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Strategic Planning for Nonprofits with Ricky Chilcott | Nonprofit411 · Nonprofit411 Podcast

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Hello and welcome to Nonprofit411, where we dive into resources and strategies that help nonprofits not just survive, but truly thrive.
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I'm Sarah Barton, your host and fundraising advocate.
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Each episode, we bring you inspiring conversations with experts in fundraising, sustainability, and best practices to equip you with the tools and confidence you need to make a real impact.
Hi, and welcome to Nonprofit 411 Podcast.
I'm your host, Sarah Barton, and I'm excited to have you here today.
Whether you're here to learn, be inspired, or simply recharge, I'm glad you've joined us.
Today, I'm excited to welcome our guest, Ricky Chilcott.
From Mission Met and he is one of the founders there.
Welcome.
Hi.
How you doing, Sarah? Good.
I'm so excited to have you here.
We've been colleagues that have known each other for a couple of years now, so it'll be exciting to have a conversation with you.
So before we jump into the, oh, sorry.
Yeah.
I was gonna say, yeah, thanks for having me.
It's been enjoying enjoyable to to meet you in person a few times that nonprofits lead a local conference that's up in Marietta, Ohio.
I don't live too far from there.
And yeah, I, I really appreciate this last this last year with how much vulnerability you shared about your, your burnout journey and that, that helped me.
So thank you for highlighting some of those resources and sharing your story at that conference.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I, yeah, I'm, I'm so grateful to have people who have supported me through that, and I'm glad that I can be able to help others as they also work through that process.
So before we dive into our, our full conversation, I like to ask all of my guests, my favorite question ever, which is what is your favorite hobby? Cool.
Well, and I'm not going to answer it with one.
I would say I.
It came to playing soccer kind of later in life and in my late twenties, I learned and learned to play soccer and that's been really great for me.
I'm gonna the Athens County in Southeast Ohio has a really vibrant local soccer community of a hundred plus people.
Or part of that.
And yeah, I went from those first few games pretty much being offsides the entire time and not understanding that rule to you know, each season I score a couple of goals and I mostly play defense.
So, and, and wing.
So that's kind of, it's odd for a defender or or a winger to score a lot of goals.
So, so that's one I also really enjoy mountain biking.
And I recently got an e bike and I've got a four year old son.
So we.
Commute him to and from daycare with that.
But I would say probably my most enjoyable hobby is kind of working with my hands as far as like building furniture just this week I'm completing a bed build for my son, a lofted bed in his room, and I really.
Because of so much of the work that I do with technology and coaching, consulting people is it's hard to like show tangibly what, you know, the end result of it.
And it's like, you have all these meetings, right.
Each, each day and what, what was the actual result of that? You can't really point to something you can maybe like explain a feeling or, or kind of talk about those interactions, but you know, It's fleeting.
It, you know, it doesn't last very long.
And so yeah, building things, even cutting the grass sometimes can be, you know, or, or working on, on the house.
That's probably my, my favorite hobby because I can see the, the end result of it for, for longer than just, you know, a feeling can last.
Oh, I like that.
So I actually read a book this summer and it was about the practice of Sabbath.
And in it, he said, you know, one of the things that he mentioned was that, you know, if you work with your, your brain all day long, like a nice practice of Sabbath or rest is to do the opposite, like work with your body or work with your hands.
So like what you're saying, like really resonates with that, you know, the idea of that, like, it's really.
Different from your, your day to day activity or not day to day necessarily, but your work activity, you enjoy these tangible hands on.
Yeah, absolutely.
That, that resonates with me.
Yeah.
I read a book fight, hustle and hurry.
And he talked about the practice of Sabbath and, and some of these other it was through a Christian lens, but kind of just everyday practices that, that people.
Can kind of fight that, that hustle feeling that, especially as business owners, you and I know that, that tension.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the other thing that you said is, you know, it's hard to measure the success of what we do, you know, and I have found as I've journaled, you know, we're out, we're recording this in December.
It's not going to go live until the new year, but As I've done this work, I've really enjoyed going back into my journals because you like the span of time from when you you know, integrated or did something to when you actually get to see results is a really long time.
And so like being able to have the written word remind me like, oh yeah, I did that.
Oh my gosh, I did that too.
I did like a six month check in probably around June or July.
So, you know, six or seven months, it all happens, you know, fluidly, but and when I wrote down all of the things that I had done so far in the year, And I, I went back into my journals and I kind of gleaned, I have to go into my calendar to actually think about like what I actually did.
