When Times are Tough, Get Creative and Strategic

Resource
Coping with Cutbacks: The Nonprofit Guide to Success When Times Are Tight

Contents
A Process that Leads to Creativity and Clarity
   Step 1: Know yourself
   Step 2: Clarify the problem or opportunity
   Step 3: Outline the process for developing and selecting strategies
   Step 4: Establish criteria for success
   Step 5: Brainstorm strategies
   Step 6: Select the viable strategies
Summary: Now is the Time for Nonprofits to Assert Their Values

Where to Learn More

From Rebecca Post, Managing Editor, Fieldstone Alliance

BAD ECONOMIC NEWS continues to dominate headlines and broadcasts. While no one knows for sure how the situation will play out, it likely spells big changes—including the way nonprofits work and are funded.

That's not to say that all is doom and gloom. In the midst of turmoil, there is opportunity. To help you survive in tough times and take advantage of the changing environment, this issue of Tools presents a logical, practical process to help you think through options and arrive at the best strategies for your organization. The information is adapted from Coping with Cutbacks: The Nonprofit Guide to Success When Times Are Tight, by Emil Angelica and Vincent Hyman.

A Process that Leads to Creativity and Clarity
In lean economic times, it's hard to be creative. Most nonprofits turn to the 3 Rs: raise funds, reduce costs, retract services. Very few consider options such as modifying their mission, collaborating with others, or advocating for public policy changes.¹ Yet these options may actually work better and help you down the road as well.

The following process can help you get creative, and concrete, about the strategies that will help your nonprofit proceed. This is a generic structure that you can adapt to your specific situation:

Step 1: Know Yourself
Step 2: Clarify the Problem or Opportunity
Step 3: Outline the Process for Developing and Selecting Strategies
Step 4: Establish Criteria for Success
Step 5: Brainstorm Strategies
Step 6: Select the Viable Strategies

Not everyone has the time to embark on a strategy-generating process. Some of you need answers, now. We've collected and cataloged 185 strategies for coping with cutbacks. You may be able to apply some of the strategies immediately; others can help as you brainstorm strategies using the process we just outlined.

Now, let's look at a summary of each process step including its purpose, rationale, responsibilities, and actions. The book includes more in-depth information, but hopefully these summaries are enough to get you going.

Step 1: Know yourself
Purpose: To clarify where your organization is going in the future and the decision-making style you want to use.

Rationale: This step lays the groundwork for all subsequent steps. As you assess your direction for the future and your decision-making style, you will also begin to develop a sense of who to involve, the process you will use to make decisions, and how you want to be viewed in the future.

Responsible: Executive director, board chair, and at least one other key leader.

Actions: Write brief paragraphs that summarize your position on these three points.
1. Your organization’s mission, vision, values, and competencies.
2. Your organization’s past or traditional decision-making style.
3. If a change in your organization’s decision-making style is needed, what you want to change.

This preparatory work will help you better understand your organization. You can refer to what you've learned if (or as) things become sticky farther down the line.

Step 2: Clarify the problem or opportunity
Purpose: To make sure that you understand the scope, magnitude, and implications of the problems or opportunities facing the community and the organization.

Rationale: This step is important because you must be certain that you are solving the right problem. Step 2 is where the nuances of the situation need to be clarified, where you determine whether the problems or opportunities your organization faces are short-term or ongoing. By the end of this step, everyone involved should agree on the problems or opportunities to be addressed, including the impact on your constituents and services and the amount of any financial implications, stated in quantifiable terms (usually dollars and clients served, service hours, or whatever form you use to enumerate your services).

Responsible: Staff leadership (usually executive director, board chair, and treasurer or key volunteers).

Actions: Write a problem or opportunity statement. As noted in the rationale for this step, be as specific as possible.

Then, answer these questions:
1. Given the problem or opportunity statement, is the solution obvious? Can this problem or opportunity be addressed easily and reasonably, or is a process necessary to address it?

If there is an obvious strategy to address the situation, then by all means implement it now. Don’t spend time developing a process that isn’t necessary.

2. Are there immediate issues that must be addressed before you move on?

If so, address them or implement a plan to address them as you prepare to move into the strategy-generating process.

Once you have answered the questions above, you can move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Outline the process for developing and selecting strategies
Purpose: To identify the people you want to involve in the strategy development and selection process (Steps 4, 5, and 6); and to write a work plan showing how you want to work with these people. As you decide who to involve, you will also be deciding in which "arenas of influence" you want to operate (see diagram below).

