Board development is crucial to the success of any organization and particularly for smaller or all-volunteer nonprofits where the board by necessity is a “working board”. Building the board up to its full capacity is not always easy.  It takes time but you reap the benefits many times over.

Some boards need a complete overhaul to reenergize the team. Others simply require an outside facilitator once a year. We work with boards – young start-up organizations or more mature organizations – to define and become a board of choice.  Some of the areas where you may need a tune-up include:

• Board recruitment and orientation
• Board retention
• Board oversight and accountability
• Effective committee structures
• Evaluation of board performance
• Board giving policy
• Effective board meeting agendas
• Succession planning

It doesn’t matter what your level of experience is, serving on a board can be intimidating. Our goal is to help you make this easy!  And to have structures and systems in place to attract the right board members and ensure the board functions well.

Failure to plan is planning to fail. In today’s environment, vision, planning and goal setting are essential components to your organization’s future.

Strategic planning is the process of understanding what your organization intends to accomplish, and how you will get there over a certain period of time.  A good real-time strategic plan, translated into yearly work plans and budgets, also ensures your organization addresses immediate and long-term goals.

A compelling vision and mission, often developed as part of a strategic planning process, has the power to attract donors to the organization and positively focus and energize staff, board members and volunteers.

We work with you to:

• Create a compelling mission, long-term vision and real-time strategic plan
• Develop a strategic planning process to suit your organization’s style and situation
• Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the organization
• Build strategies to address the problems and opportunities your organization faces

With over 80% of charitable donations every year coming from individuals, this is one of the most important sources of fundraising dollars for a nonprofit. Yet board members and staff who have never been involved in fundraising may be very reluctant or fearful to become involved and gravitate towards an income stream based on grants.  Individual fundraising can be made easier and more engaging for both board and staff members.

Nobody has to do everything but everyone has to do something!

A fundraising plan is the first part of simplifying the mystique around fundraising.  It sets realistic goals and motivates board members when they understand the fundraising activities, and the many different opportunities to be involved and how they will make a difference.

A good plan also incorporates grants which match your programs with key funding opportunities, and outlines detailed strategies and actions to support the development of winning grant proposals.

We work to:

• Develop an effective fundraising plan that suits your organization
• Understand motivational techniques to allay the fear of asking for major gifts
• Research and identify prospective sources of funding
• Write compelling grants
• Build your case for grants to fundraise persuasively to donors at an emotional level

Running good programs is the reason you exist. Regardless of the size of your organization and the community you serve, for continued success, you must constantly add or refine programs to address the constantly changing environment, and market or community opportunity.

Your program must fit in with your organization’s mission and long-term goals as determined in your strategic plan and that you monitor results.  Funders increasingly evaluate progress and results, and look to invest in organizations that respond positively to feedback and opportunities or challenges and monitor results.

We work with you to develop successful programs, to plan and manage program evaluations that will identify your organization’s successes, improve programs and share the information with your key audiences:

We will help you:

• Create a program needs assessment
• Develop a program plan
• Understand the different types of evaluation for different program stages
• Tie your program objectives to effective measurement and evaluation
• Build different types of program evaluations
• Identify the tools and technology needed to implement an effective evaluation process.