Each year, Salesforce.org publishes a report on the trends in the nonprofit industry, but instead of using data from what they are seeing, the data in their report comes from nonprofit employees across the industry. The report shares the greatest challenges and opportunities ahead, from the perspective of the 1,250 nonprofit employees in various size and type of nonprofit organizations across 10 countries.
Below I will share a few of the highlights of the report, including my 3 takeaways from the report. While my thoughts below are my personal takeaways, I implore you to read the full report. There is a lot of amazing data points in the report to learn, implement and share with your staff and leadership team. To access the full report, click here.
Pandemic Challenges Still Looming
We are now 2 years into this global pandemic of COVID-19, and nonprofit organizations are still feeling its impact. Some of the challenges that the pandemic has brought include:
- Controlling expenses
- Creating and/or adapting to virtual programming
- Learning curve of implementing new technology quickly
- Hosting, promoting and creating captivating content for virtual audiences
- Evolving how volunteers can serve safely and still be effective
- Meeting the abrupt change in demand of services, even at the risk of changing structure/size or organization
Silver Lining Amidst the Challenges
While these challenges may not be going away anytime soon, there there are some silver linings that have come out of this period. Per the report, “organizations managed to achieve over 75% of their goals across program delivery, fundraising, diversity initiatives, and even staff wellbeing and retention.”
How, you ask?
Nonprofits are not new to the idea of getting creative when it comes to meeting their mission goals in challenging circumstances, whether they be budgetary, programmatic, economic or now even global pandemic. To do this, organizations
- Tried new approaches to old processes
- Focused on their metric of success and recalibrated when needed
- Leveraged new and existing partnerships
- Engaged employees to build stronger connections
- Built a better culture within their organization
My 3 Key Takeaways
As I shared above, this report has a lot of detail in it. I thoroughly encourage you to download the report and read for yourselves, as your organization may have some needs that this report can help with that I did not touch on. To access the full report, click here.
From my perspective of an Operations Strategist, below are my 3 Key Takeaways.
Have a Plan, or Plan to Fail
No one saw this global pandemic coming. (Well, generally speaking…I’m staying out of the politics of it all, because I could go in, but I digress!) While the magnitude of COVID-19 hits differently than most challenges we have faced in some generations lifetime, the premise is still the same — Have a Strategic Plan. With a strategic plan, your organization has guidance on the direction that they are looking to take the organization in the next year, three years or even more. Without a sense of direction, how is your organization suppose to grow and achieve new heights?
Now some may say, “Well, I had a plan, but nothing could have prepared me for this!” And you are absolutely right! Somethings, even most things, we may not be able to forecast ahead of time — but this is why your plan needs to be a living, breathing plan. Your plan must allows some flexibility to pivot and recalibrate when needed. Having a plan helps your organization stay focused on the directional goals during the chaos, but the ability to pivot quickly when needed helps you to navigate through the chaos to reach your goals.
Get Creative While Keeping Your Mission in Mind
Change is constant. One’s mindset about change can make or break a situation. If your organization sees change and they cringe at the idea of evolving, your organization will fail. If your organization sees change and they get excited about the opportunity to do things differently, your organization will withstand through the waves of this industry.
While things change all the time, your mission and who you serve is the constant for your organization. With this change, find ways to meet your constituents where they are to maximize their benefit of working with you. Create platforms for your donors and sponsors to evolve with you and engage them more in some of the key choices your organization has in front of you. They will love to see it, as well as to have been extended an invitation to help. Partner with other nonprofit and for-profit organizations in order to reach more constituents and your mission goals. Closed mouths don’t get fed. Ask for what you want. Shoot for the moon and land among the stars, but you have to ask. No idea is completely off the table.
Cut the Excess & Streamline Your Processes
The pandemic has shown us that sometimes we have to trim the excess in order to realign our focus to our true essentials. Organizations have cut budgets, staff members, and even programs in order to save their organization during this challenging time. While this process can be very taxing, it does allow us to focus on the needs of the organization with a sharper eye than before.
Technology companies have been producing user-friendly software in response to help individuals, organizations and companies thrive in a new way, especially in their area of systems and processes. Search for applications that help streamline your processes to make it easier for your organization to operate efficiently and consistently. For example, if it takes a staff member a week to gather data from multiple systems to generate a frequently requested report, take a look at how to get the data in those systems into one place. Having a single-source of data can resolve this time-consuming process of generating a report, because now it just takes the push of a button or subscribing to the report to get it. Now you have freed up the time of that staff member to do other things, such as reaching out to your constituents to build the relationships needed for your organization to thrive in its mission.
Access Salesforce.org’s Nonprofit Trends Report
To access the full report, click here.