INSIGHTS
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.
The Surge of Strategic Partnerships in the Nonprofit Sector: Navigating the New Landscape of Change
Nonprofits are increasingly turning to strategic partnerships in response to economic pressures, technological advancements, and heightened competition. These collaborations offer opportunities to pool resources, enhance talent acquisition, and invest in critical technology. However, successful partnerships require careful planning. By embracing strategic collaborations, nonprofits can navigate challenges, ensure mission continuity, and position themselves for a sustainable future.
The Surge of Strategic Partnerships in the Nonprofit Sector: Navigating the New Landscape of Change
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.
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.
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.
Embracing the Future: Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Sustainability
By embracing strategic planning and adapting to the ever-changing landscape, nonprofits can continue to deliver their vital services, address community needs, and make a lasting impact on the world. Strategic planning is not a one-time exercise; it is an ongoing process that requires continuous adaptation and refinement to ensure that nonprofits remain relevant, effective, and resilient in the face of challenges and opportunities.
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.
Capacity & Cost Savings Through Org Design
It is important nonprofit organizations remember to address ‘how we work’ before ‘how many of us are working’ in order to tackle capacity issues more effectively. Our nonprofit consultants recommend addressing the root cause of capacity issues to free up time and resources that can be used to achieve your nonprofit organization’s strategic goals. This will lead to improved performance, reduced costs, and increased efficiency.
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.
How to Gain a Digital Competitive Advantage Over your Peers
Your non-profit peers are all working hard to serve their community and fulfill their mission. How can you know if you are gaining or losing ground against them? And once you know where you stand, is there anything you can do about it?
While obvious metrics like the number of employees they have or their total budget will give you an overall sense of their scale, these metrics alone cannot tell you whether you are winning mindshare or gaining an edge in awareness, which can lead to better fundraising or an increase in your base of volunteers.
Fortunately, there are ways to use online resources to find out how you compare to your peers. By analyzing search keywords, organic search traffic, ad budgets and social media sites, you can get a good idea of where you stand and where you need to improve.
Benefit Strategy: Keep, Cut, Create, and Communicate!
A benefits package is a great way to demonstrate how much you value your nonprofit employees. An effective benefits strategy is one that meets your employees’ needs while staying within your budget. A great benefits strategy combines employee needs, business needs, and aligns with your culture. If a merger isn’t in your future, it’s still important to reevaluate your benefits package regularly and remember to balance employee needs with the organization’s culture and budget.
So you have a DEIB strategy. What now?
Over the course of the last three years, many nonprofits have rightfully prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion. But where do those initiatives stand today? Are organizations seeing the progress they hoped for? If you’ve seen some progress, but want to make sure your efforts don’t stall or if you aren’t seeing the engagement you hoped for, it might be time to regroup and make a new plan.
3 Themes Taking Us Into 2023
2022 continued to be a year of rapid change for our mission driven clients and for the health and human services, association, credit union, and higher education sectors they operate in.
As the major shifts in the landscape show no signs of slowing, our nonprofit consultants have identified three themes that have been the focus of 2022 that will carry over into 2023: nonprofit consolidation, succession planning, and enhancing board governance.
The Top 3 Takeaways from Nonprofit Organization Design Projects
You may have heard the phrase “structure follows strategy”, which signifies the need to assess and change how an organization operates to ensure its ability to fulfill its’ nonprofit strategic plan. When our nonprofit consultants engage with clients during organization design projects we often see 3 common themes that arise throughout the process. The way in which the organization and its leadership respond to these themes is critical to success and the ability to achieve desired outcomes.
5 Reasons to Start Strategic Planning Today
With 2023 quickly approaching, many purpose-driven organizations may be thinking about designing new strategic plans to help ensure long-term sustainability and viability.
Whether you operate in health and human services, higher education, credit unions, or associations, our strategic planning consultants have 5 reasons for you to start strategic planning today.