- Have a reliable source of donations
Donations are a lifeline of any nonprofit. Therefore, for your nonprofit to grow effectively, you should be confident in your source of donations. With a good source of donations, you will easily weather the nonprofit storm and fund your cause. Before expanding or starting a new cause, you need to be confident that the donors you have can support your financial needs now and in future. Ask your accountant to pull the financial or income statement of your nonprofit. This document will show data about your organization's revenue earned, restricted and unrestricted income, and other activities from before and during the crisis.
- Have a solid foundation to receive future grants
Ensure your fundraising capacity has a strong foundation and is scalable with a capacity to receive future grants. Ensure your nonprofit is prepared using resources such as grant management software such as Foundant, which can help organize various grant opportunities, manage deadlines and catalogue responses. You should also have effective writers and have faith in their writing abilities. Qualified staff members should fill Grant writer positions. Ensure that your writers have a history of grant success, which will help you win grants in future.
- Analysis of your cost structure
Before expanding your nonprofit, you must first examine the cost structure and what should be expected in terms of growth and how it will impact your organization. Analyze your fixed expenses, which are expenses that are steady in a month. The fixed expenses can change long-term depending on your organization's growth plan. Furthermore, you should also understand staff expenses and additional expenses that crop up in the form of salaries and benefits, all of which can affect your financial health. Program costs are also critical in this area, as well as other flexible expenses. If you are unsure how your organization will handle these expenses, talk to a qualified accountant or tax professional.
- Effective leadership in the nonprofit
For a nonprofit to be effective, it must have the best leadership team to manage staff, strategy and operations. Engaging like other nonprofits means you have to furlough valuable team members, reduce salaries or cut operations. However, as a nonprofit, you need to find an able leadership and staff before considering the expansion of your nonprofit. Otherwise, you will risk overworking your staff and discouraging them. Furthermore, the right leadership will lead to more effective decisions and attract more donors.
- Creation of programs and management systems in mind
Scalability is crucial for every program and management system in a nonprofit. If the programs are not scalable, it will be difficult for your nonprofit to grow sustainably. Scalability means that your organization's daily activities are well documented, replicable and transferable. Scalability minimizes training costs to get every reading from the same page.
