INSIGHTS
Level Up Your Nonprofit Governance With Executive Contracts
Nonprofit executive contracts: essential for attracting talent, ensuring stability, and mitigating risk. Learn why your organization needs them and what they should include.
Beyond the Stigma: Reframing Nonprofit Mergers
Nonprofit mergers: a powerful tool for collaboration and impact. Learn how these partnerships differ from for-profit acquisitions and how to achieve success.
Maximizing Mission Impact: A Blueprint for Nonprofit Board Excellence
Learn how to optimize your nonprofits board's performance in 5 key areas and drive greater mission impact.
Embracing Nonprofit Transformation: A Guide to Leading Through Change
Nonprofit CEOs face increasing pressure to navigate rapid change. This article provides expert nonprofit consultant guidance on leading through transitions, optimizing leadership teams, and making decisive decisions to ensure organizational success in a dynamic environment.
Charting the Course: A Practical Guide to Nonprofit Succession Planning
Learn how to navigate the looming leadership crisis in the nonprofit sector.
Discover common succession planning obstacles and download a step-by-step guide to ensure a smooth transition and safeguard your organization's mission.
Leading Through Transformation: The Nonprofit CEO's Toughest Call
Change is the hardest decision for nonprofit CEOs, yet it's essential in today's dynamic landscape. Curtis Strategy partners with you to navigate the complexities of transformation, providing support, guidance, and an objective view. We help you overcome resistance, build a culture of change, and empower your leadership to drive success. Don't face change alone – contact us to learn how we can help your organization thrive.
Congratulations to Advocates, HMEA, and Family Continuity on their groundbreaking nonprofit merger!
Advocates, HMEA, and Family Continuity's groundbreaking merger marks a significant milestone in human services in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. By combining their strengths, this unified organization is poised to make a profound impact on the lives of over 40,000 individuals, setting a new standard for comprehensive care. This strategic alliance is a testament to the power of collaboration and shared vision, promising to transform the landscape of care in the region.
Congratulations to Venture Community Services and Life-Skills, Inc. on their momentous nonprofit merger.
On behalf of Curtis Strategy, we extend our warmest congratulations to Venture Community Services and Life-Skills, Inc. on their momentous merger! By joining forces, you are amplifying your impact and creating a powerful synergy that will undoubtedly elevate the standard of care for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities across Massachusetts.
Leading Change While Preserving Culture: A CEO's Guide to Sustainable Transformations
Successful nonprofit leadership means effectively navigating organizational change while preserving core values. Change, while necessary, can be disruptive and emotionally taxing for staff. To successfully guide your nonprofit through periods of change, it's crucial to balance urgency with empathy. This involves understanding the impact of change on your organization's culture and structure, and taking steps to mitigate resistance. The following provides a valuable framework, emphasizing the importance of clear communication, coalition building, and celebrating wins.
Partnerships Aren't Perfect: How to Overcome the Obstacles in Nonprofit Partnerships
While strategic partnerships offer numerous benefits to nonprofits, the process of forming them can be daunting due to perceived hurdles such as identifying the right partner, creating agreements, and managing the collaboration. However, these challenges can be overcome with careful planning and execution.
From Friction to Flow: Practical Strategies for Building Bridges Between Nonprofit CEOs and Boards
Nonprofit boards are often composed of dedicated individuals with expertise outside the organization's core mission. While their passion is invaluable, a lack of specific nonprofit market understanding can lead to a domino effect of challenges. The solution lies in building bridges, not walls. This ensures CEOs can translate passion into impactful strategies, keeping the organization relevant, effective, and true to its mission.
Unlocking Impact: How Nonprofits Can Use Data to Drive Positive Change
Data is the fuel that propels effective decision-making, allowing nonprofit organizations to maximize their reach and achieve their missions more efficiently. This is why a data strategy is crucial - it empowers nonprofits to leverage their information to build a more impactful future. Data is a powerful tool, and in the hands of forward-thinking organizations, it can pave the way for a brighter future for both the organization and the communities it serves.
