Your Annual Plan Won't Work If It's A List of Activities (And What To Do Instead) - Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast

Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast: Episode Summary

Title: Your Annual Plan Won't Work If It's A List of Activities (And What To Do Instead)
Host: Brooke Richie-Babbage
Release Date: December 17, 2024

Introduction to Outcome-Based Planning

In this insightful episode of the Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast, host Brooke Richie-Babbage delves into the critical distinction between outcome-based planning and activity-based planning for nonprofit organizations. Brooke emphasizes the importance of structuring annual plans around desired outcomes rather than a mere list of activities to ensure meaningful impact and organizational cohesion.

Understanding Outcome-Based vs. Activity-Based Planning

Brooke Richie-Babbage begins by urging nonprofit leaders to evaluate their annual plans:

"As you review and finalize your plans for next year, I want you to pay attention to whether you're looking at a plan which is organized and focused around a set of outcomes or a list of activities that you plan to do."
[00:00]

She highlights that while activity-based planning focuses on "what we need to do"—such as hosting events or launching programs—outcome-based planning centers on "why we are doing this work" and the end results they aim to achieve. This foundational shift ensures that every task aligns with the organization's mission and desired impact.

Benefits of Outcome-Based Planning

Brooke presents three compelling arguments for adopting outcome-based planning:

1. Enhanced Focus and Direction

Outcome-based planning:

Forces organizational focus: By starting with the desired end results, nonprofits can ensure that all activities are aligned towards achieving meaningful transformations.

"Outcome based planning forces you to focus on and to identify and agree about what matters the most."
[00:05]
Prevents scattered efforts: Unlike activity lists that can lead to overwhelm and lack of cohesion, outcome-based plans provide a clear direction, especially crucial for larger or distributed teams.

2. Effective Prioritization of Resources

Brooke explains how outcome-based planning aids in:

Allocating time and money efficiently: Ensuring that resources are invested in activities that drive the greatest impact towards the desired outcomes.

"Focusing on outcomes make sure that you are investing in activities that actually will deliver the greatest impact."
[00:15]
Shifting focus when necessary: If certain programs aren't contributing to the end goals, organizations can prioritize or reallocate resources accordingly, even if it means scaling back on beloved initiatives.

3. Facilitates Tracking and Assessment

Outcome-based plans allow nonprofits to:

Monitor progress effectively: By tracking outcomes, organizations can assess what's working and what isn't, enabling timely pivots and adjustments.

"Tracking your outcomes also allows you to... assess what's working and not working. Right. It makes it easier for you to pivot when you need to."
[00:25]
Ensure continuous improvement: Regular assessment against desired outcomes fosters an environment of accountability and ongoing enhancement of strategies.

Brooke's Personal Experience

Brooke shares a poignant personal story to illustrate the power of outcome-based planning:

She recounts a time when her organization was running a youth policy advocacy program that, despite her passion and investment, wasn't yielding the intended outcomes. During an annual planning meeting, her Director of Programs presented data showing that the program wasn't aligning with their agreed-upon transformations for the youth they served.

"She was right. Right. And so the fact that she was able to say, these are the transformations that we have agreed we want to see... And here is how this program isn't serving that. That was really helpful for me psychologically..."
[00:35]

This realization led Brooke to prioritize outcomes over activities, ultimately reallocating resources to initiatives that better served their mission. This shift not only enhanced the organization's impact but also improved team morale and clarity of purpose.

Conclusion: Embracing Outcome-Based Planning

Brooke concludes by reiterating the transformative power of outcome-based planning:

"Pushing yourself to center outcomes rather than activities in your planning does this heavy lifting of keeping you on track throughout the year."
[00:45]

She encourages nonprofit leaders to adopt this approach, whether through detailed multi-page plans or concise one-page documents, ensuring that every action taken is a step towards meaningful, sustainable impact.

Additional Resources:

Newsletter: Leadership Forward 3:2:1
Subscribe by texting the word IMPACT to 66866.
Podcast Website: brookerichiebabbage.com

Brooke invites listeners to rate the podcast and engage with additional resources to further enhance their nonprofit strategies.

