The cure for the nonprofit crisis? Focus.
- Thu, November 03 2011
- Filed under: Nonprofit leadership
That’s the message of a Harvard Business Review post by Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi. They note that our sector has seen billions less in donations in recent years, though not all charities have been affected equally. Some have suffered, while some have thrived. A big difference? According to Leinwand and Mainardi, it’s the degree of focus of the organizational strategy and leadership. Watered-down focus means watered-down results - and fundraising.
Three quarters of nonprofits they studied said they had too many conflicting priorities, and only 29% said the distinctive things their could do better than anyone else (their “core capabilities”) actually supported their strategy. Almost 80% said their organization’s efforts to grow had led to waste. Which both led to - and resulted from - chasing off-mission grants out of desperation for resources.
This so-called crisis of coherence only heightens competition for resources, since it creates more and more overlap among organizations—and makes them harder for donors to distinguish.
So what’s an organization to do? The authors point to tightly focused organizations like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the Mayo Foundation, which focus on what they do best to drive a clear strategy and distinct “way to play” - their unique way of achieving their mission.
I agree.
Here are my four tips for focusing on how you are different - which is a critical step to coherence - and fundraising success.
1. Strength: What is your strong suit, or what strength can you create? Are you especially good at building relationships with your constituents? Do you have very good services or an innovative approach to tackling your issue?
2. Difference: What makes you unique? Do you have the most stellar reputation in your field? Are you the biggest, or the first to offer a service? Are your services more accessible than those of your competitors? Is your overhead lower than that of other groups?
3. Simplicity: Is your strength or difference a simple, easily grasped concept? At best, you can stand for just one attribute in each audience’s mind, so make that quality clear and memorable.
4. Value to audience: Last, check yourself. Is the quality you’ve chosen something that your audiences actually care about? The competitive advantage you cite is not an advantage if it’s irrelevant or uninteresting to the people you want to reach.
Comments
Great post Katya, we blogged on the same HBR article a little way back and also focused more on “focus” than coherence (odd word when focus is simpler and works better and this is all reminiscent of a million books on branding, but nevertheless..), http://www.thedonorvoice.com/?p=386
As you may recall, our Commitment survey work found that ‘focus” (or at least our interpretation of the driver similar to this) is #1 in creating a functional connection with the donor - meaning the ability to deliver a consistent, reliable experience.
We really like your 4 takeaways, particularly relevance - being different, consistent and reliable hardly matters if you don’t connect.
Good points worth considering. If I were evaluating a communications campaign from either side of the checkbook, I’d want to clearly see what makes the organization unique.
We should definitely compare program reach, administrative efficiency, volunteer hours, and other metrics. Those should be part of a campaign, but not at the expense of foregrounding qualities that make an organization the absolute best at fulfilling its mission.
I really like this post.Leadership is very important in every field whether it is business.economy or teaching…:-)