There’s a common mentality within many nonprofits that says “we’re building the plane as we fly it.” This approach is often the wrong one because it fosters a culture of urgency that can impede our ability to achieve our goals. However, there is an easy solution. It’s project management, and it will help bridge the gap between the capacity of most non-profits and what they need to achieve their mission. Project management is the discipline of planning and organizing resources to bring about the successful completion of a specific project. The goal of project management is to maximize the efficiency with which a project is completed while minimizing the risk of failure.
Project management did not originate in the nonprofit space; however, it can help nonprofits be very successful. If applied correctly, project management can help improve communication and coordination amongst staff, volunteers, and other stakeholders. It can also help promote collaboration across departments and create a standardized process for completing projects. When applied to a nonprofit, project management can improve an organization’s ability to meet the needs of its constituents as well as achieve its mission.
Nonprofits are constantly lacking capacity and staff. By instituting project management methodologies and tools, organizations can efficiently use what they have and keep from overextending capacity and budgets. Using project management as an organization-wide approach allows nonprofits to effectively and efficiently complete projects of all sizes while ensuring their long-term viability and sustainability. Moving in a direction of building and maintaining institutional knowledge.
By focusing on specific metrics and ensuring they are completed regularly, organizations will be able to keep their operations on track and continue to achieve their missions, enabling organizations to grow more healthily. Building community capacity and increasing the overall social impact of the nonprofit sector creates a clear sense of direction and provides structure and accountability. Nonprofits cannot continue to operate the way we’ve been operating, it is not sustainable, and we are hemorrhaging staff because of burnout. The critical skills can be learned in a manageable way. We’re at a tipping point where we cannot continue down this road.
Organizations that are most successful in using project management focus on assessing the situation upfront and setting clear goals and expectations. They carefully define the scope of work, estimate the costs and timelines, and identify the resources needed to complete the project. It will also help decrease the micromanaging assumption that many nonprofits are plagued with. Transparency always helps to alleviate these assumptions. It will empower team members to see the larger picture and give them a feeling of ownership in the project as a whole. Furthermore, working with a sense of urgency is necessary for survival in almost every organization, but we encourage our team members to take time to think before acting and to be methodical in their approach to problem-solving. In addition, great project managers do what they can to inspire trust and confidence in their employees. This helps them create a sense of autonomy which in turn leads to greater job satisfaction.
There are many ways in which to achieve project management success in the nonprofit sector, but the main one is to see the necessity of it. We must do something because, in the absence of increased capacity and funds for the nonprofit sector, we must make the best use of the capacity that we do have. Project management is just another way of empowering our staff and the community. It will give them a sense of ownership in the projects that they will be working on and it will encourage them to use their skills and abilities to their full potential for the benefit of the movement. Ultimately, this will lead to increased productivity and better overall outcomes.