Maximizing Your Nonprofit’s Impact: 3 Surefire Strategies

Your nonprofit works to make a difference in the lives of its beneficiaries every day, whether you’re focused on finding homes for pets in need or providing opportunities for at-risk youth to participate in the performing arts.

And as a nonprofit professional, you know you’re never satisfied with the status quo. You always want to do more to get closer to accomplishing your mission and realizing your vision for a better tomorrow, whether that means adjusting your fundraising strategy or trying a new marketing technique.

To do this in an intentional and proactive way, turn your focus to maximizing your organization’s impact. While the concept of impact may feel abstract, it’s actually quite simple and likely already something you’re thinking about: UpMetrics defines it as “the tangible changes or results that your organization generates for its community as outlined by its mission, vision, and goals.”

To understand your own organization’s impact and magnify it, you’ll need the right strategies on your side. We’ll dive into a few of our favorites below!

1. Gather data to understand your current impact.

To improve your nonprofit’s impact, you need a solid understanding of your starting point. This will require you to measure your current impact.

Follow these steps to do so effectively:

• Define your objectives. Objectives are the small, bite-sized goals that get you closer to accomplishing your larger mission. For example, if your mission is to provide opportunities for at-risk youth to participate in the performing arts, you might have an objective to raise enrollment in your summer musical theater program or increase donations to your piano school scholarship fund by 50%.
• Determine KIIs. You’re likely familiar with the term key performance indicator (KPI). In the world of impact measurement, KPIs are referred to as key impact indicators (KIIs). Measuring KIIs will allow you to track your progress toward your objectives. For example, you might measure the total number of musical theater program enrollments or total dollars raised for your scholarship program.
• Collect impact data. Once you have your objectives and KIIs in place, it’s time to start collecting data. In addition to the data already living in places like your CRM or marketing software, you may need to collect data from other resources, like social media management software or your nonprofit’s financial statements. If relevant, you may also want to look at publicly available data like government reports or academic studies.

As you collect data, be mindful of the role of qualitative data in fully understanding your organization’s impact. Much of the time, quantitative data (data that can be given a numeric value) is given first priority thanks to its objectivity. However, qualitative data, such as survey responses, testimonials, and even photos or videos, can help humanize your impact and paint a clearer picture of your organization’s current state.

2. Lean into data-driven decision-making.

With all of your data in one place, you’re ready to put it to good use. Analyze the information for trends like:

• Wins: Did you knock your recent fundraising goal out of the park? Have program completion rates skyrocketed? Focus on the things that are going well so that your nonprofit can do more of them!
• Challenges: Not all of your findings will be positive, and that’s okay. Acknowledge data that shows your shortcomings so that you can make a plan to improve.
• Opportunities: Your data may highlight opportunities your team has yet to consider. For example, you may notice a trend in beneficiary feedback that sparks the idea for a new program or service.

With a clear understanding of how things are going for your organization, you can start to make decisions that will help to grow your impact over time.

One of the best ways to do this is to set new goals and targets based on the wins, challenges, and opportunities you’re seeing. For instance, if you raised much more than you thought you would during a recent fundraiser, it may be time to raise the bar for your next campaign. Conversely, if you notice that your volunteer retention rate is dropping, you might brainstorm some ways to improve volunteer management so that more of your volunteers want to keep working with you. You can easily translate these new goals into objectives with accompanying KIIs to track as you continue to measure your impact.

Another way to ensure you’re making decisions with your impact in mind is to cultivate a data-driven culture in your organization’s day-to-day operations. This means you’ll need to help your entire team shift its mindset toward maximizing impact and relying on information about past performance to make positive changes for the future. To do this, ensure everyone has access to your impact insights and knows how to interpret the information they’re seeing. Then, get everyone in the habit of referencing that information before making decisions or strategy adjustments.

For example, say your marketing team sees that email newsletter open rates and click-through rates have been lower than usual. Before adjusting their approach to writing and sending these newsletters, the team reviews its segmentation data and realizes that not everyone is receiving personalized content—long-time donors are receiving the same general updates as newcomers. Knowing this allows your marketing team to make moves such as refreshing its segmented lists and writing more eye-catching subject lines.

3. Foster strong community relationships.

Even the largest nonprofits with the most sophisticated operations can’t accomplish their missions on their own—they require buy-in and involvement from their communities to succeed. The same principle applies to small shops—taking the time to build relationships within your community will help you maximize your impact faster and more effectively as you establish yourself as a community team player and invite others to participate in your work.

Here are some tips for building and maintaining strong relationships within your community:

• Gather feedback from community stakeholders when measuring your impact. Truly useful impact data will incorporate perspectives from people in the community you serve. Take the time to survey and have conversations with community members to evaluate your organization’s reputation in the community and get an idea of what community members feel you should be doing more or less of.
• Share your impact insights with your community. Impact insights aren’t just for internal use—sharing your findings can actually be a great way to prove the importance of your work to the community and win further support. The best way to do so is to create an impact report (it can take any form, from a formal report document to a video overview of your findings). To make it extra engaging, lean into storytelling and incorporate eye-catching visuals.
• Collaborate with other organizations. Identify organizations in your community that are ready and willing to help push your organization’s work forward. For instance, a corporation with a large number of employees in your area might be interested in strengthening its corporate giving efforts through coordinated corporate volunteer days. Propose mutually beneficial partnerships with these organizations by highlighting the reputation boost and other benefits the for-profit might receive.
• Get to know your community’s needs and priorities. To show that your organization is truly invested in the community it serves, get to know the community’s priorities and needs. This will help you shape your programs, services, and projects to better solve your beneficiaries’ problems, thus strengthening your impact. For instance, you might get involved with a local health festival that the community is passionate about or partner with a food bank around Thanksgiving to provide greater access to your services. This helps you demonstrate that your organization is a true pillar of the community.

Your nonprofit doesn’t operate in a vacuum—no matter the specifics of your mission or what your current impact looks like, you have a role to play in your community. Being an active player will boost your credibility and reputation and give you the firsthand experience necessary to hone your work to meet your beneficiaries’ real needs.

Whether you’re actively monitoring it or not, your nonprofit is making an impact on its community. To grow that impact, you need to take a proactive approach to gathering impact data, making data-driven improvements, and being actively involved in the broader community you serve. Use the guidance above to get started!