I know your nonprofit faces changes from every direction in this economic environment. Are you facing some of these challenges?

• Doing more with less money
• Decreasing donations for increasing needs
• Aging donor base
• Next generation stakeholders who want a different relationship with nonprofits
• Global competition for donations
• Uncertain tax legislation slowing or freezing corporate and large gift patrons
• Competing with large nonprofits with sophisticated and automated giving programs
• Increasing costs for developing and printing marketing and collateral materials to support your mission, vision, and values.
• Increasing noise and exposure to a wide variety of fundraising messages through social media and traditional marketing channels

All these factors have contributed to the decline of nonprofits. For many leaders, these environmental changes have accelerated the decline and ultimate death of their organizations. So how are you dealing with these fundraising challenges? One of our core principles is that fundraising is dead. We believe that you’ll need a plan for marketing and communications to continue to be successful.

With all these challenges, it’s no wonder you feel overwhelmed. I’ve discovered several key success factors that successful nonprofit organizations share. If you have these key elements in place it will make it easier to share your organization’s message. Without these elements, your message could get lost in the crowd. These elements come from Jim Collin’s book Good to Great and the Social Sectors.

If you’re not familiar with this monograph, you might want to grab a copy of it. For less than $10.00 at Amazon or Barnes and Noble online, you can get a great overview on how to apply the Good to Great lessons to your organization. I’ll be sharing several key concepts from the book in my next blog here at Developing Serving Leaders. I’ve used both the book and monograph Good to Great to help many of my more successful clients take their efforts to the next level. I’ve found if you don’t have a solid foundation in place, no level of marketing and communications strategy can help you build an outstanding organization.

In my experience, many organizations have several of the key elements in place but have been unsuccessful in getting the synergies they need to take their organizations to the next level. Counterintuitively the more elements they have in place the less likely they will become great organizations. So, come back and keeping reading my blog to learn the strategies you need to take your organization from Good to Great.