Arenas of Influence

Rationale: The solutions you generate are affected by who you involve in developing and selecting strategies, as well as how you involve these people. Your choice of process and participants also sends a strong message to the organization and the community about how decisions will be made in the future and who is important to the community and your organization. In essence, you are deciding in which of the four arenas of influence you wish to operate. Picking the right participants is key, because often these people become your partners in implementing the solutions you choose to follow.

Responsible: Executive director, board leadership, and key staff.

Actions: Do not leave this step until you have identified the people you want to involve in the strategy-generating process and developed a work plan explaining how you will accomplish Steps 4, 5, and 6.

Step 4: Establish criteria for success
Purpose: To develop the criteria that will be used to determine the best strategies for addressing the problems or opportunities facing the organization. These criteria are based on the values of the organization, the organization’s vision for the future, and a clear understanding of the problem to be solved or opportunity to be seized.

Rationale: Step 4 sets limits on the solutions that the “strategy generators” will develop to solve the organization’s problems. If the leaders are not clear on the criteria they will use when choosing solutions, then any strategy is as good as any other. People generating ideas will waste time with solutions that clearly do not fit with the thinking of the leadership, or they will develop their own criteria. Either path leads to frustration and nonproductive conflict when the decision is finally made.

Responsible: The board, executive director, key staff, and anyone you identified in Step 3 as a participant in establishing criteria.

Actions: Once the decision makers have developed and adopted the conditions, you are ready for the next step in the process, generating possible strategies for the problems or opportunities.

Develop a list of criteria for successful strategies. Make them brief and simple—no more than five. Get approval from all decision makers. (You may find this previous Tools issue on strategy development to be helfpul: Real-Time Strategic Planning in a Rapid-Response World.)

Step 5: Brainstorm strategies
Purpose: To generate strategies that can best address the opportunities or problems in light of the criteria specified in Step 4.

Rationale: Step 5 will lead to options that can stand alone or be combined when addressing problems or opportunities.

Responsible: Staff leadership and those who will implement the strategies; everyone you listed in Step 3.

Actions: Design strategy-generating sessions using a process with which you are comfortable. Identify facilitators and participants, convene the groups, collect the options, and type them up for the decision-making group. Follow up with participants, who now feel a greater sense of connection with your organization because they have been a part of creating the solutions.

Step 6: Select the viable strategies
Purpose: To arrive at the best strategies for the organization. In this step, decision makers select the best strategies by combining their understanding of the problem or opportunity, their vision for the community and the organization, and the criteria for selection.

Rationale: This step is important because it sets the tone for how the strategies will be implemented. As the leadership decides which of the options are best for the organization and communicates its plan, it also builds on the support and interest of those who helped generate the solutions. It’s critical that leaders explain why they selected a particular strategy and discuss the full implications of the changes with all involved. This closes the communication loop throughout the organization and with anyone else the leadership has involved in solving the problem or addressing the opportunity.

Responsible: Executive director, board chair, anyone else identified in Step 3 whom you want to involve in final decision making.

Actions: Decide which strategy or strategies will be implemented. After the decision makers have agreed on solutions, begin developing an implementation plan, including how you will inform the people and groups that your strategies will affect. This plan should include milestones—measurable objectives with a due date and person or group responsible for the milestone. The executive director should monitor this plan to make certain that the problem is solved as expected.

Summary: Now is the Time for Nonprofits to Assert Their Values
Way back in 1997, writing in The Atlantic Monthly, international investor and multimillionaire George Soros stated, “Although I have made a fortune in the financial markets, I now fear that the untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society.” Later he writes, “Insofar as there is a dominant belief in our society today, it is a belief in the magic of the marketplace. The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest. Unless it is tempered by the recognition of a common interest that ought to take precedence over particular interests, our present system...is liable to break down.” ²

Now is the time for the nonprofit sector to step forth with the contention that no one system can answer all society’s questions; therefore society needs each sector’s best values at the table to make decisions and move toward a mutually desired future.

We believe that the nonprofit sector’s greatest asset is its value system as expressed in the question What good do we do for whom? We think that nonprofits need to assert this value—when communicating with the public, when collaborating with others, and when weighing in on public policy.

Furthermore, nonprofits must engage with the other sectors in ways that also satisfy their values. We believe that the public good will not be adequately served—and community problems will not be adequately solved—until these various value systems are brought into balance.

Where to Learn More

We've compiled a list of various resources on this topic on one web page for easier viewing. Please see: Opportunities in Lean Times.

Best of Luck,

Rebecca Post
Managing Editor
Fieldstone Alliance

October 23, 2008

¹ Results from a survey of nonprofit managers done for Coping with Cutbacks.
² George Soros, “The Capitalist Threat,” The Atlantic Monthly 279 (February 1997): 45, 48.

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