For Nonprofit Organizations

FIO Partners offers a variety of services to nonprofit organizations, these include:

Strategic Management
Organizational Development
Organizational Norm Setting
Strategic Alliances
Mid-Management Training

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

We support organizations in acquiring and improving their capacity for strategic management. FIO Partners has framed its approach to strategic management around four key tasks: (1) consensus on vision, mission, values and agreement on strategic management tasks among organizational leadership; (2) designing or redesigning the organization’s core of programs and relationships; (3) safeguarding and supporting the core through the adjustment of key management systems over time; and, (4) improving the core via organizational learning and quality assurance. Our approach stresses:

The importance of intentional, integrated strategy development;
Strong commitment to integrating client centered principles in strategy development;
An understanding of organizational stage and the influence of stage on organizational development tasks;
An understanding of field of service stage and how this influences organizational development tasks;
An understanding and connection to the system of national and local organizations that provide similar and allied services;
How to create organizations that can learn from their own practice, so that once they know how to learn, they will be self sustaining as learning organizations.

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

One of the more challenging aspects of growing a nonprofit organization is the on-going assessment of internal strengths and weaknesses and the continuous adjustment of internal management systems to organization needs. Too often this aspect of planning is conducted by brainstorming among a group of Board or staff…what are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? Instead FIO Partners offers tools that measure key aspects of internal functioning. By quantifying this process, it is possible to set internal benchmarks for change and re-measure periodically to assess progress and fit with organizational needs. If you have the capability, you can use our tools to conduct your own study, or, FIO Partners will conduct the assessments on-line, store your organization’s data, reassess when you are ready, and identify shifts and changes in your organization’s functioning as it grows and develops. All of these materials come with instructions for your use and are available for purchase as individual products.

You will find it particularly helpful to use our tool: Strategic Growth: A Guide for Nonprofit Organizations. This tool is available for free through our product catalog and will enable you to identify your organizational stage, guiding your choice and use of our staged products.

The current tools available are:

Strategic Growth: A Guide for Nonprofit Organizations
Adequacy of Management Systems: This product contains all of the elements listed below. The full set of Key Tasks and Indicators provides the opportunity for a full organization review, or, each function may be purchased as individual functional assessments.
- Programmatic Strategy
- Relational Strategy:
- Supports and Safeguards:
- Improving Organizational Performance:
  - Quality Assurance
Organizational Learning Survey
Board Survey for Start Up Organizations
Board Survey for Growth and Established Stages
Climate Survey
Mid-management Skills Assessment

ORGANIZATIONAL NORM SETTING

Nonprofit organizations often struggle to evolve the behaviors of staff that will best support mission accomplishment. Some organizations become truly dysfunctional and need an intervention to get them back on track. The norm setting process, a unique intervention shaped by FIO Partners, is based on the concept that organizational culture stems from a series of agreements between management and employees about specific behaviors that are useful and relevant to the work being done. The process is one of first identifying areas that the group feels are important to their work. Once the areas of norm development are defined, a unique instrument to guide discussion is developed. The norms that emerge are then adopted by management and employees and norm adherence can be integrated into performance appraisal. Periodic norm checks allow the group to adjust their agreement over time, evolving an ever clearer culture. A parallel process to define norms for interacting with external partners can also be undertaken.

For organizations who cannot purchase consulting services to support this process, we have developed a standard norms tool that includes norm areas that are common to many nonprofit organizations. This tool comes with instructions for administration.

To learn more about how organizational culture evolves and norms reinforce culture, read our article, “A FIO Partners Perspective, Norm Setting – Key to Organizational Culture”.

STRATEGIC ALLIANCES

Strategic alliances provide an important means of linking agencies within service systems. FIO Partners provides consultation in the formation of structured collaborative agreements between and among nonprofit organizations including: joint ventures, management service organizations, parent organizations and mergers. FIO Partners provides support from the earliest stages of ideas and concepts through the definition of final governance models.

In support of this work, we have recently developed an external norms tool that is helpful in preparing an organization to participate in the work of seeking out alliances by helping leaders to develop a cohesive approach to partnering. This instrument comes with full instructions for use and covers the following foundational areas for norm development: clarity of purpose, co-planning, vision for success, knowledge of partners, procedures and ground rules, roles and responsibilities, conflict management, and decision making.

To read more about preparing your organization for working with strategic partners, see Jane’s book Forging Nonprofit Alliances published by Jossey Bass.

MID MANAGEMENT TRAINING

What do mid to large non-profits do poorly most often? From the experience of FIO Partners, the answer is train people to be supervisors and managers. We can and do deliver this curriculum in many different formats. We are more than willing to work with groups and associations of nonprofits who want to sponsor this training. The following courses are fully developed and available: