AbilityFirst is a Southern California nonprofit serving people with developmental disabilities.   They came to La Piana Consulting at the height of the Great Recession in 2009 in order to think about strategies for responding to economic change.  Our Real-Time Strategic Planning (RTSP) process was a perfect fit for their needs because they wanted to know how to make good decisions in the face of change, and RTSP focuses on creating a Strategy Screen—or list of criteria—to guide decision making.

The challenge: the state of California provided approximately 50% of AbilityFirst’s funding either directly or indirectly—and the state was in the throes of a major budget crisis.  The last state budget process had resulted in significant cuts to state funded services, and the prospect for additional major cuts in coming years was certain.  AbilityFirst knew they had to be prepared to survive these cuts.

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What is so new about the New Normal? “The New Normal” is a phrase favored by pundits to describe the current economic and political condition of our nation. While we are settling into a new social contract—or perhaps it is the absence of one altogether—I can’t call it the New Normal. For nonprofits and the people they serve, for the poor, for the shrinking middle class, and for every American who still believes in the promise of a just society, it is the New Abnormal.

I will be leading the keynote at the Ohio Grantmakers Forum Annual Conference in October on the topic of Nonprofit Strategy in the New Abnormal and check out my recent guest blog at the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Tell me what you think. Is any of this new or normal?