Considering a capital campaign? Where do you start? Start by asking and answering six vital questions designed to prepare your nonprofit to enter the process. Designed for executive directors, development leaders and board members, this session will allow you to consider the questions for your own organization while exploring real-world examples from professionals with more than 18 years of capital campaign fundraising experience.
Planning
Kathy Ridge, Founder and CEO, LevRidge Resources, LLC
We now know a single vaccine will not instantly obliterate the COVID virus. Instead, we must depend on personal behaviors, along with contact tracing and vaccines, to decrease infection rates. As organizations face an unknown future, how do we plan, prepare, and organize for the ‘lost horizon’ that is 2021 and the post-virus world?
You don’t need a new strategic plan – you need a short-term business plan based on what you do know to get through the next 18 months and develop more resiliency.
Bellwether Education Partners' COVID-19 Strategic Planning Toolkit for Education & Nonprofit Leaders is an easy-to-use resource that aids leaders in making rapid decisions and actionable plans during the global COVID pandemic.
“Red folders” are a simple risk management tool that can go a long way. Call a red folder day for everyone on staff – including the CEO. The assignment is for everyone to use no more than two pages to sum up their key activities. It may include a list sorted by daily, monthly, or quarterly tasks or it may make more sense to organize the list by type of duty. It depends on the role, so let people have some flexibility.
Red Folders: A Simple Risk Management Tool
Sabbaticals can be a win-win for your organization and everyone in it. Sabbaticals Help Keep Good Executives offers lessons and advice from nonprofit leaders who have taken sabbaticals. (North Carolina Center for Nonprofits)
This BoardSource blog post tackles the issue of proactive succession planning. Learn more about the board's role in preparation, leader development, and planning for the future of your organization.
How to build an effective executive committee by Joan Garry Consulting explores what how an ideal executive committee should function and what value it can bring to a nonprofit.
Key Transition Decisions to Consider and to Avoid (Raffa, formerly TransitionGuides) is a checklist to minimizing the risk and upheaval of a leadership transition and increasing organizational capacity and effectiveness.
The job of the nonprofit executive is one of the most rewarding. It's also among the most challenging, requiring a deep passion for the work and the ability to juggle competing demands, sustain multiple relationships, and manage a very possibly under-resourced infrastructure. Failed executive transitions often cause repeated executive turnover, loss of organizational focus and momentum, and extended periods of underperformance. This resource outlines how to approach executive transitions intentionally and mitigate these negative outcomes.
Here are a number of helpful resources from the National Council of Nonprofits to help with your succession planning efforts.