Collecting data that supports your position and problem statement will help validate the need and guide decision making. Use these links to research and help make your case:
Ready For Impact Workbook
Through the Mastermind Program we help educational nonprofit leaders explore and embrace the knowledge, skills and mindsets needed to manage sustainable businesses, deliver meaningful programs, and prepare for valuable partnership opportunities. This easy to use workbook is designed to help you organize and prepare for funding to achieve your mission.
Here you’ll find a series of prompts and exercises to help identify and articulate personal values, organizational goals, desirable leadership qualities, brand message, program impact, and partnership opportunities.
The guiding questions are perfect for individual reflection and journaling, and can be used for board planning and team visioning workshops. Once completed, you’ll have the rationale and language to begin conversations with funders and other stakeholders.
Each section of the workbook includes:
Big Idea: Explains what each essential is, why it’s important and how it helps build better nonprofits
Key Concepts: Includes important words and phrases
Prompts: Open-ended and provocative questions that inspire discovery of the big idea
Task: An activity that reinforces the big idea and supports development of an executive summary
Resources: Examples, templates, videos and other media that support the big idea
Inquiry and Research
Inquiry and Research are both about gathering information. Inquiry involves asking and answering questions, while research is an investigation and review of content and data to reach a conclusion.
Information gathering is an essential part of the nonprofit development process. As we are positioning ourselves to solve problems in our communities, we want to be able to demonstrate knowledge of our cause and readiness to take on the challenge.
We have to be able to answer the ‘Who, What, Where, When, Why and How’ questions easily and consistently when writing proposals and sharing our story with stakeholders.