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Budgeting for the next fiscal year? A sustainable business plan can help keep your programs’ hard-won victories visible. This way your leadership team and board members can make better decisions based on mission impact, not just dry columns of dollar figures.

Budgeting for the next fiscal year? A sustainable business plan matrix map can help keep your programs’ hard-won victories visible. Base budget decisions on mission impact, not just dry columns of numbers.

You could budget the basic way …

1. Look at what programs cost this year.
2. Estimate additional costs next year.
3. Try to shoehorn it all to fit in next year’s revenue estimate.

… but in doing so you’d lose context, stories, the big picture of how your mission activities are driving toward your vision of a world changed for the better. There’s a better way.

1. Plug this year’s expense figures and a mission impact rating into a simple spreadsheet.
2. Generate a bubble chart showing where each program fell on profitability (income-expenses) and mission impact this year.
3. Do the same thing with next year’s projected expenses and desired mission impact.
4. Compare the two bubble charts and ask your leadership team and your board: Are these programs fulfilling our mission and moving the world toward our vision of a better future?

All you need are these figures to generate a sustainable business plan matrix map and help keep your programs’ hard-won victories visible.

The resulting charts are matrix maps, and the idea behind them comes from Jan Masaoka’s excellent book Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability. Here are really brief instructions on making your own spreadsheet like the one above:

1. Profitability: This is Revenue (how much money the program brings in, from all sources) minus Expenses (explained below). To keep things readable, I haven’t shown the Revenue column in the example spreadsheet, but you’ll need it.
2. Mission Impact: Assess the mission impact of each program, 1=well below average, 5=well above average, against several criteria. Jan’s book, and I, recommend starting with these criteria: alignment with core mission, excellence, and filling an important gap. After that, you can develop your own.
3. Expenses: Every expenditure directly attributable to the program. This figure determines the size of the bubble on the matrix map, so you can tell at a glance which are your big programs and which are the small ones.

Visualizing your budget with a matrix map shows you the whole picture of how spending money creates mission impact. Comparing this year’s matrix map with next year’s shows you clearly how you’re moving toward your vision of a world changed for the better. That way, your leadership team and board can make better budget decisions.

What about you? How would a visualization tool like the matrix map help your leadership team and board make better budgeting decisions? Tell me in the comments or on Twitter: @johnmfulwider

P.S. At a June 4, 2013, workshop I’ll walk you step-by-step through making your own matrix map. I’m speaking at HBE Becker Meyer Love’s Nonprofit Round Table, which is for the accounting firm’s clients and non-clients alike. It’s a gigantic bargain at zero dollars, and lunch is included. Register here: http://hbecpa.com/event/

P.P.S. If you can’t make the June 4 workshop, read more here about the Sustainable Business Planning for Nonprofits workshops I occasionally schedule. To get notified when I schedule the next one, please subscribe to my email newsletter.

P.P.P.S. Man, I just keep going on, don’t I? I’ve got a spreadsheet I can give you that’s already programmed to generate the cool bubbles for your very own matrix map. All you have to do is ask nicely: john AT johnfulwider DOT com

P.P.P.P.S. Last one, I promise. If you want to get another read on sustainable business planning and matrix mapping—and you should, because you really can’t get enough knowledge about this powerful tool—read this article from Blue Avocado. It’s by Steve Zimmerman, one of the coauthors with Jan Masaoka of the aforementioned Nonprofit Sustainability. (Yep, I said “aforementioned”—just be glad I didn’t say “hereunto appertaining.”) In case I didn’t make it clear earlier, the matrix map is not my idea—it’s Steve’s, and Jan’s, and Jeanne Bell’s (the third and final coauthor of the book).

In a recent post on Marc Pitman’s blog, fundraisingcoach.com, I wrote about how boards can lead from strengths to fundraise more effectively.

But what if my board’s fearful of fundraising? Well, Marc Pitman can help you them learn to, you know, Ask without Fear (ba dum dum CHING!), but strengths-based leadership can as well. An often-overlooked element of ensuring abundant resources is enhancing the organization’s public standing. The public’s high regard for your organization is itself a resource you can transform into dollars.

Nonprofit boards can fundraise and govern more effectively when they lead from their strengths, I wrote on Marc’s blog. Forming strengths-based leadership teams lets members operate from their natural talents, instead of pushing against their weaknesses. The result: More mission impact for the organization, and more personal fulfillment for the members.

In a workshop I’ve put together called Strengths-Based Board Leadership, I provide some suggested matches for individual board members’ Gallup StrengthsFinder strengths and their responsibility to raise the organization’s public standing. These suggestions are intended to inspire your own thinking about how you can form strong leadership teams using your colleagues’ mix of strengths.

• Communication: Presents the organizationʼs mission well to external stakeholders.
• Consistency: Keeps fairness toward all client segments top of mind; itʼs right, also good PR.
• Harmony: Presents the organizationʼs work as a win-win, amid diverse views.
• Inclusiveness: Ensures full and fair engagement of all external stakeholders.
• Input: Gathers external information on the organizationʼs standing.
• Learner: Looks for new public relations techniques for organizational image boosts.
• Positivity: Gets the public excited about the change the organization is making.
• Woo: Reaches out to new people and wins them over.

What about your board? How have your board members used their strengths to speak well of your organization at every opportunity, and raise its public standing? Tell me in the comments, or let me me know on Twitter: @johnmfulwider.

Nonprofit development director, what could you achieve with weekly support, encouragement and advice from five peers facing the same opportunities and challenges?

What would it mean to you to:

• Feel less alone?
• Receive pep talks from professionals who have overcome the challenges you’re facing?
• Get expert advice tuned just to you, from people who know you and your organization?

If you’re ready to raise more money for your organization and be happier, you can do it with help from your peers.

How it Works

Successful people throughout history got that way by meeting regularly with a small team of peers facing similar opportunities and challenges. These “mastermind group” members support and challenge each other to achieve more, quicker, with more happiness than they could alone.

For nonprofit development directors like you, I’ve created a “mastermind group plus”: You get peer coaching from up to five other fundraisers at different organizations, plus professional coaching from me. So that’s:

1. An “in the trenches” perspective from peers who have faced the same opportunities and challenges as you, or will soon; and
2. An “above the fray” perspective from a professional coach who counsels all sorts of nonprofit professionals across the country.

Here’s what it looks like:

• A one-hour phone meeting three times a month with fellow development directors.
• Getting “12 minutes of fame” (who needs 15?): 12 minutes focused just on you, to get honest, informed, helpful feedback on your latest opportunities and challenges, on a rotating basis.
• Giving feedback to your peers based on your own experience and success.
• Being challenged to take positive action quickly—as in, before next week’s call.
• Investing in a trusted group of advisers who will be there for you through success and failure, joy and tears.

Next step: April 22 launch party

Your next step is to attend my April 22 launch party for the peer coaching groups. Here are the details:

• Who: Development directors of Lincoln nonprofit organizations.
• What: Launch party for Help from Peers, peer coaching + professional coaching for development directors
• When: Monday, April 22. Networking, 11:30 a.m.; program, 12 p.m.; guaranteed to end at 1 p.m.
• Where: Mo Java, 2649 N. 48th St.
• Why: Free coffee and tea (I’m buying); learn how customized-to-you advice and encouragement from other development directors can
  dramatically increase your fundraising success, mission impact, and job satisfaction.
• How: RSVP to john AT johnfulwider DOT com, (402) 608-1608

What do you think?

What do you think? Are you stoked? Do you have questions? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter: @johnmfulwider