For many nonprofits, the transition back to in-person work is just as complicated as last year’s transition to remote work.
It will happen more gradually, likely in fits and starts. Over the past year, as groups scrambled to meet new and urgent needs, they found ways to innovate with technology, and everything seemed to shift all the time, demanding that they be flexible and open to new ways of working. Many were remarkably effective. But it is no easy task figuring out which changes to carry forward into the post-pandemic world.
One place to start is to think about the people an organization serves rather than the services it provides, says Meera Chary, a partner at the consultancy Bridgespan. During the pandemic, she says, many groups identified additional needs of the people they served and rushed to help because of the dire circumstances. Nonprofits might decide they should continue to focus on a broader set of issues that affect the people they work with than they had in the past.
That is one way to identify what Chary calls a group’s superpower — what the group does best — which may be different than it was before the pandemic.
Listening to clients and understanding their needs going forward will help groups be most effective as they map out their futures. “If we exist, then we exist in service of the community,” Chary says.
Understand Connections
One big lesson for nonprofits over the past year has been understanding how interconnected their work is, says Felicia DeHaney, director of program and strategy at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
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The foundation kept in close contact with grantees and provided forums for nonprofit leaders to learn from each other as they adapted to changing circumstances over the past year. She says groups that work in early-childhood development, for example, worked much more closely with health agencies. Examining the value and benefits of those connections can help groups determine how to go forward more effectively.
Many organizations moved their work onto virtual platforms, which allowed them to expand their programs, sometimes reaching a much larger group of people in locations where they had never worked before. It can be tempting to want to continue that and grow further, but organization leaders need to ask themselves what they gain — and what they lose — by doing that. Not everyone will want to view a performance or do a training online after 16 months of Zoom calls.
“The virtual format likely does some things very well,” says Preeta Nayak, also a partner at Bridgespan. “But you can’t imagine that it does everything as well.”
Above all, testing different approaches before making a large, permanent change will be very important, Nayak says. Organizations also need to continue to listen closely to the people they serve as conditions related to Covid change and as needs in communities shift, too.
Nonprofits, she says, should ask themselves: “Where does my superpower really generate value?”
