Change Is the Norm: A Nimble Approach to Nonprofit Strategy

Over many years of nonprofit work, we've seen that CHANGE is the norm.

Organizations are constantly changing. It may be internal: staff, processes, platforms, programming. It may be externally driven: audience, partnerships, funding, policy. Sometimes change is specific to your org or industry. Sometimes it affects massive swaths of the population. Change can be positive, additive. Or it can be disruptive and harmful.

Our goal in partnering with nonprofits is to develop processes and frameworks that assume change WILL happen and give you room to move nimbly.

Nonprofit strategy cannot be step-by-step instructions. It should be a signpost pointing from where you are to where you hope to be — grounded in reality, anchored by a clear North Star, providing alignment and shared direction forward.

FRAMEWORKS

We owe appreciation to two great thinkers whose ideas have influenced our approach:

David La Piana | The Nonprofit Strategy Revolution

La Piana offers an alternate methodology for strategic planning that anticipates real-time change and places strategic thinking at the center. His "Real-Time Strategic Planning Cycle" helps organizations understand their business model and competitive advantages, articulate criteria and a shared vision for strategy develpment, and shape realistic priorities and implementation tactics. The cycle is designed to be repeated regularly, so that organizations with limited resources or capacity can sustain their strategic thinking over time, across emerging circumstances.

adrienne maree brown | Emergent Strategy

If La Piana is the toolbox, brown is the technique. brown provides guidance for change movements to be adaptive and deeply relational, embodying collective liberation within their own practices. She draws on biomimicry and the writings of Octavia Butler to create a deeply empathetic, people-centered vision for systemic change.

We come back to the list of core principles so often we're surprised our copy of "Emergent Strategy" still closes at all.

• Small is good, small is all. (The large is a reflection of the small.)

• Change is constant. (Be like water.)

• There is always enough time for the right work.

• There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.

• Never a failure, always a lesson.

• Trust the People. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.)

• Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass — build the resilience by building the relationships.

• Less prep, more presence.

• What you pay attention to grows.

"Strategy [is] building complex patterns and systems of change through relatively small interactions." —adrienne maree brown

(Buy the book. It's so, so good.)