If you're small and trying to grow bigger and have high impact, take heart. Most of the things you beat yourself up about don't really matter all that much, at least according Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant. Their research shows that perfect management, brand awareness, breakthrough ideas, textbook mission statements, overhead ratios and large budgets are not the best measures of nonprofit excellence. The best measure, it turns out, is the extent to which a nonprofit can mobilize government, business, nonprofits and the public to be "forces for good."
6 Practices for Mobilizing Others to Achieve High Impact
Crutchfield and Grant outline six mobilization practices in their book, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits. They include the following:
1. Advocate and Serve. Work with government and advocate for policy change. Most organizations offer great programs only to realize that they cannot achieve the change they seek through service delivery alone. They also need to work with government and allied organizations to achieve high impact.
2. Make Markets Work. Harness market forces and see business as a powerful partner. The private sector is not the enemy. Rather, it is possible to influence business practices, build corporate partnerships and leverage market forces to achieve high impact.
3. Inspire Evangelists. Convert individual supporters into evangelists who can help you achieve high impact. Volunteers are more than free labor and annual gifts. Rather, by connecting with individuals through special events and telling compelling stories, nonprofits can engage diverse stakeholders and connect them to the larger mission.
4. Build and Nurture Nonprofit Networks, treating other groups as allies. Other nonprofits are not to be shunned as competitors for a limited pool of philanthropic support. Rather, time, talent and treasure should be given to them freely to promote their success. The overarching goal should be the creation of strong nonprofit networks that achieve high impact.
5. Adapt to the Changing Environment. This goes to my tagline, a Deming quote: "It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." Successful organizations and their staffs have to pay attention to external cues. They have to change service delivery and often the services themselves to remain relevant and achieve high impact.
6. Share Leadership, empowering others to be forces for good. Successful leaders check their egos at the door, putting the organization's interests and the cause itself, first. They let others, both inside and outside of the organization, be "heroes."
Achieving High Impact in a Nutshell
The book is filled with detailed examples of how nonprofits, large and small, have implemented the six practices. It is available on Amazon for under $20.