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How Nonprofits Dilute Their Efforts
Topics: Research-Research and DevelopmentOrganizations-Mission and PurposeSocial Enterprise-Nonprofit OrganizationsStrategy-General“Most of the nonprofits operating today make program decisions based on a mission rather than on a strategy,” writes HBS professor V. Kasturi Rangan in Harvard Business Review. “In fact,” he notes, “many nonprofits don’t have a strategy at all.” An excerpt follows.
Nonprofits rally under the banner of a particular cause, be it “Fight homelessness” or “End hunger.” And then, since that cause is so worthwhile, they support any program that’s related to it — even if only tangentially. While it is hard to fault people for trying, this approach is misguided. Acting without a clear long-term strategy can stretch an agency’s core capabilities and push it in unintended directions.
If a nonprofit doesn’t develop (its) operating mission and strategy platform in a disciplined way, its management tends to think every program is important. After all, each addresses the core mission in some fashion, so each is justified. But that kind of thinking causes a non-profit to drift from its original goals. It also contributes to the burnout of executives and staff, who feel as though they are working as hard as they can but see few results for their efforts. They may resist asking the following questions, but it’s crucial that they do:
- How effective are our programs?
- How efficiently are they executed?
- Which programs should we drop?
- Which should we seek to add?
If it doesn’t ask these tough questions, a nonprofit risks spreading itself too thin. While all programs may address the core mission in some way, their collective impact is severely diluted by a lack of coherence and consistency.
Instead of trying to be all things to all people, nonprofits should pick a niche, craft an operational mission, and, flowing from it, formulate a coherent strategy platform.
Excerpted from “Lofty Missions, Down-to-Earth Plans,” Harvard Business Review, March 2004. See the HBR section of the site: http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/whatweoffer/publications.html.
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