.png)
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Plan Perfect: Transforming Nonprofit Strategic Planning
Join me as we explore how nonprofits can break free from the limitations of traditional strategic planning. In this engaging episode, we delve into the valuable insights of Sophia Shaw and Adam Wolford from PlanPerfect, who discuss how their innovative tool empowers organizations to create dynamic plans that grow with their mission instead of collecting dust. We begin by addressing the pain points of static planning processes often seen in nonprofits, leading to a burden on leaders who just want to make a positive impact. Thankfully, tools like MonkeyPod streamline operations, allowing nonprofits to reclaim their focus and energy. The essence of this episode lies in the exploration of agile methodologies and how they can be successfully integrated into nonprofit strategies. Our discussion emphasizes the growing necessity of data management for nonprofit leaders, who are under increasing pressure to showcase their impact transparently. By utilizing effective tracking systems and dashboards offered by PlanPerfect, organizations can enrich their strategic processes with essential feedback from stakeholders, enabling them to adjust plans actively and measure success directly. This episode is a must-listen for all nonprofit professionals looking to transform their strategic planning and deepen their community impact.
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
Non-profit professionals are motivated to make a difference, but the minutia of non-profit operations can get in the way of the meaningful work you set out to do. That's where MonkeyPod comes in. Monkeypod helps non-profits get back to their mission by eliminating busy work. Their all-in-one software includes a CRM, non-profit accounting, email marketing, online fundraising and grant management. Email marketing, online fundraising and grant management. Nonprofit Hub listeners can get 15% off the first year of a MonkeyPod subscription by visiting monkeypodio slash nonprofithub. Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, megan Spear. Joining me today are Sophia Shaw and Adam Wolford from PlanPerfect. Joining me today are Sophia Shaw and Adam Walford from PlanPerfect, very excited to dig in to a really interesting conversation, I think, around AI and technology, as it relates specifically to strategic planning. So I'm very excited for this one. Guys, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me, thank you so much Thank you.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so, Sophia. Let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about your journey, kind of an introduction to who you are and your background in nonprofit.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It is really exciting to be an entrepreneur in the tech sector in my mid-50s. I've had my entire career in the nonprofit world. I worked my way up literally from a mailroom to becoming CEO of the Chicago Botanic Garden and I worked at the Field Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago. I've been a board president of a nonprofit and then I ran the Kellogg program at Northwestern their board governance program for five years and been a consultant to nonprofits and strategic planning. So really there's no part of the strategic planning or nonprofit world I haven't seen some part of.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's great. And Adam, what about you? What's your nonprofit journey looked like?
Speaker 3:Yes, definitely. So I've always had kind of a through line of nonprofit work, even when I was in management consulting before I went to business school. So I worked at Accenture and Deloitte and their management consulting practice is helping to build technology for the federal government at Accenture and then more massively doing M&A transactions at Deloitte. But while I was with both of those firms I was part of their social impact consulting world as well. So it's always been a through line. When I went to business school, I was fortunate enough to be part of Sophia's incredible program, which places MBA students on boards of local nonprofits. In my case it was an art museum in Chicago called Intuit. I'm still a proud board member of that art museum today.
Speaker 3:When I left Kellogg, I was running a product team at a Series A startup that was actually taking a product from the for-profit endurance space and moving it towards the nonprofit space. So I was helping to build out some of the nonprofit components. Left that role two years ago and started my own small consulting practice where I linked back up with Sophia. We worked on a client together, really reignited our joy of working together. That's what we called Sophia and Adam. 2.0 and then 3.0 was really spinning up and perfect. So asking ourselves how do we take what we're doing as a service and turn it into a software to increase our impact for nonprofits that can't afford or don't have access to the traditional strategic planning consulting route?
Speaker 1:I love that and that's actually kind of where we're going to start our conversation. So it's an excellent segue and setup Well done. In the nonprofit space, we get so caught up in this idea of strategic plan that it has to be this massive five-year product that, for the most part, just gives us a nice book that lives on a shelf and doesn't actually impact anything. But you're right, that is an extremely expensive process for most folks that ultimately, I feel like, has very little impact in the way that it's supposed to, unfortunately. So, sophia, start there, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1:So if an organization is thinking that strategic planning might be something that they're looking for, right, if that's kind of their, we're ready to grow, we're ready to take that next step. What are some things that you would say maybe, like as an introduction to that? What are some things that an organization has to be ready for or to think about in the strategic planning process? I think one of the things I really appreciate about what you guys have done with Plan Perfect is like it makes it more visible, right. We can actually see the impact that a plan could have, but I feel like the beginning stages of that maybe are overwhelming to folks. So what's something that an organization should consider if they're thinking about doing strategic planning? When is it right for an organization to start thinking about that, and when are they maybe just not ready for that process?
Speaker 2:Organizations, of any size, at any stage, need a plan. Just as you wouldn't go out of your house on a trip not knowing where you're going, yeah, and you wouldn't start a, let's say, even a new ice cream shop in your neighborhood without having a business plan, nonprofits also need to have a plan in order to get going to meet their dreams, to have impact. There's been no time like the present to ensure that our nonprofit sector is well supported, ensure that our nonprofit sector is well supported. But to best support an organization, you need to know why you're supporting them, what they're intending to deliver, how they will impact people, how they'll measure that impact, where are they spending your money, what are their goals? And in order to be able to better invest our dollars in nonprofits, we then need nonprofits and I say this with all the love in the world, because I am a nonprofit leader. At the end of the day and in my heart, we need our nonprofits to make those plans to prove their value. So we have people who are working with us in Plan Perfect who are literally six months old.
Speaker 2:Our first customer called Pearly and Adaptive. I met at a paratriathlon clinic in Chicago and he wanted to start a nonprofit the founder and he actually is a success story. He made a plan in our product and now he is actually starting to really build out his organization. But on the other side, you could be an organization that's been around for 75 years and moving along and resting on your laurels and everybody thinks you're great. But you need to have a plan to get to your destination. Period in life that doesn't mean to say you can't change, and I know Adam can talk about agility. Life that doesn't mean to say you can't change, and I know Adam can talk about agility, and I think that's one of the nice things that you can do when you make a plan that's not on the shelf is you can change it.
Speaker 1:I think and, adam, I'm going to toss this to you because I do think Agility that you just used is such a word or such a common word in the for-profit space, but almost a little scary in the nonprofit space, right, this is something that we have yet to embrace on the whole. I mean, we tend to maybe be a little behind, but agility, I feel like, is a scary word for some folks. So, adam, speak to that if you don't mind folks. So, adam, speak to that if you don't mind. What are some of those agility best practices for creating an agile plan that we can, either examples that you've seen work, or how do we get over that hurdle of agility?
Speaker 3:I think it's a great question and something you said earlier in the question you had to Sophia, which is like this is a scary undertaking for nonprofits to come and create a strategic plan. I think we really are at PlanPerfect working to flip that on its head Like we don't believe it has to be this drawn out 12 to 18 month plan where you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars getting someone to come in and kind of reiterate what you probably already know and need to just go and do. So we really, in our system, take that long process and make it something that can be done in a matter of weeks or months, depending on which parts of the system you use. So it really allows you to, you know, keep that five-year, three-year vision which I think you can set in your mission and vision statements, but revisit some of those more specific goals and objectives in smaller increments, and you can revisit them annually, quarterly, monthly, because you have this tool in place which will ride sidecar with you as an executive director, somebody who's running a strategic planning process, to really execute upon that plan.
Speaker 3:So for us that's, and for me specifically it feels super important because I do think in the for-profit space, that idea of agility, or moving quickly, trying things, breaking things and then ultimately growing from it, is really well-oiled in some organizations, and I'll say there's some for-profits that don't have it right either.
Speaker 3:But I think in the nonprofit space, thinking that you need to spend a year to create a five-year plan, to your point, megan, that sits on a shelf and then five years from now you dust it off and you say like, oh, we're going to kind of use the same thing, but with a couple edits, that for us feels really wrong because it's not really helping you to execute your vision or your mission or your strategy in general. So for us that living piece of the plan is so important and I mean it's been baked into our product since day one which includes kind of the tracking, dashboarding, making sure that what you're creating is actually living and you're making the rubber hit the road of your strategic plan and really helping to bring it to life for your board your donors, ultimately your beneficiaries.
Speaker 1:I think that's an important piece too. Right To Sophia's point now is not the time to rest when it comes to funding sources. Right, there's so much going on and there's so much change happening literally day by day that the ability to prove that you're actually doing what you've told your donors you're going to do is only going to become more critical. To be able to have like a hey, here's what we said, here's what we did, and now this is what we're going to do. Because of that and having that kind of data available to be able to show to people, I think is going to become an even more critical piece moving forward. So, if you speak to that a little bit, if you would, when we think about data and how we show impact, what does that look like and what are you kind of seeing as maybe some trends we want to make sure that we're aware of in that regard?
Speaker 2:In data in the nonprofit sector has always been such a challenge. When I was CEO of the Chicago Botanic Garden, my greatest pleasures came when somebody would say you know, I came for a walk at the garden and I then wrote a poem to a friend or I started to reflect on you know, somebody I'd loved. You can't quantify that, I mean. So one could argue well, so many of our nonprofits. Actually, there's absolutely no way to say how many poems have been inspired by what I mean. So you get your point there. But there are so many things we can quantify. We can quantify whether let's just take it very simply whether we did something yes or no. Yeah, what's quantifying something? We can quantify how many. Let's say you are a non-profit that's trying to put helmets on the heads of cyclists who are riding to work every day, perhaps in towns where housing is hard or traffic is bad and you can't get all of your workers to work. You can quantify how many helmets you are putting on people as you're giving them access to. So donors are requiring impact measurements and we need to give them those. But we don't need to give them into how many pencils we sold or widgets or whatever we need to give them in ways that are translated for the language of nonprofits, which includes tangible things like helmets, but also soft things like poetry and love and uplift and pride and caring. And you know.
Speaker 2:Going back to your question, megan, about non-profit strategic planning being scary, like I, I really feel like so many people who run non-profits operate out of a place of love. They operate because they want to heal something, they want to make people come together. So let's meet the strategic planning process where they are, which is in that place of love, in that place of optimism, by giving them a partner. Because majority of people go into nonprofit leadership or founding a nonprofit, let's say, are doing so because they have had a personal experience that changes them or they have a technical skill that they want to share the world with the world. So why expect them to be able to do a business plan? Sure, let's give them a partner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point, because I do think we get hung up. Unfortunately, we think about a skill set, right? Somebody who has that compassion, who has that vision for having an impact in their community and the world around them, is not always going to have the depth of business knowledge, and the world around them is not always going to have the depth of business knowledge to be able to kind of flesh that out and move it forward fully. Sometimes I think, though, where we get hung up in that data process is in some of our processes, right, where we are still stuck.
Speaker 1:I know we've talked a little bit before the show about some of the AI and tech components of this process, right, and so we talk about, okay, well, ai can help do this particular task in tracking. You know, it could help keep you on track by putting these reports together, and I hear a lot of pushback from nonprofits that say, okay, yeah, but that's somebody's job. Pulling that manual data and putting this report together is their job. So then, what would this person do what humans need to do in this process, versus what could they do if we freed them up to not have to pull manual data and sort it in Excel sheets all the time as we go to prove these impact statements. What does that look like?
Speaker 3:Interesting Megan to hear the resistance to it, and I don't think that this is just a problem in the nonprofit sector. I think the for-profit sector also has some resistance into adopting AI tooling.
Speaker 1:Well, because change is scary, no matter who you are.
