Strategy Masters
This tool links inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes into one visual roadmap.
What is a logic model?
Project-restricted, time-limited funds awarded after proposals and require compliance reporting. They can come from government or foundations.
What are grants?
Influencing specific legislation by contacting lawmakers or urging the public to do so.
What is lobbying?
The measurable changes in people or communities caused by your program.
What are outcomes?
Who are stakeholders?
The data-gathering step you do before designing activities to understand the problem and audience.
What is a needs assessment?
Nonprofit revenue portfolios can include cash from individual donations, grants, corporate sponsorship and this.
What is earned income?
The political candidate-supporting activity 501(c)(3)s are prohibited from doing.
What is electioneering?
An independent group that monitors charities’ governance, finances, and transparency, often publishing ratings to guide donors.
What is a watchdog?
A policy protecting staff who report wrongdoing or ethical concerns
What is a whistleblower policy?
A small-scale trial to test and refine your program before full rollout
What is a pilot?
The public's belief that “good” nonprofits spend almost nothing on admin or fundraising, which actually undermines capacity.
What is the overhead myth?
The 1954 rule that bars 501(c)(3)s from endorsing or opposing candidates
What is the Johnson Amendment?
The process of collecting and analyzing data on organizational effectiveness, efficiency, and other outcomes of interest to improve organizational processes and outcomes
What is performance management?
Owning decisions, sharing results, and accepting consequences for choices
What is accountability?
What metaphor describes nonprofit strategies as providing a temporary, superficial fix to a problem. It covers the problem but doesn't address the root cause.
What is a bandage?
The process in the nonprofit lifecycle that describes when nonprofits save themselves from threats and decline
What is turnaround?
When boards and execs demographically mirror the communities they serve, enhancing legitimacy.
What is representative leadership?
The term for when nonprofits internally think they should allocate less funding to administrative capacity and fundraising.
What is the starvation cycle?
Reviewing fundraising, HR, and accounting to ensure they don’t pressure staff to cut corners
Ethical risk management
What metaphor describes nonprofit strategies as essential short-term triage but harmful if relied on long term?
What is a tourniquet?
The name of the concern that increasing government spending on solving social problems decreases nonprofit spending
What is the crowding out effect?
Wiley & Berry (2018) find that nonprofits play roles as activists (agenda setting), interpreters (policy formulation), enforcers (implementation), and questioners (evaluation) in these
What are advocacy coalitions?
His model describes organizational change as a process of unfreezing, moving, and refreezing SOPs.
Who is Lewin? (Lewin's Model of Organizational Change)
Called the lifeblood of the nonprofit sector, this evaporates fast in the face of scandals.
What is trust?