess Your Organization
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Release Date: 12/26/2019
Episode 18 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 7: Make Your Difference
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
This step is what all of your hard work has been leading up to. You’re raising funds, asking people to be part of your team, building out your branding and the reason is that you’re trying to make a difference in the world. Once you get here, this is the time to celebrate! You’re seeing lives changed and now you get to tell people all about it and thanking everyone who took part. This is a really fun step and one that too many people miss.
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Episode 17 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 6: Organize the Ask
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Depending on how you’re raising funds, everyone has a demographic they serve and tend to raise funds from. There is a process for every group of people, and you need to think it through before you just go in and ask for money. You should never do a blanket approach to fundraising because you want to be well-received by every group you get in front of.
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Episode 16 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 5: Deploy Your Team
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
In today’s episode, we are talking about how to Deploy Your Team.
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Episode 15 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 4: Enhance Your Brand
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Today we are on step 4 of Mary’s Fundraising FREEDOM process, Enhance Your Brand. There are so many organizations that lean on their staff for branding. They hire marketing people to design a logo or to make sure that your message is en pointe. However, in this step, I want your volunteers to have a say in what you’re putting in front of the general public.
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Episode 14 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 3: Enlist Your Team
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
This is the step that changes everything. It’s how you go from raising thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions and so on. This is the meat of the entire Fundraising FREEDOM process.
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Episode 13 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 2: Run Your Research
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Research actually allows us to gain confidence. Especially if you are trying to raise a larger amount of money, this step allows you to regroup and overcome your fear of fundraising. The data and numbers are important – you want to be as specific with the data as to be believable. You want to give enough stats to show that you know what you’re doing.
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Episode 12 | Fundraising FREEDOM Step 1: Focus Your Vision
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
In today’s episode, we are jumping into Mary’s Fundraising FREEDOM process with step 1, Focus Your Vision. For today, we are talking about vision as it pertains to finance. Is it $100,000, $1,000,000, or $10,000,000? Whatever it is, I want you to focus your vision on the dollar amount you want to accomplish that you’ve laid out in your strategic plan. Get that number locked in your head.
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Episode 11 | Strategic Planning Steps 7 & 8: Tactics and Plan to Execute
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
After completing steps 1-6 of the Strategic Planning process, you should have tactics all over the place. At this point, you are ready to formulate and pull together your one-page strategy. You already have your strategic objectives finished, now all you have to do is gather the tactics you and your planning team have put together.
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Episode 10 | Strategic Planning Step Six: Establish Your Measurement
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
On today’s episode, we are discussing step six of the Strategic Planning process, Establish Your Measurement. How are you measuring the progress of the objectives and initiatives of the organization? Starting with the end in mind and setting quantifiable goals is great, but you must also create targets and get those numbers on paper.
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Episode 9 | Strategic Planning Step Five: Tighten Your Focus
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Today we are diving into step 5 of the strategic planning process, Tighten Your Focus. This is where you start to drill down deeper and get your arms wrapped around your strategic objectives and initiatives. There are four key areas that move from internal to external – capacity, internal process, financial stewardship, client and stakeholder satisfaction – and these four areas will show up on your 1-pager (strategic plan). Capacity: If you’re a 2-3-person organization, you simply don’t have a lot of capacity to engage in many initiatives compared to an organization with...
info_outlineOn today’s show, we are talking about Step 4 of the strategic planning process, Assessing Your Organization. This step is important because it allows us to hit the pause button and really talk about ourselves and the organization as a whole. This allows to get all the players in the same room and discuss what they’re good at as well as areas that need improved. It forces you to have critical conversations and determine how your organization can grow.
What is a SWOT analysis?
A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis is a tool that anyone can apply to any part of their organization – fundraising, marketing efforts, past events, as well as programs and services. A SWOT analysis is NOT a strategic plan. Here are some questions to get you thinking about each area:
Strengths
- What are some advantages of your programs and services?
- What do you do better than anyone else out there?
- What are some unique resources you can draw upon that others can’t?
- What does your community see as your strengths?
- What factors mean you actually get the funding, donations, or support?
- What is your unique selling proposition?
Weaknesses (these can be turned into opportunities)
- What could we improve upon?
- What should be eliminated?
- What does your community see as your weaknesses?
- What’s missing or not working properly?
Opportunities
- What are some opportunities out there that exist for your organization?
- What would allow you to get more funding and have a greater impact?
- What areas of leverage could you exploit?
- What interesting trends did you find in your environmental scan?
Threats
- What obstacles do you face?
- What are your competitors doing?
- Are your quality standards changing for your programs and services?
- What outside factors could make your organization vulnerable?
- What risks do you need to prepare for?
- How do you protect your data from security breaches?
- Is there a linchpin that could potentially bring down the entire organization?
Who should be at the table when performing a SWOT analysis?
Core planning team, other stakeholders (volunteers, donors, staff members, board members)
How often should an organization do a SWOT analysis?
This is such a helpful tool that it should be used liberally throughout your organization because you can SWOT anything.
What happens after the SWOT analysis is complete?
A lot of organizations get through this exercise and then stop. I encourage you to go back to your strengths listed and determine how you can enlist the strengths. This is also a great opportunity to brainstorm around your weaknesses and find solutions that you may decide to incorporate into your strategic plan. And, now that you have a list of threats, you can talk about how the organization can either deal with or overcome those threats. This is the time to put a plan into action in order to make improvements.
We know being a nonprofit executive is a lonely job and we want you to know that you are not alone as you work toward your mission. If you like the content of the podcast, as well as the work we do, we invite you to join the Nonprofit Executive Club. The Executive Club is a monthly training program that gives you the ability to increase your influence through strategic planning and fundraising support. For more information and to join the Club, go to nonprofitexecutiveclub.com.
Download the Strategic Plan Toolkit
For more information about Mary Valloni, visit maryvalloni.com and to download our free Fundraising Freedom Roadmap, go to maryvalloni.com/roadmap. Get a copy of Mary’s book, Fundraising Freedom.
Interested in learning more about Joel Kessel? Visit kesselstrategies.com to find out how Joel helps growth-minded leaders gain clarity.