It's so surprising how much has happened and also equally surprising how little I feel that, right? How little I feel all of that.
Yeah, I'm sure you've heard the saying like we way overestimate what we can do in a day and way underestimate what we can do in a year or a lifetime.
Right.
And yeah, we tend to kind of compare.
Ourselves and our output to like what we wanted to accomplish versus what we actually did accomplish.
It's nice to, to pause.
I've never really had a, a, a practice of journaling.
I've tried before.
I've bought lots of notebooks with that intention.
But I've never done that.
So yeah.
Yeah, I, I, I follow the Bujo method, which is the bullet journal method.
And I, I don't think anybody would look at my journals and be like, Oh yeah, that's actually a journal.
But it, it just gets me through the day and I record a little bit and it's all in one location.
That's really, for me, been a really exciting thing.
Like I always know where to reference because it's always in the book.
This morning I didn't have my journal on my desk and I had it right beside my desk.
Journal, and I wrote in this other workbook, but if I have to reference it, it's not going to be my book.
So I'll probably have to rewrite it into my book.
Well, yeah.
So we've already started chatting and covered some really good things here, actually, but I haven't given you a chance to introduce yourself.
So would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and tell them a little bit about what you you know, what you do, where you are now and how you've gotten here? Yeah.
So, it's easier to answer what I do now.
But yeah, so I'm, I'm Ricky Chilcott, co founder of a company called Mission Med.
Our mission is to make strategic planning simpler and more effective.
We.
Have built software to capture your strategic plan and then execute on it.
And my business partner in this business Eric Ryan has done consulting work for nonprofits for a really long time.
And so he does, he leads our consulting efforts and we have a few consultants.
So we do consulting.
The software and we also developed a course on how to do strategic planning primarily for small and midsize nonprofits.
And if you would have told me a decade Plus ago that I would be working with nonprofits and kind of in this sector.
I would say, okay, that doesn't sound like what I would do, but my kind of background, my, my undergrad was in audio production.
And I wanted to work in the music industry recording, you know, musicians and artists and that sort of thing.
But I realized kind of late in college That kind of all of the things all the like kind of market forces of audio equipment and things and, you know, tools of media production that you know, made it possible for me to afford a home studio when I was kind of in late high school and in college.
We're also the same reason why it was going to be really hard to make a career out of it.
Right.
Cause everybody could just buy a few pieces of equipment and call themselves a producer or an engineer.
And I also looked at kind of the, the industry and saw a lot of divorce and kind of a lot of just kind of like personal life challenges.
And I had met a girl in college and I wanted to marry her and be married to her.
For forever.
And so far that's happened.
We've, we've been married for 15 years.
Thank you.
But I had also had this software development.
I had taught myself some programming kind of in, in middle school.
My, my uncle was a software developer.
And so I kind of went into this kind of technology space at the university at Ohio university, which is where Athens what, what, Institution Is based in Athens and and worked there for a number of years at the university, but I kinda, I kinda had this entrepreneurial itch and spirit.
And so for a couple of years after I left the university, I kind of did freelance web development.
But one of my best clients.
At the time was this guy, Eric, who you know, is not my business partner in mission met.
But you know, he, he had this, this dream of helping more and more organizations and I thought, Hey, maybe we could partner and grow the software and kind of, you know, Productize our consulting offerings and that sort of thing and kind of help more and more organizations.
And so that's what we've been doing for a few years.
I won't lie.
It's been a little bit of a bumpy journey.
Every, you know, every You know, projection that I put together was going to be up into the right and that hasn't happened.
But, but I've learned a lot of things and it's been incredible to hear from clients who we've been able to help through our planning work how they've been able to raise more dollars, how they've been able to Kind of fix dysfunctional boards and, you know, help grow their teams and that sort of thing because of our strategic planning work.
And so, I'm really grateful just to be on that journey with Eric and with all of our clients.
Yeah, I think it's, that's so interesting.
I didn't know all of that about you and I, I think the, you know, when you look at like the home audio studio, it's so crazy because podcasting has taken off and you're right.
Like everybody.
Can buy, you know, cheap equipment and they can create shows.
And yeah, actually my freshman year at OU I tried to start a podcast with three other friends, my now wife, and then my roommate, Lanny and a good friend, Brian, and I was like, okay, I'm just, I'm just going to put a room or I'm just going to put a mic in the room and we're just going to have a conversation, just talk about college stuff.
