Three Systems Every Championship Nonprofit Needs

At the beginning of every football season, diehard fans at both the collegiate and professional levels anticipate their team winning a championship. Those championships occur not just because the fans want them to happen or because there is a standout roster of stellar players that year. Championships occur because there are routines and systems that control every aspect of the team's game. There are practice schedules that players must follow. There are trainers at the ready to assist players experiencing an injury or discomfort that impacts their ability to play at peak performance levels. There are systems for how the fans enter and exit the stadium. Nothing is left to chance or just hope that a championship would happen.

Yet, so many nonprofits operate without systems. Systems are critical for nonprofit operations including fundraising. They can track donor preferences, giving patterns, and anecdotal information that helps anyone making contact with a prospective donor recall that information. Systems are rarely glamorous or exciting, but like practice trains an athlete's muscles to perform faster than the brain can activate the movement, systems make the operational side of fundraising look effortless and enable those asking for money to focus on the person, not the process.

To create maximum impact at the fundraising championship level, three systems are critical: a stewardship system, an impact measurement system, and a communication system.

Stewardship System

Merriam-Webster defines stewardship as: “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care.” The donations that you receive to benefit your clients and the donors who give those funds are entrusting you with using them effectively.

Football does this through processes that care for their fans. NFL cheerleaders exist not because they contribute to the team's win or loss record, but because they celebrate the fans. The Dallas Cowboys, a team known for a 30+ year championship losing streak, has stewarded their fans so well that they are consistently one of the world's most valuable sports brands. College football recognizes this too. No SEC team neglects their fans. In fact, they encourage extracurricular events like tailgating, engaging with the mascots, or chanting clever slogans like Anchor Down (my personal favorite), Roll Tide, or Chop Wood. It has made the SEC one of the most legendary collegiate football conferences.

Nonprofits can adapt those practices to engage their donors through a stewardship system. A sound stewardship system ensures that donors, volunteers, clients, and staff are recognized promptly, consistently, and genuinely for the ways and funding that they contribute. At a minimum, it demonstrates appreciation for donors and volunteers. The system creates expectations and processes that donors may not realize but will certainly feel.

This system matters because people, not transactions, are why your nonprofit exists. When stewardship lapses, the disconnect shows up as smaller gifts, fewer volunteers, dissatisfied clients, and staff turnover you can measure in real costs.

Impact Measurement System

An athlete's value shows up in statistics. A quarterback's skills are measured in his passing yards, the distance of throws that connect with a player who catches the throw. The kicker is measured in how far and accurately he can kick the ball through the goal post. Defensive players are measured by the number of tackles and blocks they perform.

The ultimate impact measurement system for a nonprofit is the impact that they have on the clients they serve. This occurs in human services, in education, and in arts. The basic question being addressed is how your organization improves the lives of others. Typically, this is alleviating some form of suffering as in the case of homelessness or domestic violence shelters or expanding joy as in the case of youth sports or performing arts.

Ways that we measure this revolve around effectiveness, the positive change you make in the lives of those clients, and its efficiency, how you are able to create the most change with the fewest resources, an area where most nonprofits are incredibly resourceful. Donors want both, because they want their dollars to stretch as far as possible to do the most amount of good.

Because the quarterback knows the passing yard metrics that matter for him, he spends his downtime on the sidelines practicing his throws and warming up his arm. When you are proactive about measuring your outcomes (the change you make in lives) and outputs (tracking all the activities you do and clients you serve), you create the benchmarks of your impact measurement system.

Communication System

Sports inherently understand the importance of good communication. Coaches have modern headsets that allow them to communicate with one another, and in the NFL with owners and management in the stands. Broadcast announcers provide narratives of replays and critical insights of what is working and what is not. Fans will sit in the crowd with a headset watching the game in person and listening to a broadcast for clear understanding of what is happening.

Communication is as or more critical for your nonprofit. Your donors cannot see the plays you see. They will likely never interact with the violinist on stage, the homeless person on the street hoarding all their worldly possessions in an old grocery buggy, or the young girl who ran away to escape horrific abuse at home. Your communication is critical to connect them to those stories and demonstrate why they matter. Clear communication systems help you do that.

A nonprofit can be well-supported, well-run, and genuinely effective, and still underperform its potential if no one outside its immediate circle knows it. Communication is the system that carries your mission, your activity, and your results to the IRS, funders, and to the public, continuously.

At minimum, a communication system should address:

·       How you convey the data and the stories that demonstrate your impact

·       How and with what frequency you broadcast messages

·       When you personalize messages and how

·       Consistent messaging across multiple channels including mail, social media, and digital communications

·       How you determine if your communication is working

These three systems — stewardship, impact measurement, and communication — do not make the work easier. Nonprofit work is hard, but the systems automate a lot of the most tedious work and enable you to focus on the most critical part of the sector – the people. Effective systems free your time and energy for what your mission actually needs from you: more impact, delivered with less friction.

Fullanthropy Perspective:

Every nonprofit believes in its mission. Far fewer have built the systems that let that mission run without depending on memory, goodwill, or whoever happens to be paying attention that week.

The CLAIM Your Legacy™ framework identifies Administration as a cornerstone of the A pillar precisely because systems are what separate an organization that survives a transition — a departed staff member, a lapsed donor, an unexpected gap — from one that starts over each time.

Stewardship, measurement, and communication are not paperwork. They are the architecture that makes your mission repeatable.

Ready to see where your systems stand? Chart Your Impact™.