In recent posts, we’ve touched on creating a marketing plan, developing your brand identity and defining your target audience.

Now, we’ll address setting and implementing SMART goals for your nonprofit.

What are SMART Goals?

SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based:

Specific: Define a precise goal and a clear-cut plan to reach it.

Measurable: Establish metrics and parameters to track the success of your goals and determine where you need to improve.

Attainable: Goals should be challenging enough to motivate your team but shouldn’t be impossible to accomplish within your timeline.

Relevant: Think about why you’re setting a particular goal and how the results will matter in the grand scheme of things. Relevant goals will align with other needs and efforts.

Time-bound: Set a deadline that aligns with the size of your goal and incentivizes your team.

Why SMART Goals are Important for Your Nonprofit

Creating SMART goals allows you to organize a plan for marketing, fundraising and other efforts while defining steps to achieve them. Those goals will vary depending on your cause, resources, staff and projected outcome.

SMART goals can unify your team to work toward a common objective. Tracking the progress of your SMART goals provides you with data to evaluate your success and learn how to adjust for future campaigns.

Creating and Achieving SMART Goals

Analyze the big picture: Do you want to expand your donor base? Are you looking for more volunteers? Do you need to raise a specific amount of money?

Give your goal a value: It’s important to attach a numeric value to your goal, such as a dollar amount or number of volunteers. That focuses your efforts and makes it easy to know how close you are to reaching that goal.

Write it down: Document your process by writing down your ideas and objectives as come to mind. That will keep your team informed as you make progress.

Create steps: Divvy up each objective into smaller tasks. What steps are required to complete each goal? Ensure each team member understands their role by establishing protocols to direct their efforts.

Anticipate obstacles: Planning for potential issues allows you to create strategies to mitigate or avoid them. For instance, what factors could prevent you from raising funds or attracting new donors? Answering those questions lets you quickly address those possible scenarios should they arise.

Set up a timeline: Consider your capacity when setting due dates and a deadline. You may need to temper your expectations if you’re working with limited resources, which is why it’s important to set a marketing budget for your nonprofit. Your deadline should also convey a sense of urgency, though.

Assess your progress: Schedule evaluations to track your progress. Depending on the timeline, you might conduct monthly or weekly assessments to review how far you’ve come and where you need to direct more resources.

Examples of Nonprofit SMART Goals

Your SMART goals should reflect your nonprofit’s objectives. Here are some ideas:

• Secure funding and donations
• Increase your donor base
• Identity and address service gaps
• Implement new services or programs
• Drive donors to your website
• Increase your social media presence
• Build relationships with community partners

MadAveCollective Marketing Solutions for Nonprofits

We’re committed to helping you create and implement a custom marketing plan. Our team will get to know your organization and learn about your mission to support your pursuit of serving others. We’ll take care of the marketing strategy so you can take care of your constituents.

Let’s schedule a meeting. Call 419-725-6500 or send us an email.