Is your nonprofit running a Sprint or a Marathon?
Beware – you might be running a Marathon as if you
are running a Sprint.
Here are a few questions you can answer that will
tell you if your nonprofit is running a Sprint or Marathon:
Is your staff compensated above the seventy-fifth percentile
for their positions in comparable organizations?
Do you regularly budget for and produce annual
financial surpluses?
Is work – life balance encouraged by leaders and
practiced by most employees?
Do you regularly budget for and spend funds on “infrastructure”
like technology?
Do all employees have a professional development
plan which includes funding?
If you answered NO to all five of these questions,
then your organization is definitely running a Sprint.
If you answered YES to all five, then you are
running a nicely paced Marathon.
Can those you serve afford for you to be running a
Sprint, when you should be running a Marathon?
If you take a short term view of your mission, then you use that to
justify why you are going all out right now in everything you do. But you then run the risk of burning your
people out or losing them to better run “Marathon” organizations or bankrupting
your organization. Or maybe worse, you
end up doing low quality work which really doesn’t help anyone.
It’s hard.
You have a sense of urgency for your organization’s mission. But if – like most nonprofits – your mission
addresses a protracted issue, then you need to blend your sense of urgency with
a sense of responsibility for the long term thriving (beyond just surviving) of
your organization. And that’s making a
true Mission Impact.
For more ideas on how you can lead
breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site
at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com You will find free resources you can
download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no
cost. You can also check out my book, Mission Impact: Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested. And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit
Consulting on Facebook.
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