How can your nonprofit organization increase its impact? According to Gino Wickman, in his book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, organizational success is reliant on vision, people, data, issues, process, and ultimately traction. Wickman’s book, while originally written for businesses, has lots of applications in the nonprofit sector. The first five areas are all pivotal to see organizational growth, but traction is when these pieces come together. This article will focus on how nonprofits can overcome obstacles, improve productivity and achieve organizational traction.

Traction is ultimately reliant on implementation and evolution. The difficulty in the nonprofit sector is the resistance to change while to industry or community evolves. Nonprofit and social impact organizations have the propensity to be resistant to changes in the industry, or to gripe on difficult issues in the community, and this can have a disastrous effect on their ability to grow and develop. Just because things have not historically been done a certain way, implementing strategic change is a good thing.

Motivation is another key factor for achieving traction. While nonprofit employees and volunteers have an intrinsic motivation for their mission, it is important to ensure that motivation focuses on the right tasks and objectives. Otherwise, if motivation is not directed, traction is lost and the organization becomes static. Having a healthy organization with a strong emphasis on open communication and motivating stakeholders on problem-solving and innovation is critical to helping organizations to gain momentum.

In order to achieve traction through implementation, evolution, and motivation, this progress has to be documented. Be sure to conduct annual reviews. In doing so, your organization is likely to find ways to stream-line processes and improve efficiency. When departments are having problems, learning about the problems will help identify where they are and identify ways to reduce their effectiveness.

Likewise, tracking tool or make a list of all the tasks and people involved in achieving them. If you schedule tasks and have clear deadlines, people become accountable to accomplish the objectives. Everyone should know what is in the planning and what is expected of them. By clearly communicating expectations, it is a lot more difficult to overlook the important tasks. It may sound easy, but it takes effort and buy-in to have everyone work on a project or strategic task. Identifying who and when tasks are due will ensure that everyone understands who is responsible and where the responsibility lies.

MyCommunity wants to help your organization achieve traction. We exist to build relationships and tools that equip organizations so they can maximize their impact. Our suite of tools is designed to help organizations of all sizes focus on their mission without worrying about the logistics. We understand the importance of building strong relationships, so we provide the necessary tools to maximize impact and make a difference like our easy-to-use platforms MyDonors and MyVolunteers. Likewise, MyNonprofitCoach equips nonprofits with the training they need to be successful. Schedule a demo for any of our solutions here.

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Sources: https://www.plangoals.com/nonprofit-traction/ and https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2021/11/15/eight-ways-to-improve-productivity-in-day-to-day-nonprofit-operations/?sh=561caadc27ee