Planning for Sustainability in Your Nonprofit Grant Proposals

Let’s start at the beginning. What exactly is nonprofit sustainability? 

Nonprofit sustainability refers to a nonprofit organization’s operational and financial capacity to successfully provide services and achieve its mission over the long-term. 

Planning for the future sustainability of a nonprofit organization is vital to its success. While it is important to plan for the logistics of day-to-day operations and programming, it is equally necessary to have a plan in place for the future. 

Since most nonprofit organizations rely on charitable donations and grant dollars for operations, achieving sustainability can be uniquely challenging. Developing a clear nonprofit sustainability plan with measurable and reasonably achievable goals will help ensure the organization can reliably carry out its mission and serve the community in perpetuity. 

When you are first establishing your nonprofit, you should have a plan for sustainability and continue to iterate it year after year. A nonprofit sustainability plan should be a living document that can change as your nonprofit grows and can respond to external and internal challenges, such as leadership turnover or financial hardship.

Creating a cohesive nonprofit sustainability plan is integral to your organization’s operations, but it is equally important to developing a competitive grant proposal. 

Funders are keen to invest in organizations and projects that have the capacity to carry out their work into the future alongside multiple partners and stakeholders. Communicating a plan for sustainability will not only help you achieve operational success, it will also make your organization or project more competitive when applying for grants. 

Ultimately, funders want to be certain that your projects and programs will continue to operate even after their funding has ended. 

To successfully develop and communicate that plan to funders you will need to have a solid grasp of the three pillars that make up a strong nonprofit sustainability plan. 

Let’s review!

While the following components are not the only elements of a nonprofit sustainability plan, they are key to building an effective plan that will help ensure the long-term success for your organization.

1. Mission and Vision

The heart of any nonprofit’s work is its mission and vision. 

A nonprofit’s mission statement is a description of the organization’s purpose and work while a nonprofit’s vision statement is a broad, aspirational proclamation for what the organization envisions it will achieve through its mission. 

Take for example, the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project’s mission statement is to end suicide among LGBTQ+ young people while their vision is a world where all LGBTQ+ young people see a bright future for themselves. 

Having a clear, concise mission that aligns with a broader vision is key to developing a nonprofit sustainability plan. Understanding what your nonprofit is working to ultimately achieve will help you lay out direct steps that align with your mission and help you work toward your organization’s vision for the community. 

2. Financial Health

‍Ensuring your organization is in good financial health is foundational to its sustainability. 

A nonprofit organization that is fiscally healthy needs to: 

• Create realistic organizational and programmatic budgets,
• Effectively manage its expenses, 
• Diversify its revenue streams, and 
• Establish controls and policies to avoid risk and ensure transparency. 

Good financial health means integrating plans for fundraising and development into the sustainability plan, addressing financial risks and challenges, as well as identifying and evaluating potential sources of revenue. 

3. Operational Resilience

To achieve long-term sustainability your nonprofit organization needs to be operationally resilient, with a plan in place for leadership turnover, staff turnover, and other potential operational challenges that could put your organization at risk or hinder its progress. 

A nonprofit organization should be able to operate regardless of internal and external challenges that are presented. For example, a nonprofit sustainability plan should address a plan for how to shift operations in response to the resignation of the organization’s Executive Director or a Program Manager. 

Be sure to identify and plan for anticipated issues and incorporate a plan of action into your nonprofit sustainability plan.

With a strong understanding of the three pillars that are the foundation of a nonprofit sustainability plan you can begin laying out the specific details of your sustainability statement.

The following steps will help you craft a nonprofit sustainability statement that is certain to help your organization grow, thrive, and sustain for years to come. A sustainability statement can be used throughout fundraising collateral and across grant proposals to illustrate your organization’s long-term plan. 

1. Assessing Your Nonprofit's Sustainability Landscape

When it comes to developing a strong nonprofit sustainability plan and sustainability statement, be sure to review your nonprofit’s current sustainability landscape. 

Ask yourself important questions, such as: 

• Is your organization currently positioned for long-term sustainability? 
• What controls or processes do you currently have in place? 
• Do your current processes or policies help or hinder your organization’s growth and sustainability? 
• What kind of processes, plans, goals, or actions should you implement to achieve sustainability? 

These are only a few examples of important questions you should ask and answer when assessing your nonprofit’s sustainability landscape. This will help you establish a starting point from which to build the rest of your sustainability plan. 

2. Crafting Your Mission-Aligned Sustainability Goals

Following the assessment, you will want to identify sustainability goals that are aligned with your organization’s mission. 

Industry best practice for creating objectives for your nonprofit sustainability statement is to develop SMART goals. 

SMART goals are a framework for creating goals and objectives that are attainable and precise, avoiding unclear directives that can make achieving goals more difficult for an organization.