And they were like, this is the weirdest thing.
We're not doing this.
This nobody's going to ever listen to this.
This is, what are you talking about? These podcasts things? What like what? So yeah, that was in 2000.
2004.
So 20 years ago I was, you know, starting to listen to podcasts then and, and kind of, I'm happy it took off.
I like to say that, you know, early adopter and I predicted that one, but but yeah, sadly I never actually got a podcast on my own off the ground.
Yeah, but it's really interesting because you have within you a visionary spirit.
You know, you were, so when you talked about your story, you talked about looking at the industry, the you know, the music industry and looking and having a vision of what you wanted for your family and like really pursuing the things that were necessary to be able to make that happen.
You know, you had this vision of podcasting, even though that wasn't something that came to fruition.
This is clearly like, a thing.
A thread that binds you, you know, and your work with mission met, you know, is really also about strategically visioning for the future and being intentional about the work that goes into making that vision come to life.
So like, it seems like there's this theme.
Yeah, thanks.
I didn't even really realize that about myself.
So thank you for educating me about my own.
Yeah, that is, that is a through line.
Yeah, I've always I think, you know, in some ways I'm a dreamer, you know, I, I'm not sort of like a super fan of the, the EOS system.
And I think it's mostly for a lack of lack of education on, I have never actually read the traction book.
I've read some things here and there, but I, I know that there are people who are more dreamers, right.
And then there are people who are implementers and I feel like on my.
Unique snowflake and maybe everybody thinks that they're a unique snowflake, but, but I, I really do enjoy like imagining possibilities and kind of like, you know, thinking creatively thinking through the constraints of what are our skills and what are our resources? And maybe if we just like shift and just think just a slightly different way, can we maybe create something from that? And but I'm not afraid to like roll up my sleeves and like, You know, either write code or write process or kind of work through it.
I think where I fall down one of my biggest weaknesses is I don't like maintaining things.
That's just so boring to me.
Like, when I, when I worked at the university I, you know, I liked kind of like solving problems, but.
After a while, I was like, these are just mundane and these are not interesting problems.
And and I don't know if I can keep just doing this, you know, Monday and thing over and over to me, but like, I think there's lots of people, you know, I had lots of colleagues who just really love.
Kind of just maintaining systems and and doing those.
And so the world is a better place because they exist too.
But yeah this idea of visioning, I actually shortly after I left the university and started to work out on my own I hired a personal coach a friend David Dennison, and I actually just texted him this week to see if he wanted to catch up.
But he actually walked me through a curriculum called strategic featuring.
And I think there's actually two different two or three different people out on the internet that use that.
This is from a company called Genesis.
G N S Y S I think And there was a book that was written about like, future belongs to those who dare, I think is the name of it.
If you Google something like that, you'll probably find it, but they kind of walk you through a process of kind of, envisioning your future, like what is a random day, 15 years into the future and like kind of transport yourself to that.
And You know, what does, what does it feel like to wake up, look around your room, you know, put your feet on the ground.
You know, what does the carpet, like, what does the floor feel like? Is it carpet? Is it hardwood? Is it, you know, and just really describe those things.
And that was a really impactful experience to, to do that.
I wrote, I wrote like a seven or eight page thing.
And my coach, David was like, wow, I've done about 10 of these.
And this is the longest one I've ever gotten, buddy.
Like it's really helpful.
Cause if you can like just imagine, and the reality is you'll never experienced that exact thing.
Right.
But a really kind of.
Then you can start to pick it apart and like, well, why did I write that about myself or why did I imagine that that was the kind of future that I want to have or the impact that I want to have, or, you know, you know, why was my day structured in that way? And you can start to learn some things about yourself.
And more interestingly, and as it comes to strategic planning.
Part of that exercise is actually walking back in five year increments.
Like what did you do five years prior to that moment in order to get yourself there? And then what did you do five years before that? And what did you do five years before that? Which happens to be today, right? So what decisions and actions am I going to take to get me closer to that? So anyway, so I did that experience, but my business partner Eric, when Yeah, if we, if we can work with a client in the way that we would really prefer to, because, you know, sometimes there's RFPs and they have a very particular process that they want to lay out and we'll support those, of course.
But, you know, our, our version is to really kind of first start with the mission and the vision of the organization, right? Who do we want to serve? How do we want to change their lives? And what does the world look like when we're successful at that, right? If we can answer those three questions, we can come up with their mission and their vision.
