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Engaging Stakeholders in Developing Strategies

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To address complex challenges, we need strong strategies, and strategies are stronger when we engage a diverse set of people (or stakeholders) in shaping solutions. When engaging stakeholders is done well, it can lead to new ideas, stronger and more viable strategies, shared ownership of the vision, greater insight into stakeholder needs, and stronger relationships with stakeholders. But when done poorly and viewed as a checkbox exercise, it can damage trust with stakeholders, fail to add value, and harm the communities you seek to help.

We just released our new field guide on engaging stakeholders in developing strategies, where we share thoughts and questions to reflect on at the beginning of a strategy development process. Our goal is to help you start the process with a clear understanding of which stakeholders you want to engage, why their input matters, and how you will engage them. Though we focus on the strategy process, the information in this field guide might also support stakeholder engagement in other contexts, and we encourage stakeholder engagement as a regular practice outside of the strategy process.

We’re also hosting a conversation this Wednesday, June 24th, at 2pm Eastern. Representatives from Miriam’s Kitchen and the Greater Rochester Health Foundation will join us to talk about what it looks like to engage stakeholders in meaningful ways  and ways to engage stakeholders right now when people are facing so many pressures. Register here.

Register for the Virtual Share & Learn

View the Field Guide

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Five Steps to Reimagine Your Organization’s Future Through Scenario Planning

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While the COVID-19 crisis has brought tremendous challenges, it is also bringing out the best in many nonprofit leaders as they work to sustain their missions and create more equitable communities. Many leaders are pivoting their organizations’ services; tending to the professional, emotional, and safety needs of staff and volunteers; forging new partnerships; and testing creative ideas to address inequities.

This type of proactivity is no small feat amid significant disruptions to services, operations, and funding that can leave leaders feeling uncertain about what to prioritize and how to adapt. It can be easy to deprioritize planning completely or default to contingency planning and risk management. In times of crisis, many leaders understandably take a singular focus on preserving the organization’s operations and planning for contingencies. Of course financial health is crucial for continuing services, and our research and experience show organizations also need to take a broader view. Before doubling down on financial health and organizational preservation, nonprofits should focus on the impact they want to have and imagine possible new futures. One way leaders can do this is through scenario planning.

Scenario planning can help your organization manage uncertainty, envision new opportunities, and spot unexpected threats. It helps you focus on the things you can control – even amid great change and uncertainty – so that you are better positioned to achieve your desired impact. It improves your organization’s sustainability by helping you financially prepare for the worst and take data-informed actions sooner than you otherwise might have.

Scenario planning can happen in five steps:

Adapted from Diana Scearce, Katherine Fulton, and the Global Business Network community’s “What If? The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits.”

1. Define key questions.

What questions do you hope this plan will answer? Are you looking to determine how best to hold steady during turbulent times, or do you want to reimagine your programs and services for a new future?

What is your time horizon for planning? Organizations facing great upheaval and uncertainty may decide to look out only six to 12 months while other organizations may be able to take a longer view. Either approach is fine.

Even if your primary focus is on stabilizing the organization and looking at the near term, scenario planning presents an opportunity to think about steps you can take now that will position you for long-term impact.

2. Explore drivers.

The trajectory of the virus will have many ripple effects, such as closures of schools and other places due to social distancing and economic impacts that affect state budgets, employment, and donor/funder behavior. In most communities, the COVID-19 crisis is widening the racial inequities many nonprofits are working to address. Focus on the two to three driving forces that most affect your organization’s future and are the most uncertain.

3. Build scenarios.

Once you have prioritized the drivers that matter most to your organization, develop a set of plausible and thought-provoking scenarios that represent a range of future outcomes. Here is an example of what scenarios might look like for a nonprofit that identified school closures and state budgets as key drivers.

4. Develop plans based on assets and opportunities.

Envision what each scenario would mean for your organization and what you would do in response. Play out how each scenario might impact the community you serve, your programs, funding, staff, and operations. Pay attention to how each scenario and your response might widen or decrease inequities. For example, data show that communities of color are disproportionately feeling the health and economic impacts of COVID-19. What is your organization doing to address disparities, and how can you ensure your response does not inadvertently contribute to existing inequities?