Speaker 3:And I think where we've always thought about this living is really alongside of the person, and whether that be the person who owns the strategic plan at the nonprofit, whether that be with their data analysts, as they're starting to pull this data like how beautiful would it be if they're not spending all day, every day, making manual reports, but they're able to actually sit and analyze the data and they can level up the human aspect of it, or the human experience, by leveraging a new tool set that is coming at the world at an unprecedented pace. I think it's going to change the way that a lot of us do our jobs. I mean even this, even this podcast I'm assuming there'll be parts of it that will be AI edited right or when we use our Firefly's note taker. There's just a lot of this tooling that I think is coming into the fold, and we've always thought about plan perfect really riding sidecar with the human experience.
Speaker 3:I think there's a piece of strategic planning, which Sophia so beautifully captured in what she described, which includes kind of the human aspect of the nonprofit. It's not as easy as just saying, okay, we'll set this bot free, they'll give me a strategic plan and then they'll be able to execute it. There's such a human component that I think is picking both words that matter, but also being able to really think about those initiatives that are going to push people forward. So I think, instead of living in fear of the tooling, I think a better approach is really to look at it and understand where it fits into your organization and what that ultimately means. I think nonprofit leaders are going to have to do the work to understand, as AI tooling is coming into the fold and you're freeing up capacity amongst your staff, what that means for the next step for them, both in their careers, but also for your organization as a whole, and where you can start to use these tools to unlock more capacity, which only helps to grow your organization and ultimately lifts it to a higher place.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like saying like if you're a chef in a top end kitchen, you wouldn't have everybody just hand beatingbeating the batter. You would use an electric mixer and the person who used to be just hand-beating can maybe go do something else. Yeah, I like to bring them more joy as well as well.
Speaker 1:MonkeyPod brings financial and people management together into one platform. Nonprofits can manage their accounting and grants from the same software they use to send emails, collect donations and track donors, instead of using three or four different apps to run your nonprofit, monkeypod brings all those features together into one single platform, saving you time and money. Nonprofit Hub podcast listeners can get a special 15% off discount on the first year of their MonkeyPod subscription. Learn more by visiting monkeypodio. Slash nonprofithub. Slash nonprofit hub. Let's talk specifically about the strategic planning process, because I think we all are kind of still ingrained in the. It's a five-year plan, it's a three-year plan. It's this massive undertaking. Talk to me a little bit about what you see within organizations when they start to embrace this idea that it's actually a living, breathing thing. What do you start to see in that organization, either culturally or from an impact standpoint, when they can wrap their head around that?
Speaker 2:I think it lifts a huge burden off of their shoulders, actually, and plans that are living and breathing and yet and this is really important do have fundamental goals and objectives in sight, because I'm not advocating and neither is Adam when he uses the word agile, I'm not advocating for a plan that's just all amorphous, right. So I think it liberates the organization to say something like okay, we've had this metric for the past two years that we continue to come short on, come short on, come short. Well, how about? Maybe we just don't do that anymore? I mean, how liberating could that be? Or, wow, you know, we're constantly talking about how we're in competition with this other organization that does something sort of similar. Hmm, but maybe we merge. I mean, a fantasy in the strategic planning field is well, maybe we could actually bring together organizations that are of like-minded culture and goal and try to see where there are synergies between them.
Speaker 1:Interesting Adam. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I totally agree. I actually don't. I think our tool is just a lot more approachable, as you think about launching these larger plans, and I don't think the issue is actually with the three to five year plan. I think it's the previous approach to spending, you know, a lot of time in admin effort, really, frankly, getting to that plan and I think, by the time it's launched and stood up, the only way to revisit it is to do it manually. Right? It's to sit down every year and take a look at the goals and objectives, which can feel quite scary if it took you 12 months to get there in the first place.
Speaker 3:So what I think, sophie, and I recommend, is that there is that three to five year vision, right, like you do want to make some large shift or large change, but instead of approaching it by trying to set out the whole entire course of the five years, right the first day that you're on the journey, it's more so keeping in mind this broader vision, but being willing to look at your goals, objectives, what steps you're actually taking to get there, and adjusting those based on, you know, macro factors, things that are happening way outside of your control, but also you know micro factors, things happening in your organization, grants that you had access to that you no longer do, or grants you didn't that you now do and writing.