And then, you know, through some of our assessments and through conversations and looking at past plans and that sort of thing, we can identify.
And oftentimes if you ask executive doctor directors, you know, what are two or three or four areas that you really think you should focus on? They know the answer.
They don't, they don't need that.
Ask the team.
They should ask the team.
But you know, they kind of know because they're kind of Pulling together all the myriad of conversations and and yeah, assessments and kind of board conversations, you know, all sorts of things to, to really kind of distill that down.
But anyway, when you kind of get to those, like, what are those kind of key areas, what we call focus areas on the plan? You're going to focus on oftentimes it's going to be something related to programs.
Oftentimes it's gonna be something related to fundraising.
Maybe, you know, governance or, or staff or kind of people related things.
But then you write a 3 year vision for that.
What do we want our programs to look like in 3 years? What do we want our fundraising to look and feel like? Right? So not just how much money are we raising or not how much You know, like how our programs are impacting people, but like, are they run, you know, consistently, are we're not putting out fires, right.
You know, is everything documented is, you know, when new team members joined the team, do they have clarity about how to really run this program instead of like making it up again, you know, every single time they go there, right.
So getting really clear on what are those look and feel like, and then you come up with some goals.
To say what's, what's one, two, three things that we can do to take us closer to that vision, right? And so when you start to break it down that way, you know, there's really hard problems or things that you've never really been able to solve before.
You know, and maybe you're not, you're, maybe you're never going to reach that particular vision in three years, but you're going to get, you're going to learn something in that and you're going to work towards it.
And so really you know, kind of breaking down strategic planning just into like those kind of core concepts is really impactful for people, for an organization, for a person for a department.
So, yeah, yeah.
So kind of the working backwards.
But, but I Like from, from where you want to be in the, in the future.
So that's really interesting that I, cause I do think like that's a great description of how strategic planning can be so impactful and so meaningful.
When we're looking at measuring our success in meeting these.
So one of the things like I have just often said to people is that, you know, it's, it's easier to see to look how far you've come versus how far you have to go.
So when we're looking at metrics for measuring our success, how do we do that in a way that doesn't overwhelm and but still drives and rewards like.
Something that drives and rewards us as we go through the process.
Yeah, and that's a great question.
We we absolutely think that metrics and, and quantitative measures are really valuable to consider.
But and I think this is actually, this idea is becoming more popular, but, you know, I think everybody thinks that they need to be data driven.
Right.
Everybody, you know, imagine that.
And in larger organizations, they absolutely are.
But the reality for smaller organizations is they don't have enough bandwidth or the tools or the systems to measure all the things that they need to.
And so they can't.
In some ways be data driven, right? And so I, I, we kind of, that doesn't mean you should just ignore data, right.
And never track anything or never, right.
And so it's really this kind of continuum.
I'm probably going to get this wrong, but I've been thinking about a model.
You know, we talked about models before the call started, but you know, there's sort of like, You know, getting organizations from totally a lack of data, maybe to data curious, right.
Or they're just asking questions like what could we possibly measure that is going to help us be clear on this over time.
Right.
So maybe you can be data curious, then you can maybe maybe be data influenced, right.
That like data, you know, quantitative measures can influence your decision making, but still you're going to have to make decisions based on, on gut to some extent, based on Your life experience and that sort of thing.
And then, you know, all the way to data driven.
And I think even when you talk to most organizations, like very few decisions are truly made only based on data.
And when they are, people don't really like those decisions.
Right.
And so it needs to come with a lot of.
You know, smoothing over or, or what have you.
So, so I think that's a start of the answer.
I think just like goal setting, you know, like our perspective, just on, just like goal setting is you got to start somewhere, right? So I would rather have an organization tracking a few things that they have determined are not too onerous.
But, but still.
Are likely to help them answer questions over time.
But just kind of build that, that habit and then kind of layer it on.
But I think it is a really hard thing, especially in small organizations, because there are just so many variables that you, you could just imagine, you know, we should, we should be tracking this KPI.
And in the end, it actually doesn't mean anything.
And so I, I don't have a great answer.
And, and a very, you know, contextual, but I think, you know, start somewhere refine it over time, maybe have a goal, you know, once a once a year to kind of review, like, are these, are these particular and I think it's really important for us to be able to have a conversation about, you know, what are the best quantitative measures, helping us understand if we're on the right path or not.
And just have those conversations.
Yeah, I think that conversation is really, really important.
Like, is this helping us understand? Because it's really been interesting to me as I've worked with a lot of organizations over the years.
