Learn How to Reinvent Your Business Model & Reclaim Your Future
Disruption.
It’s what every nonprofit sector from Health and Human Services, to Associations, to Credit Unions, is experiencing right now. It's forcing organizations to reevaluate, pivot, and work tirelessly to develop new strategies to help regain footing within their new normal.
While this has left many feeling uncertain and unsettled, there are those that have leveraged the disruption into an opportunity to reevaluate and reinvent their business or service models. A business or service model is the way and manner in which you deliver value to a customer or individual.
By evaluating and determining how services may be reinvented or delivered in a different manner, organizations are able to more effectively align themselves to the future marketplace. In our experience as nonprofit consultants, these pathways to innovation and ideation are necessary for organizations to ensure their relevance and to showcase the value they offer to the individuals they serve.
Ultimately, exploring new nonprofit business model ideas is about being intentional when preparing for the future and taking the lead on reinventing your own services before the competition comes along with their own improved or new service offerings.
When exploring new business/service models or methods of evaluating existing service, we recommend a process that focuses on the following three areas: Value, Capacity, and Viability.
Value
The first step when mapping a business model is to recognize your value, or what it is that you can offer that will solve a problem or satisfy a need belonging to your target audience. Ask yourself and fully understand:
Who is our target audience?
Where is our target audience?
What value and service do we want to deliver?
How do we deliver that service?
How do we create awareness among our target audience?
Capacity
The second step in developing a business model is ensuring it is viable. This requires having the capacity and resources that are necessary to put the plan into effect. Be able to answer:
What is our staffing model and requirements?
What capabilities and skills are needed?
What key activities will enable effective delivery?
What resources are needed to launch?
What potential partners do we have?
Viability
The third step in finalizing a business model is exploring its longevity and sustainability potential by building a viable revenue and cost model that aligns to the individual's ability to purchase and a cost structure that ensures profit/surplus. You must know:
How will our service be priced and does that align with our audience’s ability to purchase?
How large is our target audience and is that a viable market size?
What costs are associated with acquiring clients/individuals, etc?
With all the disruption to traditional service we are experiencing, it is important to evaluate the value of your service delivery and whether it is viable for the future. Exploring and understanding your value, capacity, and viability can go beyond business model development as well. This strategy can also be utilized when:
Assessing and evaluating the current business/service models.
Exploring and innovating new ideas and concepts
Transforming existing services to build more relevant models
We understand the impact the disruptors are having on nonprofit sectors and industry but we also know there is tremendous potential for business model innovation and for expanding upon and modifying services to establish relevance in an increasingly competitive environment.