Transcript

Brooke Richie Babbage (0:00)

As you review and finalize your plans for next year, I want you to pay attention to whether you're looking at a plan which is organized and focused around a set of outcomes or a list of activities that you plan to do, there is a real difference between the two and it's all about the focus on outcomes welcome to the Nonprofit Mastermind Podcast. I'm Brooke Richie Babbage. I've been in the social impact game for 25 years as a social justice lawyer turned two time nonprofit founder and leader turned growth strategist and coach for leaders around the country. I grew my nonprofit from me and an intern in a tiny closet to a high impact seven figure organization. And along the way I learned so, so much about how to build an organization that has real impact and how to do it without burning out. In this podcast I share the nuts and bolts of all of it so you can do that too. We dive into the mindset, strategies and tactics of how to scale a high impact organization and how to do it in a way that's truly sustainable. Does your plan articulate concrete end results that you want to achieve in the coming year? Is it clear to you and your team and your board why you're doing all of the things that you plan to do? You may think it's obvious and that everyone knows the why. The reason effective plans start there and are actually organized around end results or the why and not the how. Not the programs and the activities and the tasks is because it is so easy for teams to get off track and for organizational leaders, organizational stakeholders, to feel like you're just doing busy work. The more distant you are from the work, like say a board member, the easier it is to forget how meaningful the tasks and activities that you're being asked to do actually are. Instead, you want to start with end results. You want to make sure your plan articulates the changes that you want to bring about in the people you work with, in their lives, in the communities and issue that you work on. And then you say if this is where we want to be in a year, what must we do to get there? Now I want to make an argument for three concrete ways that outcomes based planning will make your organizational plans and efforts far more effective. The first is that outcomes actually force organizational focus and direction. Activity based planning or what, what a lot of us do, which is these are the things that I want to do right in the coming year. These are the things we need to do. We need to have 10 community based programs. We need to make sure we Host three town halls. Those kinds of output driven planning, they often lead to overwhelm and more foundationally to a lack of cohesion on a team. Particularly if you have a team of more than, say three or four people where you can all sort of talk to one another. Or if you have a distributed team, meaning remote. The more activity based your annual plan is, the easier it will be for your team to feel like they are sort of doing a scattered list of to dos outcomes. Answer the question, why are we doing this? I'm doing this work. To what end? Outcome based planning forces you to focus on and to identify and agree about what matters the most. If you start with activities and say, how many programs will we hold? The goals and the outputs are associated with tasks rather than transformations of people, communities, issues, then it's harder to make sure that you're spending your time and your money in a way that will actually achieve the outcomes you care about. You may hit your program target, you may have the 10 programs and still feel like. And more importantly, your team may still feel like, so what? So we did this, but what progress have we made towards our mission? Right? Why 10? Right. We did 10 programs or we, you know, have four more partnerships and like, why, why does that matter? That why is very, very important. And you want your annual plan to name it, to start there. And you say we want to. We want the young people that we work with to experience these changes. And therefore, in order to get there, we believe we have to be in five schools, right? In order to get there, we have to do it this way. The next argument is that outcomes actually help you prioritize, prioritize your resources. And as I've talked about here on the podcast and in my Leadership Forward 3:2:1 newsletter, if you aren't subscribed, I will include a link in the show notes. As I've talked about, in both spaces, prioritization is both really, really central to your success in a given year and very difficult to do, really hard to do for all of us. And outcome based planning does some of that heavy lifting for you. How you spend your money and your time really matters. How your team spends its time really matters. Especially when you are growing and you can feel like money and time aren't necessarily limited, but they have to be allocated efficiently. Focusing on outcomes make sure that you are investing in activities that actually will deliver the greatest impact. Right? That'll take you closer to the transformations you're trying to bring about. When you know the outcome you're working towards, it actually can help make it clear to you and your team which activities, which programs, which tasks, which partnerships are actually worth your time and which aren't. You may realize that achieving the goals you've set for the coming year involve a different mix of programs than you had originally anticipated or that you're doing right now. Right. It may require a de emphasis on something that you thought would be a big