7 Actionable Principles by @CNE
1. Create Strategic Budgets - We Create Strategic Budgets that Fully Fund Our Work.
Aligned with our strategic priorities, we create and manage transparent, realistic budgets. We develop processes and policies that enable us to incorporate all necessary costs and investments, justify each expense, identify cost-saving opportunities, and pursue predictable long-term revenue sources that are diversified. Our budget is built from the individual budgets for each key function of our organization, inclusive of not just programs but also the operations required to maintain a healthy, functioning organization.
2. Manage Financial Position - We Sustain Our Organization by Effectively Managing Our Financial Position.
We closely monitor, clearly communicate, and thoughtfully project our financial position and budget performance with financial health metrics that we identify, to ensure our ability to responsively serve our community, deliver on our current goals, achieve our strategic priorities, mitigate risks, take advantage of future opportunities, and adapt to unforeseen scenarios.
3. Build Relationships - We Grow Financial Support by Building Mutual Trust and Accountability.
We work hard to develop relationships with a range of funders who are best-suited to fund our work. We cultivate and steward our funder relationships, seeking to build on shared interests and foster mutual trust and accountability. We are guided by a resource development plan that is tied to our strategy and owned by the whole organization, not just development staff, with all staff and board actively involved in fundraising and ambassadorship.
4. Prioritize Equity - We Prioritize Equity with Learning, Skill-Building, and Action.
Understanding that equity is integral to our success and required to achieve a more just society, we commit to the ongoing intention, skill-building, and action that supports becoming more equitable in our policies, practices, programs, and budgets. We commit to: learning about inequities in all forms in our community and our sector; listening to, believing, and elevating voices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and people most impacted by systemic injustices; examining equity measures in internal operational and service metrics; developing skills and taking action to center equity in our organizations and our work; and collaboratively and transparently creating and soliciting feedback on our plan and progress.
5. Develop Leaders - We Develop Leaders Across Our Organization Who Model Our Mission and Values.
We demonstrate our commitment to effective stewardship of our staff and board by ensuring representation of and leadership by those served. Leaders throughout our organization understand the unique business model of the organization, meaning how money is raised and spent to fulfill the mission and strategic goals, and make sure that promised results are achieved. We offer competitive staff compensation and benefits and provide systems and infrastructure that staff need to do the work. We invest in staff and board development, mentoring and support, and we intentionally plan for leadership succession to ensure staff and board growth and continuity.
6. Collaborate with Communities - We Effect Positive Change by Collaborating with and Adapting to the Needs of our Communities.
We seek collaboration where it makes sense as a grounding principle of doing business, and we leverage partnerships for greater impact with nonprofits, public, private and higher education sectors, and community members with lived experience. We acknowledge and understand root causes for systemic challenges, and we take action by joining forces and allocating resources toward a common goal of addressing root causes and changing systems. We center the community we serve in informing our work and making our decisions. We value and promote a culture of humility, adaptability, and continuous learning where we encourage reflection on lessons learned, questioning the status quo, and taking risks in support of better service.
7. Evaluate Impact - We Define and Achieve Success by Clarifying, Measuring, and Evaluating the Results of our Work.
We have clarity of purpose, and we demonstrate and communicate our unique value. We define what success looks like and we align our work guided by our mission, strategic thinking and planning. We measure program impact with the tools we have, centering the voices of those served, and we seek to improve based on feedback. We disaggregate impact measures and service evaluation data by race to inform how we do our work.
Center for Nonprofit Excellence
"CNE envisions equitable, thriving, and just communities powered by healthy nonprofits and to achieve that vision, we serve as a champion, learning partner, and advisor to Virginia nonprofits. We invite you to join us in investing in our collective futures."