They don't always understand why they're collecting the data.
And so, like, they maybe don't collect it well.
Or they collect it and they do nothing with it, you know, kind of like what you said, but it being really meaningful.
And I love it when I talk to an organization and they're like, well, I was talking to somebody yesterday and they said, well, we, we had been tracking this, but that didn't really tell me what I needed to know.
Like if I track they were tracking like, two different types of clients that they had.
One would be at the beginning of an illness and the other one would be after the first round of treatment for the illness.
And so, but they weren't tracking that yet.
And she said, if I track this and I find out which stage they're at, there's actually different opportunities, you know, for people who are, are just newly diagnosed versus those who are survivors and who have completed.
And I was like, yes, like that's a really meaningful way of looking at your data.
So she wasn't just looking at what numbers are we collecting? She had a reason why she might want to segment it.
And so, you know, kind of, I love your Data curious and data influenced all the way to data driven, because we're not always ready, we're not always ready for for every model that we see out there, you know, to be able to implement it.
And when we are a solopreneur or, well, you know, if we are a solo shop for a nonprofit then we just.
You know, being a solopreneur, I can say like, there's just not the capacity.
I can't do it all.
I can't, you know, I can't offer my programming and always do all of the backend stuff really, really well because there's only one of me and we all have capacity.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And in our software, we're starting to we have some metrics tracking.
And one thing that I was going to highlight is that ideally those measures are reported on.
To some extent regularly, you know, with transparency with the staff, if you have it and, and with your board.
So something to keep in mind is, you know, what, what are the things that we can measure, but then also can kind of be, you know, published and, you know, not necessary.
I mean, ideally be held accountable to some extent around it, but also recognizing that there's all these external influences that are going to affect how those things are.
The other thing that we're starting to build and our software is a feature that I'm going to.
Work on the next six months is, is kind of this idea of compound metrics, right? So just because you.
Measure one thing like that number might need to be added to multiply it against something else right in order to really you know, like in the financial world, you know, there's all these different ratios that you can be looking at, you know, your you know your assets versus You know your income right? And so how are you utilizing? Like What impact of the assets that you have, how is that driving revenue? Right.
So just an easy one to talk about.
But there's all these different types of ratios that you can say.
So like just tracking one thing might not be enough.
You might need to be tracking multiple things and kind of doing some equation on there and that starts to get more complicated unless you have the right tools, unless you have the right systems and processes to, to, to track it and measure it and then use it, right.
Yeah.
Yeah, but it is really helpful.
It's really helpful to be able to work with someone who understands some of the cross implications of the data, you know, so that they might be able to recommend ways to utilize the data that you're already collecting in a new way and make it even more meaningful.
You know, when we look at return on investment, return on investment is sometimes very difficult to measure when we're talking about impacting humans.
But there are some other return on investments that are a little bit easier to manage in something that if we have the capacity to, should look a little bit at, right? Like how much per person are we spending or investing, you know, to make this change? Well, you probably have the, the, you have the information about how much you have spent, you know, and how many clients you have.
Like, so just, And it's, it's not a perfect calculation, but if you divide your expenses by the number of people you're able to serve, you can get a rough estimate about the cost per person that's being served.
And you can look at that.
And that's a really helpful metric to be able to say, hey If, if it costs this much per person that we're serving right now, you know, if we want to serve X number of people more, we can guesstimate that it will cost this much more.
Right.
And maybe there's some economies of scale, right.
So it might go down a little bit.
But also if you're tracking that thing over time, and that probably is not that hard to track, right? Yeah, you're already tracking how many how many people you serve and you're already tracking your revenue or expenses You know, is that number going up and down? Right.
And so like, and what, what changes did we make around that? And so some of that, what can be helpful is not only measuring those things, but also kind of going back to the journaling that you talked about on a personal level, you know, making a journal of, we made this decision at this time.
So that way, six months from now, or a year from now, two years from now, when you see this, Dip or the spike, you know, in this chart, why did, why did that happen? I can't remember.
Oh, we can go back to our log of here were some kind of bigger decisions that were made in the organization at this time and hence strategic planning software might be able to help with that.
Cause then you have a log of all the things that were worked on and what you were trying.
But but still that this idea of.
Of just being more, a little more intentional in, in kind of, Logging the quantitative outputs and then the decisions that are happening, you know, at the board and the staff level and see how it changes over time, right.
To better understand your business, better understand how do you, how to serve your communities.
Yeah.