deal. But actually realize if we want to hit that goal, if we want to achieve that end goal, actually, we have to emphasize this other thing. We have to shift energy to this other new, maybe unexpected thing and away from what we've been doing. Letting go of what we are currently doing, even when it doesn't serve us the way that we thought it would, when the program is not performing the way we thought, when it's not getting us closer to the transformation we want. That can be really hard, especially if you care a lot about the program, the way it's being done, the particular partnership, etc. If you're invested, if you've been doing it for a long time, or if you just believe in it. But when you focus on the end goal that you want to achieve and, and then you back into the best way to get there, you may realize, oh, this thing that we are actually spending time and staff and money on, it just. It isn't getting us there. I want it to. I wish it were, but it isn't. And so then you have a choice to make. Do you allocate your resources there? Do you refine the program, but you don't keep going the way you've been going? Right. That is a misallocation of resources. If you were to start with, we're going to do this program and we're going to do it in this way without that checking or running it through the lens of the outcomes you want to achieve. You can look up at the end of the year and have run a program that actually isn't accomplishing what you want it to. I can speak to this from personal experience. I started, I had this vision in my mind when I was running my organization. This is probably seven or eight years in. So we're established. I had an amazing program team and I had this program that for two or three years we ran pretty consistently, and I just really loved it. It was a youth sort of policy advocacy training boot camp. And it was sort of like my baby, like a play space for me. And in my mind, it was going to achieve particular end goals. There were going to be these sort of policy pieces that we'd work with young people on. So it wasn't working for various reasons. And I might go into that in a different podcast episode about data and all the things that I was learning that I just didn't want to pay attention to. I really, for various reasons, loved the program. And what it took was my director of programs sitting down during one of our annual planning meetings. Because I, for those of you who are longtime listeners, it will probably not surprise you to hear that I was big into annual planning with my team. So we sat down for one of our check ins and she was developing her annual program and our annual plan. And of course it was outcomes based. And she said, look, this is where we want these young people to be. Right? This is the experience that we want them to have, and these are the particular outcomes that we want to shoot for. For this year and for the last two and a half years, this particular program hasn't helped us, but it is requiring my time and my staff. I am analyzing data like there are resources going into it, but it's not, it's not doing the thing you think it's doing. And, you know, we walked through the data and the evaluation and it just, she was right. Right. And so the fact that she was able to say, these are the transformations that we have agreed we want to see for our young people in these particular populations and communities. And here is how this program isn't serving that. That was really helpful for me psychologically, not just the data in helping me say, okay, I have been misprioritizing my, my resources. So that's the second argument, that focusing on outcomes at the top and then sort of reverse engineering how to get there can help you prioritize. And then third, and this is a quickie one, tracking your outcomes also allows you to, as is the experience that I had, assess what's working and not working. Right. It makes it easier for you to pivot when you need to. And I, you know, I share that story because the pivoting is both about prioritizing the right way and it's about impact. Ultimately, is the work that we're doing leading to the kind of impact we want to have. And when you track your outcomes, you can actually look and see, oh, we are getting closer or we are not getting closer. Right. It's easier to spot when something is or isn't delivering results. Results. Outcomes based planning sets you up to get feedback, the feedback you need to adjust your strategies and improve over the course of the year, over the course of multiple years. So ultimately, these three arguments are about pushing yourself to center outcomes in your plan. This can literally be, you know, if you have a one page plan, which I'm a big fan of, the headers are the outcomes and the bullet points are the programs, activities, the strategies, the how right Pushing yourself to center outcomes rather than activities in your planning does this heavy lifting of keeping you on track throughout the year. So that is it for today, talking about outcomes based planning. I hope you have a great week and I will see you back here next week for more Mastermind. Thanks so much for joining me this week. If you enjoy this podcast, I would love for you to leave a rating and a I read every single one and they really do matter. I also share extra tidbits and resources building on what we talk about here in my newsletter, Leadership Forward 321. You can sign up by texting the word impact to 66866. And finally, definitely check out the links and resources that I mentioned in this episode@brooke richiebabbage.com podcast see you next week.