Episode 10 | Strategic Planning Step Six: Establish Your Measurement
Nonprofit Executive Podcast with Joel Kessel and Mary Valloni
Release Date: 01/09/2020
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 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.
One way to measure your progress is, did you do it or not? For example, if your objective is to increase the awareness and education of your audience, an initiative might be to create a marketing/communications plan that provides direction to achieve that objective. The simplest measurement is whether or not you developed a plan. But what about the metrics?
The second way to measure your progress is to use key performance indicators (KPIs) to show if your activities made an impact and whether or not you produced the outcomes you set out to accomplish. It’s easy to fall into the trap of overanalyzing every piece of data. You do have to measure, but measure what matters. Be realistic about what you’re measuring and don’t get so far into the weeds that you are no longer progressing toward your objectives.
Once you have a one-page strategy in place, it’s time to develop the work plans. A great tool to develop KPIs is called Klipfolio. This tool starts with a list of questions that will help you start to track your progress throughout the year. Here are the questions:
- What is your desired outcome and where do you want to be at the end of the campaign/year?
- Why does this matter?
- How are you going to measure progress?
- How can you influence the outcome?
- Who is responsible for this outcome?
- How will you know if you achieved that outcome?
- How often will you review progress toward the end goal?
Don’t get analysis paralysis! It’s easy to become overwhelmed by all of the data so make sure you are measuring what matters. To do this, your entire team must be aligned on the overall objectives and initiatives you determined in step five (Tighten Your Focus).
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.