Nonprofit Business Planning

Nonprofit Business vs. Strategic Planning

As the opening entry to my new blog, I would like to answer a frequently-asked question: what is the difference between nonprofit business and strategic planning?

Simple answers: each asks unique questions; employs unique processes; and serves unique audiences. 

Strategic planning poses external (long range, fully informed, results focused) directional  questions; who it seeks to serve and impact; and what results it seeks to achieve.  Strategic planning also poses internal directional questions: management and operations; sustainability (which are both internal and external); amd, governance.

Business planning questions center around each of the program customers a nonprofit seeks to serve and impact and first digs deeply to understand that customer's needs, wants and interests; the numbers of these customers; the environment these customers face; and, the options or choices these customers have to address the needs, wants and interest they face.  Next, business planning poses the marketing 5P (product, price, place, promotion and value proposition)questions: what will the nonprofit offer (to satisfy needs etc.); what will it cost the customer (money or other exchanges); how the customer gets access to the offering; how the customer will learn of the offering; and, the organization's position often viewed in terms of how this offer will address needs in relationship to other alternatives.  Questions must then be answered about management and operations, the financial model, and the risks as well as a strategy for addressing risks.

Of course, the questions are different as is the process for answering the question.  Strategic Planning is best accomplished in group getting lots of buy-in from the board, staff and customers and possibly others.  Business planning is principally a research project bounded by decisions by a small group of the folks who will be implementing.  The board may also sign-off.

PS.  Business planning is about all planning focused on serving a nonrpofit's customer (client) etc.  For each program coming off a strategic plan, a business plan is warranted.

So, there you have it. My launching blog.  Please come back regularly as I look for examples (good and not-so-good) to help us all move our business planning forward.

 

 

Nonprofit Revenue Generating Venture

In this, my new blog, I plan to highlight all that relates to nonprofit business planning -- the processes, the victories and the losers.  Nonprofit business planning is a core business of BWB Solutions and we are committed to understanding and sharing what we believe can be helpful in the work of business planning. 

So, for my first entry, I am going to introduce a story I did a week ago in my nonprofit board crisis mostly because I didn't have a forum for this kind of story.  Now I do.

Offsetting dependency on philanthropy or increasing the potential to do more is one of the most frequent drivers for a nonprofit seeking to establish a sustainable revenue generating venture.

Some ventures are related to a nonprofit's mission and capitalize on the nonprofit's core competency to reach a market that has means and desire for the product or service offering.

An Utne Reader article titled "Trappist Caskets" caught my attention on this topic.  The article focuses on a group of Cistercian monks in Peosta, Iowa. According to the article, the monks are "called to live by the work of their hands. Manual labor for a monk is cultivation of interior quiet and mindfulness of God."

These monks' chosen work is to build caskets and funeral urns. Casket building "promotes contemplation and provides an opportunity to minister to other's suffering". Since 1849 they have built caskets for the abbey's members but according to the article "instated public sales in 1999 when seeking new ways to support themselves".

The article concludes with noting that the monks harvest the wood for their caskets from their sustainably managed 1,300 acre forest of red and white oak, black walnut, hard maple and bitternut hickory trees. Trees aren't harvested until they are 100 years old. And, for every casket or urn that is purchased from the monks, a new tree is planted in the forest as a living memorial.

Talk about mindful governance from start to finish, and start again.

P.S. Here's the Trappist's website: http://www.trappistcaskets.com/.