Organizational Development

Crisis prevention is doubly important for small public entities, companies and nonprofit organizations. Small organizations often have fewer resources to draw on when a crisis erupts, and insurance and other risk financing tools may not be an available due to the organization’s meager financial resources. But every organization, from the smallest to the largest can and should take steps to prevent the preventable and prepare for the unavoidable. The key is to select the strategies that appeal to your organization and best suit your situation.

When well-crafted, Request for Proposals (RFP) can introduce an organization to high-quality vendor-partners and consultants from outside their established networks and ensure that a project is completed as planned. In An Overview of the RFP Process for Nonprofits, Charities, and Libraries, TechSoup offers basic considerations for each phase of the RFP process. 

The M Word: A Board Member's Guide to Mergers from CompassPoint is a practical guide to help nonprofit board members, executives, and funders think through a merger. Offering a rough guide to expectations, processes, and obstacles often encountered in a merger experience, it can help an organization determine if a merger is the right choice for its own situation.

Does your organization need a strategic plan or a refresh of your current plan? Use this framework for a basic strategic plan from Free Management Library to craft a goals-based document.

Stage-based Nonprofit Lifecycles (based on Dr. Susan Kenny Stevens' book Nonprofit Lifecycles: Stage-based Wisdom for Nonprofit Capacity) walks through the various stages of a nonprofit lifecyle and helps organizations determine where they fall.

Social enterprise is about using a market-driven business model to address key social and environmental issues. Often, nonprofits apply ideas and practices from social entrepreneurship to advance their missions. The Free Management Library's resources on Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship offers definitions, examples, resources, and trends on the field and related topics.

The Small Business Center Network (SBCN) offers programs, services, and resources to start and grow a business or nonprofit organization - including guiding you through the steps of considering, planning, developing, opening, and operating the organization. Small Business Centers are located at each of NC's 58 community colleges.

The Center developed a request for proposal for an executive search firm while conducting its executive search for its president & CEO. Use the Center's document as an example and adapt this template for your own.

The article, Rediagnosing “Founder’s Syndrome”: Moving Beyond Stereotypes to Improve Nonprofit Performance, from Nonprofit Quarterly diagnoses founder's syndrome and its four "symptoms", and explores how boards of directors can address and remedy symptoms for a mission-driven focus and approach.

Increasingly, nonprofits are turning to more flexible strategic frameworks instead of formal strategic plans to guide their board and staff. BoardSource's infographic, Nonprofit Strategy and Planning by the Numbers, outlines this evolution and describes different strategy and planning options, key qualities of strategic frameworks, and tips on how boards can monitor their progress towards organizational goals.