Strategy, Tactics and Resources: The Puzzle Comes Together!

In grant writing and nonprofit management, preplanning is the key to a successful fundraising year for donations, grants and in-kind gifts. Preplanning is the art of preparing oneself for all the activities of the year. This is where the puzzle comes together and we see the whole picture or vision as a clearly outlined initiative.

First lets deal with some definitions and explore them as we go into detail about how these three systems work as a whole.

Strategy is defined as an elaborate and systematic plan of action. In other words this is how we attack the social issue we are trying to correct. If the social issue we are wrestling with is the local food banks are low on food, our strategy to correct that problem might be collect 20% of the needed can goods for a one-year supply.

There can be more then one strategy, for instance another nonprofit tackling the same issue might use the strategy to collect 20% of the money needed to purchase those food products. It's in the deployment of several different strategies that long-term successful corrections are achieved in our communities.

Next we need to define tactics. They are detailed plans to achieve objectives set by strategy. Alright, if that is so then using our continued example of food bank shortages, a tactic to have volunteers go around to all the churches in the area and collect can goods from the congregations on Sunday would be one.

Another tactic might be to have the grocery stores in town to ask that people donate can goods at the point of purchase. So you see tactics accomplishes the strategies we employ to reach our goals.

Now the piece that completes the puzzle and makes the vision a reality and that's Resources. We define resources as the source of aid or support that may be drawn upon when needed to help meet the intended goal.

The nonprofit in order to successfully implement the tactics from our strategic plan that will enable us to reach our goals must draw upon our volunteer resources to get the people needed to pickup all the canned goods at the local churches and grocery stores for delivery to the food bank. Yea, that's right, it's an ah hah moment.

Resources are a means of support to help us mobilize tactics. The pieces of the puzzle come together to form a complete vision of why this nonprofit exist and that is to help the food banks to fill their local shortages so that everyone in our community has food to eat everyday.

Also another form of resource is the board of directors. If in the above example we have two grocery store managers, a preacher, and two councilmen then we have a great resource with our board. So resources need to be planned out as well and the way to do that is to have a strategic plan that spells all this out. The plan is written and edited my multiple staff, executives and board members to make sure we are united in our efforts.

In this economic climate that we are in today with funding hard to come by we need to preplan to execute our strategies that help us tackle our vision and make it a reality. It is only with prudent tactics and oversight from management, who help to deploy much needed resources, that makes it possible for a nonprofit to stand out from the crowd and be noticed.

That is very crucial in this country today. The markets are down and income with the foundations and taxes for governments are down also. That makes funding tight and hard to get.

Donors like well-run businesses with active and organized management. If you are applying for grants or trying to land a big donor then standing out because you are organized and prepared puts your organization in a league of it's own.

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