By Leah
Greetings from my sabbatical! From Dec. 15-January 31, I am catching up on the mountain of "that looks interesting" reading that has been piling up on my desk for... years. My goal is to learn new approaches in planning, evaluation and research that our clients can benefit from.
Today I have been reading up on business strategies and reflecting on how these business strategies could be applied in the nonprofit and public sector. One article focused on scenarios as an alternative to forecasting. Because forecasts use previous trends to try to make predictions, they are very bad at accounting for major shifts or changes in the broader environment (which I'm sure anyone - including me - who has bought a house in the last four years can attest to...)
Scenarios use a number of factors in the current reality, and then think about what would happen if those factors were taken to greater or lesser extreme. For example, in our current reality, tax revenues, endowments and contributions are all down significantly. In the next several months, the declines may level off and we might see economic recovery as people look for buying opportunities, or the declines might continue worsening. A nonprofit or a public agency would then think about how to best position itself given those various scenarios. Does the nonprofit need to be prepared to take drastic measures? Does a public agency need to maintain as many programs as possible, potentially with some delayed spending?
Even before I started reading the article, I was listening to today's MPR Midmorning on Nonprofit Survival - and got to have the final comment of the hour! Essentially, the guests were trying to analyze where the "scenarios" were headed in the coming months. My comment was that I have observed nonprofits becoming increasingly savvy about evaluation over the last nine years, and feel they are better positioned in this downturn than in the past because they have valid, reliable and meaningful data with which to make decisions.
One of the benefits of sabbatical - not having to leave my house on this frigid day! Stay warm out there (you can ignore that part, California, South Carolina, Texas, Georgia and Florida friends!)