And for the listeners, I have used Qazi.
So I've used the software that Ricky's talking about.
And I think one of the benefits of using something like Qazi is that you have captured, because I think this is the most important piece.
You have captured how you were measuring things and then you're capturing the data.
And using it in that way.
And you can reference back to it because for so many of our small to medium nonprofits, you know, if we experienced turnover that can mean a large portion of our staff, you know, if it's a smaller organization, it could, it could be, if you're a, if you're a staff of three and you turn over one person, that's 33 percent of your organizational memory gone like that.
Right.
And.
So it's really so wonderful when we have captured some of these things so that when the new person refers back to the number or and they ask the question what does this mean They have something to reference and they have something to build from rather than having to really either kind of backfill all of that information.
Cause they're going to have to get the information one way or the other, right? How did we do this? And why are we doing it? And so I think that a COZY is a very, it's a very affordable option for for organizations as a, as a tracking tracking mechanism.
And if If it's not that particular software that they choose Having a software that helps explain the data that you're utilizing is, or having that recorded somewhere institutionally is really vital.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think just in general, the habit of writing things down, you know, here was our plan.
Here's what we were going to measure.
Here's what we didn't measure.
Here was the impact of that.
It goes a long way when there's, when there's turnover and leadership and staff and boards You know, there's typically a six month to a year long process of a board member, even just kind of kind of just understanding the basics of the organization and really how it operates and that sort of thing.
So if you can speed that up, then they're going to more likely to provide their expertise for their guidance or decision making much faster.
Right.
So if you can point them back to things you know, as appropriate, that can be really helpful even on the governance side.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
Right.
The faster we get up to speed, the quicker we're at speed.
So can you tell our listeners where they can find you and learn more about Mission Met and Kazi? Yeah, absolutely.
So, our company website is mission met.
com.
And if you're, you can get to the causey site from there, but causey.
app it's causey.App.
And not super active on LinkedIn right now.
But I I'm kind of taking a little bit of a social media break in the last quarter of this year, but you can connect with me there.
And I Love, love to chat and see if I can help in any way, shape or form.
Awesome.
And then the last question that I, that every expert gets to answer is what is something, a tip or some type of advice that you'd like to give every nonprofit? So in regards to, this is kind of the most impactful thing that when I, And I, you know, beyond the visioning thing that my business partner shared in our planning process, but it's about, it's about goal setting and you know, a lot of people set goals like I want to lose 10 pounds, or I want to lose.
You know, 15 pounds.
And they might even say, okay, I'm going to be, I'm going to use smart.
So I'm going to be specific, measurable, attainable, all those things.
I probably got one wrong already.
So they're like, okay, by this date, I'm going to have lost this amount of weight and, you know, so the problem with that is it doesn't tell you how you're going to do it right.
And it also doesn't.
You know, for something like weight loss, especially sure.
You probably want to fit into a pair of pants or, or, you know, look different slightly, but digging deeper, you really just want to be healthy, right? You want to be.
At a healthy weight for your body type and, and all those kinds of things.
And so it's better to kind of develop what we call or what other people call a process goals, right? So what is, what is a process? What is a, a system that we're going to put in place so that we are healthy, so that we ultimately lose that weight and keep that weight off, right? And so a better goal might be, I'm going to you know, walk 10, 000 steps.
Four days a week.
Or I'm going to meet with, you know, this friend and this friend you know, weekly to go for a jog or a bike ride, or, you know, to lift weights or what have you, right? So being really intentional about setting more processes and systems in place so that that.
And result comes to fruition and and you can make that even better by having somebody who's kind of a champion with you on that, right? So you can, you have somebody else that you are connected to that also can be on that journey with you, right? Cause we, we do so much better work.
We're much happier when we're, you know, kind of making changes.
With others holding them accountable, them holding us accountable.
And so if you can find, you know, some friends to help you in that, you know, weight loss or getting healthy goal all the better, you're more likely to do it.
And so, you know, in our, in our planning process we often coach organizations to have co champions for goals that two people are working together to develop a process and then implement that process.
Oh, I love that.
Yeah.
We work better in community, right? Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
So thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing with our listeners all about strategic planning and goal setting.
This was a great conversation to our listeners.
I hope that you tune in next week and that we'll have more opportunity to learn more about nonprofit work and how to do more, do more work better.
Thanks.
Thanks so much, Sarah.
Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Nonprofit 411.
I hope you found today's conversation as insightful and inspiring as I did.
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