Summer’s Over – Now What?: Nonprofits continue to navigate uncertain waters

In March when life as we knew it came to a screeching halt, our nonprofit clients were shouldering the impact of unexpected changes on many levels: working remotely, introducing children to virtual learning, balancing family and work responsibilities without support, and realizing there was little time for volunteer or any other non-essential activities.

Our immediate response was to help clients focus on what could be accomplished versus what could not be accomplished, allowing for some modifications to “how one does business” to address the new virtual landscapes that quickly replaced our traditional work environments.

At the time, the future was uncertain, so long-range planning seemed unachievable if not irrelevant. To maintain momentum, we focused our clients on what we’ve come to refer to as the 12-week COVID-19 Plan. This style of short-term planning allowed volunteer leadership to identify benchmarks and measurable objectives to be completed over a 12-week period. The plan was clear and manageable, with a workable timeline. We could celebrate success, and then focus on creating the next 12-week plan. A semblance of routine returned.

But now, we are approaching the end of the summer and facing an unfamiliar fall season. While things have “opened up” to some degree, business as usual has not returned nor has a “new normal’ been solidly established. So now what?

Protect your people. Revise your fundraising model.

Nonprofits have responded to the immediate concerns, made appropriate adjustments to keep “the lights on,” and accommodated both staff and volunteers through remote workplaces and virtual connections. Now it’s time to take a deeper dive.

Here are four things nonprofits can do during this COVID-19 recovery that will enable them to retain resources, sustain momentum, and remain relevant now and through the years that follow:

1)    Pay attention to the people. Both personal and work lives have been uprooted. The social aspects of working on a team, from gathering after work for happy hour or simply chatting between workstations, has been curtailed. Gathering volunteers together for work projects and fundraising events provided a level of engagement that does not totally translate into a virtual framework. People in general are experiencing a wide range of emotions, including concerns about their health, the pressure to care for family members, anxiety over job and financial security, and stress due to disruption of normalcy. 

Caring for your people needs to be a priority. Consider things like maintaining visibility with a strong two-way communication plan, encouraging flexible work schedules to allow your team and volunteers to work most productively, fostering stronger engagement through virtual social time, providing assistance with technology which will play an important role in our new normal, and maintaining an overall positive experience for your team and volunteers. It’s all about the people, and your investment will help them, the organization, and you – be the role model.

2)    Assess your social impact. Now more than ever nonprofits are revisiting their missions and visions for social impact and evaluating success through community engagement, programs, services, and outreach. Social impact measures what you’re trying to create and how you plan to create it. Maintaining social impact will help nonprofits remain relevant during these uncertain times and will inform decisions on finances and capacity, especially as you begin to plan strategically for the future.

Your social impact will also allow you to frame the value of the nonprofit’s work to invigorate donors, engage corporate partners and sponsors, and motivate your team and volunteers. Many nonprofits are recreating service delivery models, engaging stakeholders and new communities to extend their reach, and ensuring that the organization is working from a position of strength, financial and otherwise. This is an opportunity to embrace change to ensure impact.

3)    Continue to build your tech strength. When nonprofits transitioned to a remote workforce, it required modifications to the traditional IT systems and work protocols. Nonprofits who were not using virtual tools needed to ramp up quickly and provide immediate training to team members who were unfamiliar with the latest technology, not to mention training volunteers with even less exposure to virtual platforms. Those who were working remotely needed to up their game, with ongoing training to ensure team members and volunteers were using systems seamlessly.

As meetings and volunteer interactions become almost totally virtual, staff members are using both work and personal devices, and nearly everyone is connecting to the Internet on their home Wi-Fi networks, which could create security concerns that nonprofits should address to keep their systems safe. Technology is also rapidly changing to meet the new demand, so staying current with those upgrades and enhancements is also important to functioning remotely.

Now that we’ve come to accept that virtual work settings will remain in place for some time, continuing to build your tech strength is critical. As you envision the space that will work for your nonprofit and begin to build it, make sure your infrastructure—and staff and volunteer workforce—is remote ready.

4)    Build a Road to Financial Recovery. In many cases, the reflex response to fundraising in this COVID-19 environment was to move current activities and events to “virtual activities and events.” Some have been very successful. Others not so much. Nonprofits are feeling the pressure to replace lost revenue in order to provide the programs and services they’ve promised their communities, yet they are, in some cases, ill-equipped to do that.

It may be time to not only refashion current fundraising events and activities, but to consider new, innovative ways to increase revenue streams. It is certainly a good opportunity to reframe your funding model so that income streams are more diverse and less dependent upon a single revenue source. This may be time to “recut” your pie graph to ensure your revenue is more equally distributed. 

Organizations that have been primarily funded through events are now looking at individual giving programs. Others are moving away from solely grant funding to incorporating service fees. Funding models can incorporate a menu of different revenue sources to help you meet, and even expand, your fundraising goals. This may be an ideal time to reassess your fundraising plan to reduce risk and secure the future of your nonprofit and the communities you serve.

What’s next?

This pandemic has been impacting nonprofits and the communities they serve in numerous ways, including the cancellation of programs or events, the increased demand for services, volunteer stress and anxiety, and budgetary challenges.

Those nonprofits who are successfully weathering this storm are "exercising their flexibility muscles" by embracing the changes, mastering the virtual platforms, ensuring social impact, and using "out of the box" thinking to create revenue streams that will sustain and grow their organizations despite the current environment.

Nonprofits are resilient. We believe in the cause and that propels us to success no matter the obstacles. We can do this!

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