Abstract
Many nonprofits have put off—or scaled back—their strategic planning this year, because with everything else going on, they haven't had the time and resources to commit to it or because they've opted to take a short‐term, triage‐based approach aimed at getting through to the end of the pandemic.
Many nonprofits have put off—or scaled back—their strategic planning this year, because with everything else going on, they haven't had the time and resources to commit to it or because they've opted to take a short‐term, triage‐based approach aimed at getting through to the end of the pandemic.
With recently approved vaccines being rolled out across the country, some groups may be thinking the worst is behind them. But experts suggest keeping your guard up about the many different “what ifs” that could still play out and making plans to address a wider array of scenarios that could impact your operations.
According to Making Sense of Uncertainty: Nonprofit Scenario Planning During a Crisis, a guide published by The Bridgespan Group, the first step to planning for emergency events like the COVID‐19 pandemic is to identify the key drivers of your organization's economics and impact—in basic terms, your programs, operations and funding. Then, consider the universe of things that could possibly affect each of those categories, no matter how remote.
As the pandemic has shown, nightmare scenarios can develop quickly and seemingly out of thin air—a viral outbreak that started on the other side of the world spread like wildfire and led to shutdowns impacting a large swath of the U.S. economy in a matter of a few months. Nonprofits and their boards would do well to commit to a crisis planning exercise where members brainstorm on what big developments in the world could conceivably come up in the next 12–18 months—and then assess how much risk they present to the organization.
In evaluating levels of risk, the Bridgespan guide says, you should consider three questions:
What is the nature of the risk associated with the driver?
What is the likelihood that the risk plays itself out?
If the risk played out, how much of an impact would it have?
It's not possible to develop contingency plans for every possible development, of course. But this exercise should at least get the organization and its leadership thinking about a wider field of potential scenarios that could impact their operations, so that they can be more prepared if the need arises.
To access the scenario planning guide in full, visit https://bit.ly/388leow.