What Makes an Education Nonprofit Sustainable?
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What causes one education nonprofit to succeed while another fails?
What makes a program sustainable?
How does one avoid exhausting resources?
A sponsor of an education nonprofit’s grant making program told the board, I’d like to see this have other legs than our donations. We’d like to see it stand on its own. Let’s imagine for a minute, what would happen if our funding went away.
She wasn’t threatening the board, she was helping them to make the program sustainable.
Sustainable programs, successful education nonprofits
Sustainable programs make an education nonprofit successful. If the programs aren’t successful, then one donor’s support is only keeping it alive longer than it should be. Also, that donor’s resources will eventually be exhausted, because they’ll find something else to support instead. That’s why education nonprofits need to keep an eye on their capacity building.
Capacity building – the ability to deliver its mission now and in the future. Council of Nonprofits defines capacity building as “whatever is needed to bring a nonprofit to the next level of operational, programmatic, financial, or organizational maturity, so it may more effectively and efficiently advance its mission into the future. Capacity building is not a one-time effort to improve short-term effectiveness, but a continuous improvement strategy toward the creation of a sustainable and effective organization.”
Making a Sustainability Plan
Capacity building isn’t just the responsibility of the education nonprofit’s staff. It’s the entire ecosystem: funders, volunteers, support organizations, and more. A sustainability plan might include:
Mission—summary of the aims and values of the organization
Target Markets Defined—who is served, what problems the organization is helping them solve, what is the value proposition
Program descriptions—the purpose, target market, what it does, and expected outcomes
Competition—who is competing for the resources your education nonprofit needs, including funding and volunteers. What the organization and programs do better than anyone else.
Partnerships—what’s the strategy with each group (funders, volunteers, etc.) and how those partnerships will be cultivated
Asset management—who the people are and what skills are needed to make programs succeed.
Revenue—sources, funding strategy
Expenses—budgets for each program
Marketing and promotion—what’s the story and how it will be communicated
Succession planning—what programs look like for the next 3 years. Who is needed on the board of directors.
A good sustainability plan can keep an organization on track, and it can also show other supporters how the organization will keep doing the great work it’s doing.
