What is a good report?
How often have you created a report? For your board maybe, or for a donor? And how many times have you enjoyed this task? One of the reasons why many nonprofits find reporting so tedious is because it is not always clear what the point is for themselves. And many...
What questions to ask in your evaluation?
A good monitoring framework helps you collect relevant information in the implementation of your project. So that you can know how you are doing and what to adjust, if necessary, to do better. At the end of your project, it is time to zoom out a bit and evaluate the...
How can you monitor the quality of your project’s progress?
All donors require a monitoring framework as part of a project proposal. This helps you (and them) monitor progress towards your project results, objectives, and impact. Very often, monitoring focuses on collecting numbers. So in fact you are measuring quantities...
How can you create clarity in your project from the start?
Do you know that feeling when a new project is approved? You want to get going, start implementation straight away! But often it is better to first take a moment to create clarity about your project. So how can you do that? How can you create clarity in your project...
Who owns your projects?
Looking at your work plan you will probably see some projects there. No matter whether your projects are paid by grant making donors, private individuals or your own resources. A project is a project: a set of actions towards a clear end goal starting and ending at...
How can you make sure you use your lessons learned to do better?
Before you finalize the work plan for the year, let’s look at your lessons learned of the past year. How can you make sure you use your lessons learned to do better? Let’s start with your annual work plan Look at your work plan. Which elements are the same or very...
Getting off to a good start of the new year
Let’s look at what you may want to do to make sure you’re getting off to a good start of the new year. Annual work plan You may have created an annual work plan already last year, when you were preparing your annual budget and work plan for approval by the board. Is...
What to include in your annual report
We have looked at why you might need or want to create an annual report. So now it is time to look at what to include in your annual report. A legal obligation If there is a legal obligation, there often are legal minimum requirements for information you must include...
Why you want to create an annual report
This period of the year is a period of reflection and looking back for many people and especially for nonprofits. Especially for those that run year-end donation campaigns, as looking back can be a powerful part of such campaigns. Sharing past impact can help mobilize...
How to go about ensuring completeness of your accounts?
December is for many of us the final month not just of the calendar year but also of the book year, the fiscal year. If you work with finance in your nonprofit, you are focusing on being sure you have all the needed data for closing the book year. So how to go about...