SMART is an acronym for: 

• Specific
• Measurable 
• Achievable
• Relevant, and
• Time-bound

An example of a sustainability goal could be, “In 2024, Organization X will engage 10 new funders to support our affordable education initiatives”, or “In 2024, Organization X will partner with 3 new organizations to secure over $10,000 to support our affordable housing initiatives.”

You can learn more about goal setting by reviewing Dr. Bev Browning’s webinar on writing SMART goals, available on Instrumentl’s blog. 

3. Identifying and Securing Diverse Funding Streams

Securing diverse and sustainable revenue streams is vital for any nonprofit organization. 

A nonprofit cannot sustain itself with a single grant or from charitable donations from a single donor. A nonprofit sustainability statement should clearly communicate a plan for action for identifying and securing funding from a variety of sources, such as:

• Individual donors, 
• Private grantmaking entities, 
• Government grant programs, 
• Corporate sponsors, 
• Special events, 
• Membership fees, 
• Monthly giving plans, 
• And more. 

Each nonprofit’s fundraising and development strategy will be unique. Regardless of your individual nonprofit’s circumstances, be sure to pursue multiple streams of funding and never rely on a single source to sustain your organization’s operations. 

Unsure where to start? Check out Instrumentl for tips on how to jumpstart your organization’s fundraising efforts!

4. Building Partnerships for Collaborative Sustainability

Remember, no nonprofit can achieve its mission on its own. A nonprofit is only as successful as the communities it builds around itself. 

Partnerships are key to the success of a nonprofit. Developing partnerships can help nonprofits reach more participants, increase and/or diversify revenue, and grow sector expertise. 

Building partnerships with stakeholders will strengthen your nonprofit’s sustainability through community support, including:

• Diverse networks of funders 
• Community groups and other nonprofits aligned with your mission 
• Neighbors and community members who support your nonprofit’s mission
• Participants and the individuals directly impacted by the work of the organization 

A nonprofit sustainability plan can include a proposal for community outreach, both to community groups and to individuals directly impacted by your work.

You could also include a list of current partnerships and how they support your organization. Funders love to support organizations that work with other key organizations in the community.

Together, these partnerships help ensure the operational and fiscal sustainability of your nonprofit. 

5. Designing an Operational Plan for Sustained Impact

While much of a nonprofit’s sustainability plan is focused on broad and high-level goals and objectives, the day-to-day operations of the nonprofit are just as important. 

To integrate a sustainable operational plan for your nonprofit organization, make sure you have clearly laid out detailed information about daily activities and key actions taken by your organization to carry out its work. 

This element of the sustainability plan can include a wide variety of daily work that is crucial to the organization’s operations, including: 

• Budgets for key programs 
• Official organizational policies
• Daily program activities or timelines
• Support for personnel (e.g. HR procedures and policies) 

6. Implementing Your Plan with Flexibility and Foresight

When it comes to sustaining a nonprofit’s operations, flexibility is essential. 

You can craft an immensely detailed and comprehensive sustainability plan but there are always risks, emergencies, and hazards that may arise that are outside the scope of even the best planners.

Many nonprofit organizations experienced this kind of unforeseen challenge in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonprofits serving low-to-moderate income communities reported experiencing “severe disruptions” to their operations during the peak of the crisis.  

While perhaps no one can foresee the challenges associated with such an all-encompassing emergency, it is still important to prepare for a nimble operational response to all challenges so your organization does not find itself hindered or unable to provide services when faced with severe challenges. 

7. Monitoring, Evaluating, and Reporting Progress

Evaluation is important for nonprofits to ensure the efficacy of their work and to illustrate their impact. This is also foundational for the success of a nonprofit’s sustainability statement. 

To ensure the document is up to date and successful, it is important to monitor the organization’s activities and track whether or not the objectives laid out in the plan are having the desired results. 

For example, if your goal is to impact a specific number of individuals annually, be sure to track the number of people your organization serves. If your goal is to increase revenue by a specific amount, be sure to track the change in revenue from year to year. 

If you notice that despite your best efforts you have not been meeting your stated objectives it may be time to go back to the drawing board. It is always okay to try again and see if a new strategy yields better results!

8. Revising Your Plan for Continuous Improvement

Remember, your nonprofit sustainability statement should be a living document. Your plan for sustainability should be iterative and nimble, able to bend and change in response to any challenge big or small that your organization may experience. 

Draw up the results from your evaluation and reporting and identify gaps or challenges and revise the sustainability plan to address these issues differently next time. 

With these vital components included in your sustainability plan, you will have a strong foundation upon which you can build a more sustainable and successful organization.

With the guidance, tools, and resources provided in this article you are already well on your way to writing a strong nonprofit sustainability plan, ensuring your nonprofit can provide crucial services to members of your community for many years to come. 

A nonprofit sustainability plan is only the first step to building a thriving and flourishing nonprofit organization. 

With Instrumentl, nonprofits have access to a library of tools and guides that will help your organization grow sustainably. Visit Instrumentl’s website to get everything you need to help your nonprofit thrive!