The Human Services Strategic Restructuring Pilot Project: Transforming Nonprofits in Cuyahoga County, Ohio
Funded by the Deaconess Community Foundation and St. Luke's Foundation, this summary report, by Heather Gowdy, Jo DeBolt, and Melissa Mendes Campos, describes the Human Services Strategic Restructuring Pilot Project in Cuyahoga County. The pilot project brought together a group of 18 grantmaker organizations that were motivated by a common desire to offer struggling nonprofit with support "beyond a grant check." Their initiative attracted leaders from 76 nonprofits throughout the county. The year-long pilot project provided 17 organizations with readiness assessments and helped 8 organizations develop restructuring plans, culminating in four nonprofit restructurings (including a program transfer, two parent-subsidiary relationships, and a common board and management structure). This summary describes the powerful scalable impact of collaboration and how a funder initiative can serve to transform the social sector. Download the PDF.
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The Nonprofit Business Plan: The Leader's Guide to Creating a Successful Business Model
To Purchase:
Amazon
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Nonprofits often use the terms “strategic planning” and “business planning” interchangeably, but a good business plan goes beyond the traditional strategic plan, testing the economic logic and operational feasibility of the proposed strategy and detailing how and why it will succeed.
The Nonprofit Business Plan helps your organization understand what a business plan is and when you need one, and outlines a practical approach to creating a successful, sustainable business model.
A detailed case study is interwoven throughout the text, demonstrating how a nonprofit can move through the process in way that creates value for internal and external stakeholders alike. Readers may download and work with a sample financial model based on the case study.
Free previews of the worksheets and discussion guides are available below. Let us know what you think!
The Importance of Testing Assumptions
Testing assumptions – financial, operational, and market-related – is a critical part of the business planning process. In this podcast, Lester Olmstead-Rose and Heather Gowdy talk about why it is so important, and offer several examples of organizations that did that examination and made changes based on what they learned.
Length 9:05
Assessing the Need for a Business Plan
Which comes first, the strategy or the business plan? In this podcast, David La Piana, Heather Gowdy, and Amari Romero-Thomas talk about why and when organizations may need a business plan - or not.
Length 4:41
Beth's Blog
CausePlanet
CommonGood Vermont
Foundation Center
Foundation Center Atlanta
MassNonprofit.org
National Council of Nonprofits
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Twelve leaders from foundations across the nation met in San Francisco on March 9, 2012 to share practical advice for building successful funder initiatives to support nonprofits in pursuing different forms of partnership.
Co-sponsored by the Tides Center, the Foundation Center, and La Piana Consulting, this invite-only event engaged participants in examining the state of the field, learning from one another’s efforts, and exploring opportunities for funder collaboration to continue this work.
The group has graciously allowed us to share this report detailing the process and highlighting key takeaways to inspire and inform others.