Speaker 3:You can grow the aperture of your impact and I think having a process in place where you can revisit this plan almost challenge it but really ask and make sure that what you're doing makes sense, versus just saying you know we spent x tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars building this, so we have to follow the plan or else I think that is probably that gives me pause and makes me fearful as a you know, coming from the for-profit sector is having that rigidity and I think what's nice is that a tool whatever tool you would like to use or process you would like to use that allows you to revisit sort of the goals and objectives in a cadence that makes sense for your organization can be really powerful for sort of reducing that burden or that stress that you have to know all the answers at the outset.
Speaker 1:Well, and I would think it would lead to higher visibility of that plan as well.
Speaker 1:I was part of a strategic plan process, probably 15 years ago now, at a private school here in the Pittsburgh area, probably 15 years ago now at a private school here in the Pittsburgh area.
Speaker 1:We went through this whole six month process and a year later those of us I would say those of us that were involved in the process still understood what it was driving where we were headed. But if you, I feel like if you were to go ask Jane Doe, teacher in the classroom, she had no idea what was happening. She didn't know that the plan had ever been completed. It didn't necessarily, it didn't impact her day to day in terms of here I am teaching third graders, right, and so there was very little visibility to the people who are actually on the front lines doing the mission of the school. It just kind of lived up here. But I would think that if we're talking about something that's a little more concrete and has some dashboard visibility to it, that makes it a little easier to actually permeate culture or to actually get down to the people who are on the front lines doing the mission, right, right, Megan, You're absolutely right, and a strategic plan is only valuable if every person I mean every person, every person can quote at least one thing.
Speaker 2:Let's just take the mission statement. I mean, if every person in the organization can't quote the mission statement and I'm not taking word for word, it doesn't have to be perfect, but generally speaking, then there's been a huge, a huge mess. You know, there's the old story about the boardroom meeting that's taking place and a woman comes in the room and says I will give you $10 million if you answer one question. And they say, okay, definitely, why your $10 million? What's the one question? She said I'm going to ask the board chair and the executive director both to tell me what is your number one priority. You both whisper it in my ear and if you both say the same thing, you get my $10 million. Now, isn't that interesting? Even be a question, even there'd be an old joke and story about this.
Speaker 2:So we all need to be on the same page and a good plan is, as you said, which is socialized, which is part of the culture and fabric of the organization, from the board level all the way to the level of the people who are actually getting out there and doing the hard work every day on the front lines, all the way to the level of the people who are actually getting out there and doing the hard work every day on the front lines of the organization, is one that's going to take hold and bring the organization forward. However, that's done and we have a software product. But we're certainly very supportive of consultants in this role. There are I have been one, I haven't been one. We've all had consultants in our lives who've done transformative work. We're absolutely not trying to take consultants out of the picture, but just again, just kind of like the mixer, we can all add a little bit of extra fuel to our work and get better results.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree, and I love that illustration of the boardroom with the donor because it does have to be everybody on board. Now, a soapbox that I will get on any day and maybe as a conversation for another day is no one can quote your mission statement because it is too dang long. It is too dang long Like if they can't do it word for word because it's longer than maybe six or seven words. You've missed the boat. This is a hill I will die on. Our mission statements are too long.
Speaker 2:Or it starts with, in the middle of a sentence, a mission statement. It does should not start with the word two, in my opinion, because you can't remember a sentence with the word two in the beginning, because it's not a real sentence.
Speaker 1:It's not a real sentence. It's not a real sentence, right, yeah, so right, that's I completely. I'm with you on that hill. Yes, I will die on this hill. It is a soapbox. I get on regularly with folks, so I'm glad to have some backing and support on that one for sure. All right, so we have just a couple minutes left, but talk to me a little bit about PlanPerfect. Who should be looking at this Kind of? Tell me a little bit about what the software does itself. But then also who, like? Is it the executive director? Is it the board? Is it director of development? Who should be involved in this process of evaluating that and to see if it would be a good fit for their organization?
