Effective governance is critical to the success of nonprofit organizations. We help boards understand their roles and responsibilities, improve their effectiveness, and position their organizations for future success.
JFFixler & Associates offers retreat and meeting facilitation, coaching for executive staff and board leadership and brand auditing services that will:
- assess board and organizational effectiveness
- clarify board and staff roles and responsibilities
- develop a plan for improving board governance
- develop a leadership succession plan
- analyze competition
- identify how stakeholders view the organization
- develop an organizational brand, position statement, and key message platform
Case Study:
Anchor Center for Blind Children, Denver, Colorado
The Challenge
Anchor Center for Blind Children, founded in 1982, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing early intervention and education to blind and visually impaired children in Colorado. Recognizing that it had outgrown its current leased facility on the Clayton Campus in Denver, the organization undertook a successful $7.5 million capital campaign to construct a new building. Anchor Center’s leaders understood that the new home for Anchor Center would present a host of new opportunities and challenges to the organization and would push the Center into a growth mode for which they felt unprepared. The organization’s primary challenges were issues related to board governance, lack of a strategic plan, formal brand identity, and clear key messaging.
The Solution
JFFixler & Associates provided comprehensive consultation, facilitation, assessment and coaching services to help Anchor Center prepare for its future. The project involved the services of three Associates and included the following components:
- Organizational Assessment
- Board Assessment
- Board Retreat Facilitation
- Interviews with a broad spectrum of stakeholders
- Competitive Analysis
- Leadership Analysis
- Conducting Discovery Interviews with Key Stakeholders
- Strategic Planning Retreat Facilitation
- Conducting a Brand Audit
- Conducting a Positioning/Branding Workshop
- Creating a Key Message Platform and Marketing Recommendationsa
Results
The board and staff endorsed the strategic and marketing plans and committed to significant organizational change. Highlights of their work included:
- Adopting a three-year strategic plan that addresses critical issues facing the organization.
- Public Positioning
- Programming
- Finances
- Human Capital
- Organizational Operations
- Addressing and clarifying key goals to support the sustainability of the organization, including:
- Succession planning
- Clarifying staff roles and responsibilities
- Volunteer engagement
- Strong board-staff relationships
- Each element of the plan contained a section detailing:
- Initial impact
- Sustained outcomes
- Measurements
- Staffing Impact
- Space, equipment, and technology impact
- Financial impact
- Communication plan
- Each element of the plan contained a section detailing:
- Initial impact
- Sustained outcomes
- Measurements
- Staffing Impact
- Space, equipment, and technology impact
- Financial impact
- Communication plan
- Other critical components of the project included:
- Creating a Board Governance Committee to promote future board development
- New mission, vision, and values statements.
- Developing a formal positioning statement and message platform for the organization which included:
- Formal positioning line
- Top-tier key messages
- Audience-specific messages for parents, donors, and the community
- New logo and graphic standards for the organization.
Impact
In 2007, Anchor Center for Blind Children will celebrate its 25th anniversary with the opening of a unique teaching facility designed specifically for the learning style of children with vision impairments. The organization has renewed self-esteem and an inspired, energized, focused, and more clearly aligned staff and board. Externally, the organization is in its strongest position ever to attract, retain, and grow funders, volunteers, and partners. Finally, Anchor Center for Blind Children has a clearly charted vision, endorsed and supported by board and staff, to set the standard as a nationally recognized leader in early developmental education and support services for young, visually impaired children, their families, and the professionals who serve them.