As you develop your plans, consider where you might have the greatest opportunity for impact. If you are getting stuck trying to imagine a different way of creating impact, take a step back and consider your organization’s core purpose. What are the three things you must hold on to? Maybe those things are your values, the population you serve, or the way you show up in the community. What three things might you change or let go of to stay focused on what matters most? Maybe you are open to changing your funding model, ending a longstanding program, or having staff build new skills. This helps you identify where the greatest opportunities lie in each scenario, what tradeoffs you may need to consider, and the steps you need to take to prepare for the future.

5. Monitor indicators.

To be able to act on your plans, you will need to have a sense of which scenario is playing out. Identify two or three metrics that indicate the organization is transitioning into each scenario, so you can make timely choices about how to respond. Many organizations set financial indicators, such as progress against fundraising goals, to guide operational decisions. Consider what outcome indicators might guide programmatic decisions as well. For example, if you see a widening of racial disparities in your community as the virus spreads, you may decide to double down on your efforts to address those disparities, and that may require you to let go of other activities that don’t support efforts to decrease disparities.

Imagining a New Future

During disruption and uncertainty, scenario planning helps organizations focus on the things they can control. It can clarify what’s most important to your organization and what to pay attention to. Imagining what you would do in your most severe scenario will push you to think creatively and identify actions you could take to help ensure long-term sustainability and improved community outcomes.

While scenario planning can help stabilize organizations during times of crisis, it can also help you imagine a new future. As you embark on scenario planning with your organization, bring an asset-based mindset to consider not just future risks but also the strengths within your organization and community. Build on these assets to find the new opportunities and possibilities for the future, even in times of uncertainty.

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Engaging Communities in Developing Strategies

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This blog post is an adapted excerpt from our field guide on stakeholder engagement.

Strategies are stronger when they’re shaped by people who are closest to the issues and who will be most affected when strategies are implemented. Community engagement can range from gathering community members’ input to looking to communities to decide what the strategy should be and how it should be executed. (See more about a spectrum of community engagement to ownership here.)

The way you engage communities has the potential to heal old wounds and build collective power, but it also can deepen mistrust and harm communities. It’s important to approach community engagement with care and consideration.

Here are some considerations to reflect on before engaging communities. This approach draws on insights from the National Gender and Equity Campaign, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Building Movement Project, King County Washington, Marnita’s Table, and our own experiences. See more resources at the bottom of this post.

  • Clarify purpose, outcomes, and process. What do you want to achieve through engaging this community? Do you want their perspectives to inform your strategy, or do you want community members to set the strategy? As you clarify your process for developing the strategy, think about how to center and shift power to those who are most impacted, and leave space to change course and be responsive to the community as needed. Recognize that many perspectives can exist within one community, and work to surface those perspectives. Dive deeper into this topic: “Four Questions to Sit With as You Learn to Let Communities Lead” (Community Wealth Partners)
  • Understand history with the community. How has your organization interacted with this community in the past? Where have you built strong relationships? Where has trust been broken? Understand what the history of your relationship looks like from the community’s perspective. To avoid duplication, identify information community members previously shared that could serve you now. Dive deeper into this topic: “Community Engagement Guide for Sustainable Communities” (PolicyLink)
  • Take an asset-based approach. Recognize that solutions exist within the community. Seek first to understand the community’s strengths and assets. Work with partners who are trusted in the community and who are knowledgeable about community resources. Dive deeper into this topic: “Build a Playground Toolkit: Community Involvement” (KaBOOM!)
  • Create space for relationship-building. Not every interaction with the community needs to be linked to your formal strategy development process. In fact, it can feel transactional to community members if you only engage with them when you have a specific need. Make space to build and strengthen relationships without an agenda. Dive deeper into this topic: “What Institutions Get Wrong About Community Engagement and How They Can Improve” (Marnita’s Table)
  • Reach those most impacted. Make sure those most impacted by the issues you seek to change can participate through offering an accessible location and time, translation services, childcare, transportation, and food and drink. Respect their participation by offering compensation if possible. Listen empathetically and strive to understand, not to reply or reframe. Dive deeper into this topic: “Why Am I Always Being Researched?” (Chicago Beyond)
  • Set clear expectations and create feedback loops. Share decision-making power with the community where possible, and in all cases, clearly define and transparently communicate community members’ role. (e.g., Are you asking for their input, or will they make the final decision?) Ask the community for feedback regularly throughout the process, be intentional about integrating that feedback, and loop back to tell the community how you used their feedback. Talk with the community about how you plan to stay in relationship with them throughout the strategy process and afterward. Dive deeper into this topic: “The Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership” (Facilitating Power)

View the full field guide on stakeholder engagement.

