- I’m starting a new series about the nonprofit life cycles
- Specifically, how to know where you are and what it will take to move on to the next stage
- We talk about growth in our sector – growing your budget, growing your team, getting bigger…
- But a bigger budget isn’t always the best next goal – it’s not what you should be focused on
- It doesn’t always tell the right story of where your organization is, and focusing on it doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to stay there and have the impact you want
- What if your next best milestone is making sure you have the right people in the right roles? Your staff stays the same size, but looks totally different in 6 months
- What if the best thing for your organization is to shift the structure and nature of your board — again, not necessarily have a bigger board – but a more committed and engaged board of the same size. 7 deeply active board members is way better, and will have more influence on your impact, than 12 people who you have to prod to show up and help bring in people and resources.
- Rather than budget size alone, or even age of the org, I recommend understanding your stage of development – where is your organization in its growth and maturity. That will tell you what to focus on next
Why am I focused on this?
I work with organizations at two stages – when they’re launching and getting off the ground; and when they’re established and ready to grow without being overwhelmed, and in a way that ensures stability.
Both of these are inflection points – launch and growth stage – so I get a lot of questions about useful tactics. I want to zoom out and give you a framework for growth rooted in intentionality and a strategic approach to growth, and that emphasizes stability and sustainability.
The framework of nonprofit life cycles just makes sense: f you want to grow your organization and stay stable, you have to do the right thing at the right time.
First, knowing your stage provides insight into key milestones and challenges. You want to make sure that you recognize the stage you’re in so that you can set the right goals and address the right challenges.
If your goals, plans, and actions aren’t aligned with where you are, they will be less effective.
Second, you also want to know what the next stage is so that you can prepare to grow – you want to set the next best goal for the health and stability of your organization.
If you waste time and resources aiming at the wrong goal or trying to institute practices that your organization is not set up to support, running your organization will feel hard and heavy.
Put more positively, a clear understanding of your organization’s “life stage” can help frame critical conversations, inform strategic decisions, and offer a starting point for capacity-building.
So there are 10 stages
- Idea, birth:
- Infancy/ toddler
- Post-Start-up: Childhood
- Early growth – Teen
- Late growth – Young adult
- Prime Adult/ Zone of Maximization
I talk about these more broadly in another episode…
How To Use Nonprofit Life Cycles To Reflect On The State of Your Organization (October 2021)
In this series, I’m focused specifically on how to use this framework to shape your strategic decisions. The characteristic goals of each phase, and the next best milestones to strive for in order to move to the next phase.
In this episode, I’ll be focused on the infancy — the early stages of idea and launch and start up; Next I’ll look at childhood – you’re not in start-up but you’re not in an intentional growth phase; third, I’ll look at the two growth stages – early growth and late growth; and finally, I’ll look at the zone of maximization — what a mature org looks like.
I have two resources for those of you who are founders and listening:
A 1-page nonprofit launch plan template that walks you through your key decisions for the first year – a roadmap to guide you during this phase.
You can sign up for that at richiebabbage.com/nonprofitlaunchplan
AND
I’m launching a private podcast that you can subscribe to called Your Nonprofit Launch Roadmap. I’ll walk through the 6 steps to take to bring your idea from launch to launch, including a deep dive into Myths and Mistakes that can undermine your success.
You can sign up for that at richiebabbage.com/nonprofitlaunchpodcast
So let’s dive in!
As a brief overview of where we’re going:
Your goals from idea to launch: First, launch and Second, proof of concept, and Third, formalize.
To get to the point where you’re ready to move to your next phase — the childhood, post-start up phase — you need to get clear about the substantive foundations of your organization, make decisions about your structure, and craft and formalize key decisions about your initial plans – programs, strategic direction, staff, board, and fundraising.
So, a closer look at the first stage: the idea/birth phase. This is where you’ve identified a problem and are developing your idea of a solution.
So think of your organization as launching as soon as you begin running programming – doing work – testing your idea. I name that because even if you aren’t incorporated – even if you haven’t chosen your corporate structure, which we’ll talk about in a moment, you begin to carry out your mission as soon as you begin to carry out your mission.
So your next best goal for this phase is to launch. Simply put, you’re aiming at pulling the pieces that you’ll need to move from idea to an actual thing.
Your strategic growth focus – or transitioning out of this phase – requires the initial concretization of both substance and structure. Substance is – what are you about? This means a deep understanding of the problem you’re solving, a clear mission, and a clear theory of change.
Structure mostly means determining your structure and formalizing. Becoming an entity.
This is about determining the right corporate structure for your mission and target beneficiaries.
You don’t need to be a nonprofit – or a 501c3. You may want to be a social enterprise or hybrid. During COVID, we saw a lot of unincorporated mutual aid groups and social impact networks.
The key is, choose a format and commit to it, because your format will shape how you move through the world.
This is also taking the steps to formalize – incorporating, filing your 1023 to get your tax exempt status, finding your first board members. Understanding the legal requirements of your state – here in NY, you need 3 board members, you need bylaws, you need to register with the charities bureau…
Finally, it also means making some personal decisions: Do you want to start something? Does formalizing your idea make sense? Is it something you want to do? Does it need to be a nonprofit?
Many people don’t move beyond the idea stage into the formal “start-up” stage.
It’s hard to get something off the ground… they move into the startup phase. You make the move from infancy and toddlerhood into childhood…
For those who head into the start-up phase, the organization is mostly still just the founder. This phase is marked by high energy, limited funding, and a newly acquired legal status as an entity.
So the goals of this phase are proof of concept and initial formalization. Start-ups need to substantiate that there’s a problem that is real, urgent, and in need of being solved, and they need to prove the impact of their theory of change by experimenting with program design.
Transitioning out of this phase requires crafting and formalization of initial plans. What is your program plan? Do you have a strong program logic model? Do you have an initial business or strategic implementation plan? This is where the free download I created can help: richiebabbage.com/nonprofitlaunchplan Do you have an initial fundraising plan that is focused on implementation?
For your staff, you want to focus on determining the roles that your organization will need to grow. You’ll begin to move from a loose constellation of people, to an intentionally designed team. I did an episode about role mapping — How To Figure Out Your Next Hire
For your board, in this stage, your goal is to shift into an early-stage governance board that is structured and not made up entirely of friends.
So, to recap:
Your goals from idea to launch: First, launch and Second, proof of concept, and Third, formalize.
To get to the point where you’re ready to move to your next phase — the childhood, post-start up phase — you need to get clear about the substantive foundations of your organization, make decisions about your structure, and craft and formalize key decisions about your initial plans – programs, strategic direction, staff, board, and fundraising.
In the next episode, I’ll look at the specific goals of the childhood phase, and the milestones you’ll be aiming at in order to graduate from this phase.
Links Mentioned:
Nonprofit Launch Podcast
How To Figure Out Your Next Hire
How To Use Nonprofit Life Cycles To Reflect On The State of Your Organization (October 2021)
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