Strategic Planning
Your Nonprofit Has a Mission. Does It Have a Plan?
A mission tells people why you exist. A strategic plan tells your team what to do about it this year, and how you will know whether it worked.
7 min readRead Article →
The CAMPBELL Blog
Practical Guidance for
Mission-Driven Leaders.
Strategy, program design, performance measurement, grants, governance, and operations — written for the people who have to make these decisions with real constraints and finite capacity. No theory for its own sake, and nothing you cannot act on this quarter.
Articles
Insights You Can Use.
Filter by topic, or read straight through. Every article ends with an open invitation to a free consultation.
Strategic Planning
From Strategic Plan to Action: What Happens After the Board Approves It?
Board approval is the midpoint of a strategic plan, not the finish line. What happens in the ninety days afterward determines whether the plan becomes an operating system or a binder.
8 min readRead Article →
Grants & Funding
Are You Grant-Ready? What to Put in Place Before Applying
Most declined proposals are not rejected because the program was weak. They are rejected because the organization could not document, on deadline, what it was already doing well.
8 min readRead Article →
Program Design
Before You Launch Another Program, Ask These 7 Questions
Most programs are not designed. They accumulate. Seven questions, answered honestly before launch, prevent the most expensive mistakes.
9 min readRead Article →
Performance Measurement
Outputs vs. Outcomes: How to Show the Difference Your Nonprofit Makes
Counting the people you served tells a funder how busy you were. It does not tell them whether anything changed. Here is the difference, with examples.
7 min readRead Article →
Performance Measurement
Data Tracking 101 for Small Nonprofits
You do not need a database, a dashboard vendor, or a data analyst to start. You need five measures, one owner each, and a spreadsheet you actually maintain.
8 min readRead Article →
Operations
Your Nonprofit Is Growing. Are Your Systems Keeping Up?
The informal processes that carried you to twelve staff will not carry you to thirty. Here are the warning signs, and what to document first.
8 min readRead Article →
Operations
What Does Your Program Really Cost?
Most nonprofits underprice their own programs, then wonder why growth makes the budget harder. Full cost includes staff time you are not counting.
8 min readRead Article →
Governance
Board or Staff? Clarifying Who Owns What
Most board-staff friction is not a personality problem. It is an unwritten role agreement, and it can be fixed in one working session.
8 min readRead Article →
Consulting
How to Work With a Consultant—and Get Lasting Value
The difference between a consulting engagement that changes an organization and one that produces a report is mostly decided by the client, before the work starts.
8 min readRead Article →
Project Management
Project Management for Nonprofits: Turning Good Ideas Into Completed Work
Nonprofits rarely fail for lack of good ideas. They stall because nobody owns the work, the sequence was never mapped, and the finish line was never defined.
8 min readRead Article →
Strategic Planning
Planning for Uncertainty: What to Do When Funding Changes
You cannot forecast a grant decision or a policy change. You can decide, in advance and calmly, what you would protect and what you would let go.
9 min readRead Article →
No articles in that topic yet.
Free Consultation
Have a question about your organization?
Bring the problem you are actually facing. A consultation is free, carries no obligation, and is a conversation rather than a sales call.