A well-designed, user-friendly website can help you engage new members, raise money, and communicate with decision-makers. In A Nonprofit's Guide to Building Simple, Low-Cost Websites, TechSoup provides tools and ideas for building a simple, attractive website without breaking the bank.
Outside Resource
A web hosting provider stores the files that make up your website, and reliably connects them to the Internet so your constituents can see your site. Idealware's A Few Good Web Hosting Providers shares insight from nonprofit internet specialists on the web hosting providers that have worked well for them, and tips for hosting everything from a basic website to a powerhouse web application.
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.
TCC Group's original briefing paper, Ten Keys to Successful Strategic Planning for Nonprofit and Foundation Leaders, offered ten keys to successul strategic planning, explored what strategic planning is and isn't, and outlined the components of a successful plan.
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.
An organizational climate survey measures an organization's strengths and areas for improvement on several levels: pertaining to the organization, each work department, and specific jobs/roles. Adapt this sample to conduct a survey of your organization.
Network 180's request for proposal for a strategic planning consultant provides a sample you can adapt for your own organization.