An Overview of Metrics on Your Strategic Plan

At Mission Met, we think establishing and tracking metrics on your nonprofit’s strategic plan is a fantastic way to strengthen your organization. But we also totally get that metrics can be made to be overly complex and a distraction. So, in this brief article we’ll provide you with an overview of our practical (hopefully!) approach to strategic planning metrics and how they can benefit you and your team. 

(Note: Please take a few minutes to watch this accompanying video about metrics. Eric Ryan will walk you through how metrics can be displayed and measured on a strategic plan.)

About Metrics 

We think of a metric as a numerical outcome that you and your team are seeking to attain. Some basic examples are:

• Tons of CO2 reduced

• Number of grants submitted

• Donor member retention rate

Further, we have three different categories of metrics on our strategic plans:

1. Key Metrics

2. Focus Area Metrics

3. Goal Metrics

Don’t let three categories of metrics overwhelm you. These are just different types of metrics for you to consider; you absolutely don’t have to create and measure metrics in all three categories. 

The information below gives you an overview of these three types of metrics.

---

Examples

• Tons of CO2 reduced

• Mortality rate reduction

• % increase in literacy

1. Key Metrics

Somewhat timeless measures that indicate a nonprofit’s overall success. 

Ideally, you’d have no more than three to five Key Metrics.

---

Examples

• $ raised in a capital campaign

• # of board members

• Staff member retention rate

2. Focus Area Metrics

Measures used to indicate progress with “focus areas”, typically over about a three-year timeframe. 

Ideally you’d have no more than three metrics for each focus area. 

---

Examples

• # of grants submitted

• # of workshops delivered

• # of Twitter followers

3. Goal Metrics

Measures used to indicate progress in completing a goal, typically over a one-year or less timeframe. 

Ideally, you’d have no more than one or two metrics per goal. 

---

Measuring Metrics

As Eric wrote about in his recent book on strategic planning, it’s best to establish a monthly cadence of reviewing and measuring your metrics. Monthly measurement may seem a little cumbersome at first but if you only have a handful of metrics to measure then it isn’t too big of a lift.

Since your metrics are numbers, measuring progress over time is straightforward. However, in addition to measuring your numerical results, you can also use a “traffic light system” to provide a summary of your progress: 

Red — We are off track on this metric

Yellow — We are making slow progress on this metric

Green — We are on track to meet this metric

Using our software, Causey, tracking and reporting metrics is simple. 

A Catalog of Metrics

Several years ago Guidestar created the Common Results Catalog, a long list of the key metrics that organizations within were measuring. Reviewing this list may spur some ideas of your own. 

There’s No One Way

Although we have our own approach to metrics, there is absolutely no one way to create and track them. The important point is for you to simply establish some metrics and create a regular cadence of tracking and measuring them. Don’t worry about making it perfect. Over time you can dive deeper and clarify the best way that works for you and your organization.

How Software Catalyzes Your Strategic Planning Success: From Eric Ryan's Upcoming Book

Later this month I’ll publish my upcoming book, Mission Met: Proven Strategic Planning Guidance to Help You Build a Financially Secure and Impactful Nonprofit. The book will provide you with a suite of practical strategic planning practices that will help you and your team better execute your strategic plan. 

This blog entry, about the benefit of strategic planning software, is the fourth article in a five-article series where I’ll share a brief preview of some of the guidance that I provide in the book. 

A Software Journey

For the first decade-plus of my consulting career, I helped our customers capture and track their strategic plans in Microsoft Word and Excel documents. That worked fine. 

However, Word- and Excel-based plans were fairly static and didn’t actively engage teams to take any action. Plus, not everyone felt comfortable using Excel, and the plans were avoided as a result.   

I had a nagging thought that there must be a better way. 

With that in mind, I searched to see if there was any strategic planning software on the market that could help us and our customers make their strategic plans more dynamic and engaging. Although I succeeded in finding some good platforms, they were designed for large corporations and were too complex and expensive for the organizations that I was working with. Put differently, the software solutions were Ferraris when I was looking for a practical and affordable Toyota that my customers could easily own and drive. 

Not finding a solution, in 2015 I decided to create one. I hired a software development team to work with me to build easy-to-use and cost-effective strategic planning software designed specifically for the practical needs of small and midsize nonprofits. 

The result, as you may know, is Causey, a wonderful software platform that has transformed my approach to strategic planning. 

What I’ve Learned

Since then, we’ve had thousands of people utilize the software. It’s been a completely amazing and exciting journey. I could write a separate book about all that I’ve learned. 

But my key takeaway has been that my initial hunch was spot on: strategic planning software significantly catalyzes strategic planning success.

I first realized this at a planning retreat where I introduced the software to a team of about twelve people. I had worked with the team before, using Word to capture their prior plans. 

This time, however, we documented their plan in the software. During the retreat, everyone was fully engaged in the plan via their laptop. The software made the process more enjoyable, logical, and engaging. The executive director told me that she’d never seen her team so fully immersed in the process. 

The team’s engagement continued, over time, as the team built a habit of tracking and measuring their plan in the software in a way that they had never done before.

I knew that my software team and I were onto something. 

Key Benefits 

I’ve learned that using strategic planning software has several key benefits:

• Ensures that your planning is a good investment
  Effective planning can be a significant investment of time and money. By capturing and tracking your plan in planning software, you help to ensure that your plan will be used and that it provides a positive return on investment. Further, using planning software sends a clear signal to your team that strategic planning is something for everyone to take seriously.

• Builds your measurement habit
  As I described earlier, one of the best ways to catalyze your team’s strategic planning success is to build a habit of regularly measuring the plan. Planning software can help you and your team build that muscle by sending automated reminders to review and measure progress on your plan. Further, the templates and forms in the software simplify the measurement process. 

• Integrates the plan into your calendar
  By linking to your online calendar, strategic planning software can help you keep track of when key goals and action items are due. 

• Strengthens communication
  Most planning platforms provide easy tools to report and share progress on your plan with your team and key stakeholders. 
  

Learn More

If you’d like to learn more about Causey then visit our web site where you can watch a two-minute overview video and review some of the software’s key features. You can also schedule a demo and get a free trial.