 

Additional resources: 

Photo courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action

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Podcast: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Sector

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In a recent episode of the Business of Giving podcast, Amy Celep (CEO of Community Wealth Partners) talks with host Denver Frederick about what we’re hearing from the organizations we work with. The conversation explores many things including:

  • How the COVID-19 crisis is exposing deep inequities but also accelerating action to address those inequities.
  • The ways leaders are leading effectively in a virtual world and taking care of staff and themselves. If you want to do best by your mission, clients, and staff, Amy says, you have to pay attention to what you need. And as Maurice Jones, CEO of LISC, told Amy, “We’ve had to up our game in matters of the heart, and give people permission, through our words and deeds, to display their pain.”
  • How scenario planning can help organizations prepare amid uncertainty. Around Minute 8, Amy shares a five-step process for scenario planning.
  • How funders can address power dynamics to better support nonprofits. Funders can proactively encourage grantees to be bold in their asks. They can also continue practices of trust-based philanthropy long after this has passed.
  • How nonprofits can better understand the reliability of their revenue streams. Nonprofits can ask bold questions of donors and funders like, “What are your intentions for our grant/donation? What do you anticipate continuing to do and fund? What might you consider stopping or pausing?”

You can listen to the full interview here on the Business of Giving website or below.

 

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Three Things Nonprofits Should Prioritize in the Wake of COVID-19

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Nonprofit sustainability, or the ability to continue delivering relevant social impact over the long term, has always been important to nonprofit leaders. But as the spread of COVID-19 causes upheaval in just about every aspect of society and highlights the deep social inequities many nonprofits are working to address, sustainability is becoming even more of a top priority. Over the past few weeks, we’ve spoken with many nonprofit leaders who are worrying about how they will continue to sustain the important programs and services their organizations deliver. Indeed, a recent survey from LaPiana Consulting found that 93 percent of nonprofit respondents have already had to adapt or curtail services.

Naturally, financial health is crucial to ensuring that organizations can continue their work in the months and years ahead. However, our research looking at more than 50 nonprofits after the 2008 economic downturn and the years that followed (one example here), as well as our direct experience working with hundreds of nonprofits, shows the need to take a broader view. Before doubling down on financial health and organizational preservation, nonprofits should first reflect on their social purpose. …

 

Click here to read the full post in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

 

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Stories of Earned Revenue

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Funding is top of mind right now. As nonprofits consider their long-term financial sustainability, some organizations are weighing the pros and cons of pursuing an earned-revenue strategy.

For organizations in need of immediate cash, now might not be the time to explore earned revenue. But organizations that are looking to the long term and have flexibility to do early planning and research now can lay the groundwork for an earned-revenue strategy in the future. In the right circumstances, an earned-revenue strategy can help some organizations advance their mission, resource their efforts, access unrestricted funds, and find greater stability.

We hosted a conversation about earned revenue where the nonprofit Per Scholas talked about their experience and help nonprofits answer the questions: 1) Is an earned-revenue strategy the right approach for my organization right now? And 2) What might the process look like to develop and test an earned-revenue strategy?

Watch that conversation below or at this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XnS3UgF1TU

We also published a field guide on this topic with frameworks and guiding questions. Stories can bring ideas and frameworks to life, so we wanted to tell a few organizations’ stories of what developing an earned-revenue strategy looked like in practice. In the field guide, we wrote four case studies about nonprofits’ experiences creating and implementing earned-revenue strategies: Center for Children’s Law and Policy, Communities In Schools, Food & Friends, and Per Scholas.

Read the field guide and case studies

If you have questions about earned revenue or would like some free thought partnership from our team, please reach out to Lori Bartczak at lbartczak@communitywealth.com.

 

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What’s Good on the Ship? Assessing team strengths and mission-critical needs in response to COVID-19

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If you ask anyone about Tom Hanks’ classic film Apollo 13, they will most likely respond with the movie’s most famous quote: “Houston, we have a problem.”

This line resonates right now within our communities and our sector. Just last week, La Piana Consulting shared the results of a survey about the impact of COVID-19 on the social sector, indicating that on average, organizations have had to lay off or furlough 19 percent of their staff.

The challenges we are up against are overwhelming. In the face of mounting problems, how do we move forward? In our webinar last week “Leading for the Long Term in Uncertain Times,” Laura Meyers, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., encouraged us to look to another Apollo 13 quote: “What have we got on the spacecraft that’s good?”

 

“What have we got on the spacecraft that’s good?”

 

Some context might help you understand that quote. In the movie, the spaceship Apollo 13 has lost its main engine. Ed Harris, who is leading mission control in Houston, doesn’t focus on the problem – no engine – he even throws out the original flight plan. He focuses first on what assets are still functioning on the ship.

This example can guide us as we confront a new normal of operating amid COVID-19. It begs us to be asset-based – avoiding the temptation of spending too much energy on overwhelming deficits, especially those out of our control. It asks us to pivot our strategies and operations. What got us here won’t fully get us through the pandemic. And it calls organizations to move forward, step by step, working the challenge to find innovative solutions.

To get started in bolstering the functioning of their “ship,” organizations can work on a rapid three-step organizational assessment and change (OAC) process as a senior team or across all staff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QCp0gfLxtM

Step 1: Map your assets and strengths

“What have we got that’s good?” Begin with taking time as a team – say, over email or in a one-hour brainstorm session – to list out all of your organization’s assets and strengths. What is functioning well that we can build on going forward? This can be talented staff, video technology, strong partners, trust in the community, access to food, strong donor base – whatever it is, list it out and make sure it is comprehensive.

Step 2: Identify the one or two highest-priority gaps to fill that build on your strengths

“What do we need to land?” Once you know what is strong, it’s then time to identify the highest-priority gaps that, when filled, will help you build a bridge to get through the pandemic. First, ask yourself, What are the most critical gaps we need to fill in order make it through this period and land our ship? Second, map these gaps to your assets. Ask yourself, Given the assets we have, what are the one or two gaps we are best positioned to act on right now? Perhaps you need to do financial modeling to assess and rethink your business model. Maybe you need to strengthen your senior team communication and collaborative practices so you’re all in lock step. Whatever you choose, make sure to focus. As writer Heather Hart said, do one or two things well instead of ten things poorly.

Step 3: Pilot innovative changes – across all levels of staff – that fill these gaps immediately

“Let’s work the problem, people!” These changes are not going to be easy, and yet it is clear we must work differently and change the status quo for our organizations and our programming to make it through. I offer three pieces of advice in making these changes:

  1. Do not let perfect be the enemy of the good. Create team-wide expectations that failing forward is okay and we need to experiment, learn, and evolve at this time.
  2. Delegate to your team. Give team members of all levels autonomy to move things forward.
  3. Raise up processes that unleash teamwork. Eliminate or change inefficient processes that create silos or prevent staff from effectively working together.

We know how challenging this time period is, and the work ahead is daunting. Yet we see so many good things on the ships of organizations and communities. Together – with resilience, innovation, and action – we can make it through.

If you would like some free thought partnership on this or another issue you’re facing, reach out to whowell@communitywealth.com for more information.

 

Find more COVID-19 resources and support on this page.

 

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What Does Virtual Leadership During COVID-19 Look Like?

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It’s hard enough to lead an organization through a period of difficulty and uncertainty. It’s even harder to lead through the extreme societal and organizational disruption we are experiencing in the wake of a pandemic and to do so virtually with team members juggling work with watching children, caring for sick loved ones, navigating difficult home situations, and managing a roller coaster of emotions.

In response, many leaders are asking, what does virtual leadership look like?

While virtual leadership like this is new for all of us, there are leadership principles that are particularly relevant right now. Just as before, leaders can offer:

  • Inspiration and realism: Give hope to your team while being realistic about the future and its uncertainty and challenges. Getting this balance right is key to helping your team have faith in leadership, their own work, and the path forward.
  • Action: Help your team get unstuck by focusing on immediate steps they can take to make a difference and adapt, especially if they seem paralyzed by the changes. Show them you are in it together.
  • Love: Support your team, assume best intentions, and create space for team members to be multidimensional, imperfect humans who can try new things and learn in the process.

This time also calls upon us to be creative with how we lead. Here’s what strong virtual leadership can look like this moment.

