Investing in a transformative strategic engagement stretches the resources of most nonprofits, foundations, and education institutions. A refresh of your brand strategy, embarking on a new strategic plan, or a major fundraising campaign happen at most twice a decade.
Many organizations in the sectors Mission Minded serves have no choice but to do the work in-house. Perhaps a board member or two can offer pro-bono support, or a staff member with previous experience in strategy leads the effort. (That’s one of the reasons we share resources like our guides and blog free of charge. Our vision is that organizations like yours have what you need to succeed!)
The nonprofits and schools that do work with Mission Minded have marshaled significant funds and carved out the leadership bandwidth to engage with an external partner. They’re ready to make the most of the opportunity to collaborate with strategic and creative experts.
Yet the nature of mission-driven organizations means many still come to us with a risk-averse, resource-scarce mindset. They’re understandably so diligent in protecting resources that they miss out on an opportunity to truly activate the strategy they’ve invested in so heavily.
In short, they budget for the strategic work, but fail to budget to take full advantage of their new strategies.
Here are a few ways we’ve seen nonprofit and school leaders shift their mindsets around budgeting to deliver on the transformative promise of their strategic engagement with Mission Minded.
Mindset Shift: A Great Image = 1,000 Words
I want to start by highlighting one of the most frequent funding shortages we see in our work — and that’s on the development of new, high-quality photography and video content for rebrands, and admission and fundraising campaigns.
Standing out to the audiences you need to attract requires an investment in not just a strategy, but also in developing compelling creative assets that are authentic to your organization. Stock imagery and DIY video are rarely distinctive. And team members walking around with an iPhone but without training and experience in shooting resonant imagery have a hard time capturing the emotion you need.
Make sure your initiative includes the time and funding to develop and tell your story visually — including a first wave to launch your rebrand or campaign, and then ongoing resources to continue to feed your communications and sustain your impact.
A nonprofit client of ours replaced their in-house video with a professionally developed one in the second year of their capital campaign. The number of unsolicited gifts doubled year-over-year!
The mindset shift here is that your communications need more than a strategy to be effective. You’ve invested in the strategy and you’ve invested in the key messages and copy. Don’t forget that your visual storytelling is as impactful as your logo, tagline, and theme.
Mindset Shift: Elevate the Opportunity
Convincing your board of directors to invest in a rebrand, strategic plan, or major fundraising campaign means painting a picture of the long-term benefits and the potential impact on your organization’s mission — not over-emphasizing the short-term risk and cost.
For example, if you’re trying to lead your board to invest in a strategic plan, emphasize to your board that strategic planning will ensure clarity of purpose, alignment of resources, and efficient use of funds. Proactive planning can help your organization adapt to a shifting landscape and capitalize on emerging opportunities. Share success stories of other nonprofits, foundations, or schools that have achieved significant growth and impact through strategic planning to help illustrate the tangible benefits.
A head of school who recently hired us to refresh her school’s brand convinced her board to fund the work by sharing independent research she conducted among school leaders who’d done similar work several years before. While their results were all unique to their challenges, they were all markedly positive.
Ultimately, position whatever strategic initiative you’re trying to fund as an essential tool for sustainable growth and maximizing your organization’s impact. Doing so will help shift the mindset of your board members and compel them to make the investment.
Mindset Shift: Identify an Underwriter
Yearly nonprofit, foundation, and school budgets rarely have the padding to absorb the investment required for rebranding, strategic plan, or major campaign. Incrementally raising more money and cutting operations to find the funds rarely pan out — and leave many internal teams frustrated by the negative short-term impact to their programs and workload.
A different approach is to reframe your strategic initiative as a standalone project worthy of major gift development. Start by collaborating with your board members, high-capacity donors, foundations, and other key supporters to plant the seeds for the need and potential of your effort. As you gain traction, move those conversations into proposals.
A client of ours recently reported back: “The board member who funded our strategic plan has been so inspired by the work she now wants to fund next year’s brand work.”
Another client, a start-up membership organization, developed and launched their brand through the grant support of a foundation partner.
And we’ve seen board members at several independent schools step up with major gifts to support rebrands that would ensure their school’s long-term sustainability.
If you go this route, tailor your pitches to each potential funder, highlighting specific points of alignment with their values and priorities. Building trust and rapport through transparent communication, personalized engagement, and a clear roadmap for their collaboration and input can ultimately tip the scales in convincing a funder to invest.
Mindset Shift: Borrow Upfront to Support Your Effort
Have you considered borrowing money to fund a major brand, campaign, or strategic plan? This approach initially makes many leaders uncomfortable because they take their fiscal stewardship duties seriously. To be successful, you must coach your leadership team and board so that they are 100% behind the strategic imperative and see that the ROI outweighs the risks.
Why borrow? Investing in a strategic initiative can yield significant returns in terms of increased visibility, donor and community engagement, and ultimately, greater impact on your mission. By leveraging borrowed funds, you can amplify your message, attract more supporters and top talent, and secure additional funding opportunities in the long run. Underfunded efforts, on the other hand, can fall short of expectations because despite compelling strategy and creative, there’s not enough budget to execute the plan to its potential – so you limp along with incremental gain rather than bold and measurable advances.
A health services agency that we partnered with to develop fundraising tools recently borrowed to engage an independent fundraising professional to steward the quiet phase of their campaign. They recouped his annual fee in the first gift he cultivated!
If you are open to thinking more about borrowing, then conduct a thorough financial analysis and assess your capacity to repay the debt over the medium term. You’ll need to be transparent with all your stakeholders about the rationale behind borrowing and the expected outcomes of the initiative to maintain both trust and accountability.
Invest With Confidence
To be truly successful in your work and move past incremental change, this moment calls for your unapologetic boldness. That starts with your vision for change and the impact your organization seeks to create. Just as essential is the bold confidence required to invest in strategic initiatives that bring audacious ideas to reality.
Ready to learn more? See these case studies about our partnerships with organizations like yours and the results they’ve accomplished. And then let’s talk about how your organization can reach its next level of impact.