Redesigning Your Organizational Model for Sustainable Growth

Ask anyone in the nonprofit field — nonprofits are always busy. These organizations carry out essential and urgent duties, from housing the homeless to feeding the hungry and advocating for civil rights. At the same time, they’re often operating with small teams and budgets. As a result, nonprofits need to work hard, smart and fast.

However, working hard, smart and fast often takes a good deal of introspection, a limited commodity in the nonprofit world. Many nonprofits are at the mercy of their funding mechanisms when it comes to internal facing work: Funders are more likely to give to support programming than to support internal capacity building and strategic planning.

This dynamic means there are often few resources available to help nonprofits look inward. When the focus is mostly on your constituents, it’s tough to take a big picture look at how your programs are operating, how they might be improved, and how they can become more resilient and sustainable.

Unfortunately, this oversight can be dangerous. Mission and day-to-day work will suffer if a nonprofit is not regularly assessing their programs and updating their organizational models for the future and for sustainable growth.

Here are four strategies for ensuring your nonprofit is set up for sustainable growth — and, as a result, sustainable success.

1. Seek Signs That It’s Time for a Redesign

Not all organizations need a redesign. But when a nonprofit is in need of one, there are often tell-tale signs. At a high level, these signs could entail a mission drift, a shift in the services you provide, a change in grant funding or a fluctuation in donations.

More granularly, these signs might manifest as an expansion into a new sector — say, from advocating for affordable housing to now also advocating for affordable transit. Or, they might manifest as a new avenue of funding — perhaps your small-dollar donation stream is now supplemented by a hefty state or federal grant. Another key sign is inefficiency: Your team might be encountering delays, difficulties and other obstacles in delivering key programs and operations.

2. Understand the Dangers of Inaction

Organizational stagnation inhibits innovation and growth, meaning your organization won’t be providing the best programs and services possible. Further, your employees — the backbone of any successful nonprofit — may seek opportunities elsewhere. If they feel their roles and the broader mission aren’t fulfilling, then their satisfaction, performance and loyalty will suffer. Lastly, clients and partners could explore other options. They may feel they’re receiving sub-par programs and services, and so look for a different path.

3. Prioritize Sustainability

Once you determine the need for an organizational redesign and then commit to it, it’s time to put one principle first: sustainability. That is, ensuring the design changes you make don’t just improve things for six months, but rather for several years ahead.

To do this, each step of your organizational growth process should feature both a short- and long-term goal. These goals must be both realistic and measurable. Avoid ambiguity, like “increase services for the city’s most vulnerable residents” or “secure extra grants.” Instead, be concrete: “provide 100 extra meals each week to the city’s most vulnerable residents” or “secure $150,000 in state funding over the next three years.” 

Short- and long-term goals should also complement each other. For example, if your desire is to increase your program participation, set your end-of-year goal (i.e. short-term goal) to 25% growth in participation, and then your three-year goal (i.e. long-term goal) to 75% growth. Then take careful stock of how both goals are progressing. If you exceed your short-term goal and hit 50% growth in year one, but all your new participants leave your program by the end of year two, you’ve failed to achieve sustainable growth. That means it’s time to rethink the strategy.

4. Listen, Listen, Listen

As you redesign for sustainable growth, don’t do it behind closed doors or in a vacuum. Listening and gathering input is key — from staff, stakeholders, and the constituents you serve. Human capital is the most valuable asset in the redesign process. Ask your staff what they think works — and doesn’t work — about specific programs. Speak with donors about the impact that excites them and the impact they think is lacking. Chat with constituents about whether programs and services are meeting their needs. You can even speak with peer organizations, or review their 990s, to see what strategies they’re deploying.

Running a nonprofit is a challenge, but it’s essential to make time for introspection, redesign and building for sustainability. In the months ahead, use these strategies to ensure you’re setting your organization up for success — not just in 2022, but for the next decade.