  • Assume the best and give grace. Let’s face it: work and home have just collided like never before, and you may not know what challenges people are facing or what they need. This is a moment to assume the best of intentions, be flexible where you can, and listen to your team. Ask questions to understand what’s going on. Pay attention to the circumstances people may be facing in their homes and personal lives – particularly team members with disabilities, with dependents, with sick loved ones, and who are part of communities that are on the front lines of this pandemic or that are receiving the least support right now. (The Management Center put together this survey to help you understand staff needs.)
  • Be present from afar. As always, your presence matters. As you lead from afar, you can get creative with how to be present virtually. For example, consider temporarily creating daily 15-minute check-ins with teams to stay connected and provide support. During meetings, turn on your video so people can engage with your facial expressions and body language. As you communicate with your team, consider that many people have a greater need right now to feel connected and informed; but also, if their inboxes look like mine, they’re receiving a huge influx of emails. Be generous but intentional in your full-team communications. Consider using email to communicate organizational things and using a chat platform (like Slack or Zoom) to manage smaller, daily, project-level communications.
  • Walk the virtual halls. Connecting one-on-one with individuals can help maintain or strengthen relationships. You can’t physically walk the halls of the office to connect informally with people, but there are virtual ways to do this. You can set up virtual coffees or meet-ups with people you don’t typically see in meetings, particularly people with less access to power in your organization. It’s also important to support your team’s virtual social gatherings to help foster a sense of community. Encourage and support virtual social events like lunches, snack breaks, or mindfulness gatherings. As we distance ourselves physically, we need more social connection.
  • Live your culture virtually. Now more than ever culture matters and will be tested. Culture challenges are often exacerbated amid all the pressures staff are facing, which can lead to less effective work in a time when it’s greatly needed. At the same time, this moment may offer an opportunity for breakthroughs because it may force your team to break down silos and change ineffective ways of working as you try new things. Model the values and behaviors that make your organization effective, and continue to hold teams accountable for doing so too. Most importantly – this is a time to prioritize the conversations that help you uphold your culture. It can be easier to avoid difficult conversations when you are virtual. Instead, insist that your team engage, listen, and have the conversations that matter most. You might hold time with your team to talk about what it looks like to live your values right now. How might you manage power dynamics over your virtual meeting platform? How might you collaborate in real time with each other when people are dealing with slow internet? How can you ensure everyone feels they can fully participate in team meetings when the technology isn’t intuitive to some team members?

We’ve learned some of these lessons over the years, and some have emerged in the last two weeks. This moment and the months that follow will teach us a great deal about how to lead. What are you learning about virtual leadership? What’s working, and what isn’t? We hope to keep learning, making mistakes, and finding humor alongside you.

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Finding Greater Financial Stability and Impact Through Earned Revenue

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Greater financial stability is on a lot of minds right now – even more than usual, as the world shifts in response to COVID-19 and as economists predict a recession as early as this year. Yet many nonprofits may not be ready for a recession. According to a November 2019 Center for Effective Philanthropy survey, nearly two-thirds of nonprofit CEO respondents said a recession would increase need or demand for their programs and services. Yet only one-third of respondents said their organization had a plan for how it would handle a recession.

Earned revenue is one strategy that can give organizations more financial stability and help strengthen an organization’s impact. Of course, it’s not for every organization, and it’s not a quick fix. It can take years to implement. Though nonprofits must focus on immediate needs now, there’s also an opportunity to think differently about how to sustain the work long-term.

We developed a field guide for nonprofits considering earned-revenue opportunities and funders looking to support grantees in doing so. The field guide includes a set of four case studies about how nonprofits have developed and implemented earned-revenue strategies. We hope this field guide will help you:

  • Ask the right questions to understand if an earned-revenue strategy is the right approach for your organization right now,
  • Get a glimpse into the process of developing an earned-revenue strategy that helps your organization achieve greater impact, and
  • Learn from other nonprofits that have gone through this process in different contexts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XnS3UgF1TU

Download Earned Revenue Strategies: A Field Guide

 

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Self-Care During Challenging Times

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As we all grapple with the upheaval and uncertainty produced by COVID-19 and its impact on communities and the economy, one thing is certain: Communities will call on nonprofits – especially those working in human services – to meet rapidly growing needs as schools and businesses remain closed, unemployment rises, and healthcare needs increase. As nonprofit leaders are faced with increased demand for services and massive disruptions to funding and operations, they must grapple with the urgent dilemma of balancing short-term and long-term priorities.

