For when your organization or program is ready to grow!
You just realized you are probably now in the "grow" stage of your program or organizational life structure. This inspiring stage is reached after you have proven to be sustainable and are ready to grow and scale out. See below for the basic indicators and resources for this stage.
Basic Indicators
Your organization has existed and been operations for more than 3, probably even more than 5 years.
You have policies and procedures in place that are well communicated and well understood by your team. It might be time to look at what changes might be needed to adapt to current times and to include more input from your full team and the community you serve.
You have staff and/or workin volunteer committee structures in place. Perhaps it is time to hire more staff, think about restructuring, or adding more committees. This is a great time to check in with your team members about the work they are doing and see if there are any changes that can be made to better engage them.
You have consistent, loyal donors with stewardship practices that help keep an above average retention rate. If you haven't already added major gifts fundraising, planned giving, or capital campaign fundraising to your fundraising programs, then it might be a good time to do so. Talk with your fundraising team and see what their capacity is and what might be best for your organization. This is also a great time to put together a Fundraising Action Plan and consider multi-year pipeline projects.
You use cashflow management, program and event specific budgeting on top of your overall budget systems, and have at least some form of a reserve. You might be thinking about investing some monies if you haven't already, and it might be a good time to make sure your full team understands the finances and are an integral part of your budgeting system year over year.
You have at least one database, CRM, or other digital management system. Maybe you also have a separate system for emailing and newsletters and fundraising. Or maybe you are using one giant system for everything and it's not quite working out. Now is the perfect time to conduct audits on your systems to see if they are working for your teams, your community, your donors, and your organization. Either consolidate or break up into separate systems, whatever might work best for your teams.
You have done several multi-year strategic planning facilitations at this point, but they may just be a really expensive full day or multi-day practice that ends in a document that is hardly ever looked at again. Re-examine your processes and maybe do some research to see if there is a better way of facilitating. Maybe establishing custom board and team engagement plans might be a good idea. Invite members of the community you serve to participate in the process if they aren't already a part of it.
You have some Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility plans, statements, and practices in place, but you might need to do a check and make sure your organization is "living" those values.
You have a volunteer recruitment and management system in place, but perhaps you need to develop better onboarding for them. Have yourself or your staff be a "volunteer" for the day and move through the system from sign up to an actual volunteer shift. If they are feeling undervalued or overwhelmed, more than likely your volunteers are too. Maybe it's time to rethink the volunteer roles and strategies you are currently using.
You have a decent following on social media and people recognize your brand and what you do. Now would be a great time to think about teaming up with other, bigger names in the spaces you work to see what kind of collaborations can increase your visibility while better serving your community.
Your programs are up and running, but might need a full evaluation. Perhaps you are lacking vital perspective from the communities you serve and you could enhance your programs by including them in your program evaluation.
Resources helpful for this stage still in the works. Check back again at the end of August. In the meantime, check out our Helpful Resources page by clicking the tab on the menu at the top of this page for general resources.