It's Time to Hibernate or Pivot
Nonprofits and Small Business – It’s Time.
In a video the first week of the crisis I recommended that people quickly pare down expenses and trim as far as they could and consider going into hibernation. I’ve fielded a few calls about hibernation and what that really means and I wanted to share some quick insights.
1. Hibernation may mean laying off staff
I know no one wants to really accept that reality but as a business owner or nonprofit leader your job right now is to ensure you are still around in a few months to quickly get back to work. Sustainability is the goal and should be done with as much humanity as possible. Laying people off is never fun but ensuring there is a home for your services and programs later is essential.
BUT, if you have applied for the PPP – just hold the decision if you can. The back and forth decision making causes more stress.
2. Your mission is the answer to where to focus
You likely have less right now. Less staff, less business, less philanthropic support. Your mission and your strategic plan are where you should find the answers of where to focus. Both provide guard rails and are likely the result of lots of debate and internal work. Just remember - you did the hard work of determining your strategic direction and gaining consensus.. What does that look like in practice? It looks like scaling a new grant program geared toward marginalized communities like CultureWorks did. It looks like doubling down on supporting your artist community like Studio Two Three did. It looks like crafting and creating a tele-therapy plan like ReadyKids did.
3. Contingency Planning + Transparency
Create a contingency plan from here until September that shows cuts and drivers of the cuts – If this, then this. Share with teams and collect feedback. You may find that some employees are able to assume pay cuts and others are not. Consider as your first wave 10% and 25% cut scenarios and then layoff scenarios. Be as conservative as possible with income. But then share with your team. Lots of companies and nonprofits taking the transparent approach have been able to help ease the stress of not knowing what is going on and used the creative brain power of their teams to execute on sustainability plans with less harm.
Pivot is your other pathway
Adapting your business model to stay relevant for the long-term is a pathway to consider. Can you take your lunchroom kitchen and prepare meals and pivot programming that way – can you reinvent the way you deliver services and offer new services of value during this time without significant expense – then by all means do so. The question to ask is, what is it that you do best and can you do more of this? This looks like VPAP digging down into one of the things that makes them so special – visualizations – and applying that to the crisis. It also looks like Peter Paul embracing online tools to stay in contact with families and community members.