Leaders across the sector have the entrepreneurial spirit and skill that it takes to respond to the short term and ensure that their organizations are well-positioned for the long haul. However, nonprofits are facing potential challenges such as disruptions that impact service delivery, periods of negative cash flow, and burned-out and overwhelmed staff. These pressures can leave many leaders feeling that their organizations’ very existence is threatened, and managing these challenges can feel scary, isolating, and exhausting.

To lead effectively during a crisis, Bill Shore, founder and executive chairman of Share Our Strength and chair of Community Wealth Partners, advises “putting your own oxygen mask on before trying to assist others.” Although by now we’ve likely all heard the value of self-care to promote mental health and avoid burnout, for nonprofit leaders who place great value in serving others, self-care often takes a back seat – especially in times of crisis. It can feel almost impossible to lead others when at the same time you’re trying to figure out how to tend the health and safety of yourself and your loved ones.

Now more than ever we need strong leaders at the helm of nonprofits to guide teams through the challenges they confront. Leaders cannot provide strong leadership if they are not feeling strong and healthy themselves.

Self-Care for Nonprofit Leaders

Self-care will look different for different individuals, and there are a variety of resources that offer recommendations for nonprofit leaders. (For example, here are some questions to ask yourself, tips for nonprofit professionals, and 21 self-care resources.) From the conversations we’ve had with leaders over the past couple weeks, there are a few key practices I’d recommend.

  • Accept that this is not business as usual. We don’t know what our world will look like three months or three years from now, but we do know that we are likely to come out on the other side of this changed in some way. Some leaders we’ve spoken with have felt pressure to push forward plans they set weeks, months, or years ago without pausing to reassess whether to continue the work. Acknowledge that times are different and ask yourself, does this still feel like the right thing to do right now? Accept that the answer may be no.
  • Give grace to yourself and others. None of us has lived through something like this before. We may make bad decisions. We may be unable to follow through on commitments. We may let people down. Leaders who model patience and grace with themselves and others will be the ones who are able to rally their teams and pull through.
  • Lean on others for connection and support. Remember that you are not alone. While we may not be able to come together physically for connection and support, there are a variety of tools available to facilitate virtual connection. Lean on your colleagues and networks for support, solidarity, and help navigating thorny challenges.

Self-Care for Nonprofit Organizations

Just as personal self-care will look different for different individuals, organizational self-care could take many forms. As you prioritize the well-being of your organization, here are four places you can start:

  • Prioritize your people. Does your staff have what they need to take care of themselves and their loved ones and continue to work as best they can? What adjustments can you make to help them cope with change and uncertainty, so that they have what they need to help your beneficiaries?
  • Bolster and adapt your processes and systems. The chaos of the past few weeks has shown limitations and flaws in the systems, policies, and processes in governments, businesses, and nonprofits around the globe. For example, at a systems level, the current crisis has shown the limitations of U.S. policies on healthcare and nutrition. For some nonprofits, transitioning staff to telework may have surfaced gaps in the organization’s IT systems or inequities in personnel policies. In the short term, you may need to adapt your policies and processes in order to continue to deliver your services; this has been especially true for organizations that distribute food to children, senior citizens, and other food-insecure populations. Balance short-term adjustments needed to address current challenges with long-term considerations of the policies, processes, and systems that may be required for new ways of working in the months ahead.
  • Invest in yourself. Some funders are releasing restrictions on funding to give nonprofits the flexibility they need to respond to rapidly changing circumstances, and some organizations may receive unexpected gifts in recognition of the critical services they provide. Don’t hesitate to invest some of these resources in your own organization. Consider what your organization needs to stay strong for the long haul. If you have the resources to invest in what you need, use them.
  • Stay focused on your true purpose. During a time of crisis, a nonprofit’s first instinct may be to do whatever is needed to be of service. It can feel difficult to say no. But stretching your organization too thin can drain resources from core services and hamper the organization’s overall impact. While many organizations will likely need to evolve and adapt to changing circumstances, you can help ensure long-term sustainability by keeping an eye on the organization’s true purpose and not being afraid to say no at times.

We don’t know what lies ahead, but we know the coming weeks and months will be tough. Through this difficult period, Community Wealth Partners remains committed to supporting the nonprofits and foundations who are doing critical work in our communities. We want to help you address the challenges keeping you up at night by offering resources, connections, and support.

You can let us know how we can best help you by commenting below or reaching me directly at acelep@communitywealth.com. In the weeks ahead, we will develop resources and offerings to support leaders with the challenges that we keep hearing are top-of-mind right now.