Speaker 2:We see that the user could be the executive director, could be the founder, it could be a board member, it could even be a consultant who is working with nonprofits and wants to expand their capacity to serve nonprofits and wants to expand their capacity to serve. So we are focused squarely in the for now as we're growing in the small to mid-sized nonprofit space. So let's broadly say, under $10 million. There's probably a place in there, maybe a little smaller or a little bigger, if the organization has a very clearly focused mission, if they're working on a goal, that's very clear. Not if they're working on 50 different things at one time, which they shouldn't be anyway, but that's another story we could talk about another day.
Speaker 2:So, people really, from all aspects of the organization, I'd really like to think of us being disruptive in the space, and disruptive in a positive way, not because we're using there's a like component of AI or not, because it's a software tool, but it really puts the reins of strategic planning in the hands of the people in the organization who know the topic, the mission, best. So whoever that person or people are, they are the ones that should be using it, because sitting down at the computer by themselves or with a group and then using the interview tool to get really broad constituent feedback. That can be done in a few hours really, really. That's not to say the whole plan probably can be baked in a few hours, but it can be really. You know, the seeds can be planted and sprouting in a few hours in a way that's very satisfying for the user who has the vision for the organization.
Speaker 3:I think, just to piggyback on what Sophia said, I think she hit the nail right on the head about our target customer base. Being the executive director, I think we've had board members, consultants, other people who are interested in using the tool or at least seeing the outputs of the tool. But the tool itself kind of has three main components, just to answer your questions specific about the product. The first is this concept of interviewing or interview functionality. That's really getting your feedback from both internal and external stakeholders, so being able to get context from your board members, your volunteers, your beneficiary staff, etc. To help you inform the strategic planning process. Then there's a functionality built in that helps you actually generate it. So, like Sophia said, it's hands on keyboard. It's really getting that type mission statement, type vision statement, developing those goals and objectives that are measurable and actionable and are really powerful as you're thinking about approaching this for the next year.
Speaker 3:And then the most important piece to me, or the part I always tout on, is really the tracking and the dashboarding.
Speaker 3:Like you said at the very beginning, megan, that the plan on the shelf is a real problem, I think in the space of creating these plans and tucking them away. I mean, sophia's husband, art, tells an amazing story about this in the for-profit sector as well, I think it's not atypical that plans are developed and then never executed. So for us that's so important because we don't want to just be churning out plans that nothing is done with. For us, it's most important that we can say, or that we left this world, that we developed a tool that not only helps people think about how to become bigger, but actually helped them to become bigger. So for us, that tracking and reporting piece is of utmost importance and where we spend a lot of the time in the demos is just saying, yeah, once you have your plan, this is really where it comes to life. So that's kind of the three big buckets of the work and just another piece of the system.
Speaker 1:I love it, and if somebody wanted to find out more information about it, check you out, connect with any of you. How would we go about doing that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can visit our website, which is planperfectco, not com co, so don't make that mistake. And then our emails are just adam at planperfectco and then Sophia's is sophia at planperfectco. And we also have an inbox that hits both of us, which is founders at planperfectco. And one last plug is this tool. Like I said, the goal of it is to be accessible for nonprofits, no matter your size, whether you're six months fresh into the nonprofit world or you've been around for 75 years. So we do have a scholarship program in place for smaller nonprofits, based on just their budget. That makes the pricing a little bit more accessible. So did just want to say that plug. I think a lot of people are concerned when they hear AI and strategic planning, that this will break the bank, and that's definitely not our intention. We want to make sure that you know the small nonprofits are able to build their plans and execute and then become one of our full price big, big nonprofit clients. So that's also something of our system.
Speaker 1:I love it. That's great. Well, thank you both. This has been a really interesting conversation. I think much needed in the space for folks to realize that there is another option and a different way to think about strategic plan. So I appreciate both of you sharing all of your wisdom with us today on that idea.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, Megan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my pleasure having you Really enjoyed it. Guys, this has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Spear, and we'll see you next time.