Unlocking Potential: How Organization Design Can Boost Your Team's Performance
Struggling with unlocking the full potential of your nonprofit team? You're not alone. Collaborative efforts can often be hampered by unclear communication, unhealthy competition, and unclear roles, leading to lost productivity and missed opportunities. But what if a framework existed to guide you in empowering your team to achieve peak performance? Imagine a team that collaborates seamlessly, embraces challenges with enthusiasm, and consistently achieves objectives. It's possible with the right framework.
Our nonprofit consultants have 5 tips based on real-world success stories help organizations like yours reignite employee passion, foster ownership, and drive measurable results.
Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance and Alliance for Housing Solutions Merge
Curtis Strategy is pleased to announce the successful merger of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance (NVAHA) and the Alliance for Housing Solutions (AHS) effective January 1, 2024. This transaction will create a unified voice for affordable housing advocacy in Northern Virginia.
The merger will bring together the strengths of both organizations, and create a regionally united and locally responsive impact strategy in solving the affordable housing crisis.
Merger Messaging: A Strategic Approach to Communications Planning for Nonprofit Mergers
Nonprofit mergers in health and human services, associations, credit unions, and many other sectors can be complex and challenging, but they can also present significant opportunities for organizations to amplify their impact, enhance their efficiency, and serve their communities more effectively. However, for a merger to be successful, it is essential to have a strong communications plan in place. We have the steps you need to develop and implement a strong communications plan, to ensure that all stakeholders are informed about the merger, that any concerns are addressed, and that excitement and momentum are built for the new organization.
5 Steps to Drive Accountability and Build a Culture of Performance
Organizations are overflowing with data, but not all data is created equal. In order to use data to improve performance and mission outcomes, it is important to collect the right data, analyze it effectively, and make data-driven decisions.
Our nonprofit consultants recommend 5 steps to enable CEOs and COOs to use data effectively to drive the change needed to build a culture of performance.
The Fundamentals of Feedback
We’ve all heard the adage “feedback is a gift.” While most nonprofit leaders would agree, providing constructive feedback is a skill not all managers have mastered. Many managers are so uncomfortable giving feedback, that they avoid difficult conversations altogether. And receiving constructive feedback gracefully is another skill set altogether.
But studies show that high performing individuals crave feedback. In order to develop and retain that talent, and compete in the war for talent, we have to create a culture of feedback within our organizations. This means teaching our staff how to give - and receive - feedback effectively.
In this post, we will explore the do’s and don’ts for giving and receiving feedback and how you can support a culture of feedback within your organization.
Four Pillars of Successful Performance Reviews
For the most part, leaders agree on the importance of performance reviews and high performing individuals crave feedback. So why does it feel so difficult to create an effective performance review process? And how should reviews be designed to ensure they are effective? In order to function at their best, performance reviews need to be consistent, objective, contextual, and impactful.
The Secret to a Successful Nonprofit Merger
In recent years there has been a massive upswing in the number of nonprofit mergers and affiliations throughout the country. As a nonprofit consulting firm that has facilitated a number of merger transactions for our clients, we have seen firsthand the factors that contribute to deal success. A nonprofit merger or affiliation (M&A) is weighted heavily on the relationships that exist between two organizations. Meaning, the currency of a nonprofit deal is the relationship that exists between the two organizations, which means the progress of the deal will move at the speed of trust.
CEO’s Guide to Managing Capabilities and Complexity
In recent years the role of nonprofit CEO has become increasingly complex. Between managing large-scale turnaround, merger integration, reducing costs, and technology implementation, nonprofit leaders are challenged with issues that require innovative thinking and new approaches to managing.
In this article, we are going to provide insight into two areas of focus that go hand-in-hand to help CEOs achieve short and long-term goals.