10 key areas to renew, review and refresh

1. Review your mission

• Do you need to change your mission statement?
• How long has it been since you changed it? Is it up to date?
• What's changed since you wrote it? Your mission must be responsive to changing needs and expectations. Do you have a new competitor; has there been a change of government policy or a shift in demographics?
• Is your mission fully understood? Is it precise enough to be helpful and flexible enough to be forgiving?
• Is your mission keeping the vision alive by focusing board members and staff on the future direction of the organisation?

2. Review your plans

• Is your mission expressed in your strategic plan?
• Do you even have a strategic plan? A business plan? A technology plan? A risk management plan?
• Do these plans reflect the current and future priorities of your organisation? Or does your plan need to be modified to meet new contingencies? The environment may have changed around you, presenting new challenges that require new attitudes and new reactions.
• How do your results compare with the goals, objectives and timeframes stated in your strategic plan? What else needs to be done and by when?

Tip:

Your strategic plan should be for three or five years, with yearly reviews. Your business plan should be re-done each year, with six-monthly reviews, and should be re-done when you are contemplating significant new options or threats - either when applying for new grants or when facing salary hikes.

3. Review your governance

• Is your board on the ball? Are they active in fundraising, networking, marketing and meetings? Do they have their ears to the ground, regularly listening to candid internal and external views of the organisation's performance?
• Do you need to fix your meetings procedures? What will happen if you change the structure of board meetings? Do you need less/more meetings? Shorter/longer meetings? A change in location or time of meetings? To use more technology?
• Do you need to fix your recruitment process? Do you have an open, public process to advertise board vacancies? (If not, check out the Institute of Community Directors Australia's Board Matching Service).
• Are your sub-committees active? Do you have too many sub-committees? Are too few people taking on all the work? Have any sub-committees outlived their usefulness or become redundant?
• Is there a comprehensive induction checklist for incoming board members? Do you have defined term limits for board members, staggered to ensure an appropriate rate of turnover?
• Do you have an agreed process for addressing and resolving conflicts between key personnel at an early stage?
• Is the relationship between the staff and the board satisfactory? Are there clear definitions between these roles or is further training required to reinforce these boundaries?

4. Review your assets

• Do you have any under-used assets, such as surplus space?
• Do you have any over-used assets? Would an upgrade make economic sense?
• Can you get more out of what you've got? For example, can you rent your office, vehicles or technology to other not-for-profit organisations?
• Do you have an assets register that allows you to keep track of your assets and provides a fair estimate of their worth? Have any major assets been independently valuated?
• Do any assets need replacing?

5. Review your budget

• What can you learn from your estimates in last year's budget? Did your costs go up or down? Have there been any external changes that would alter these costs, such as new taxes, rising prices or changed practices?
• How does your strategic plan and business plan compare against the reality of your accounts? Did last year's budget allow you to achieve your objectives comfortably? Was there scope for savings? Are there any changes that could have reduced costs?
• Do your plans for the coming year include any new activities that you expect will result in increased costs?
• How do you plan to bring money into the organisation? What grant applications do you have in at the moment? What is the demand like for your services?
• Are fundraising efforts accurately targeted towards new priority areas and away from less successful projects? Should you abandon much loved programs that have outlived their usefulness and concentrate resources elsewhere?

Tip:

Undertake an independent financial audit at least once a year and act promptly to resolve any concerns that are raised. Although not always legally required, a properly conducted audit of the year's finances assists the board in their forward planning, gives valuable information to potential donors and generally lends credibility to the organisation.

6. Review your personnel

Hold planning sessions involving volunteers and staff at all levels.

• Is your staff (if any) on top of their game?
• Do you need more (or less) staff? Your organisation itself may have changed and may need to expand or shrink.
• Have written position descriptions, discussed and agreed upon on appointment, been reviewed?
• Is staff management adequate? How is morale? Is there enough capacity and commitment within our present staff and management team to achieve our goals?
• Is there a need to schedule further training or staff development? Do board members need to update their skills and become more acquainted with their governance responsibilities? If so, have you considered the Institute of Community Directors Australia's Diploma of Governance or other training courses?
• Are any of your staff or volunteers likely to leave, with or without warning? If so, do you have a succession plan?
• Are any due for long service leave, retirement or promotion?
• Is your volunteer program under control? Can you get more volunteers/more out of your volunteers/more for your volunteers by changing practices? Are you acknowledging and rewarding your volunteers?

Tip:

An integral part of your organisation's annual review and planning is the CEO's performance review. The same person will not remain in that role forever and the head person may well need to change from time to time to suit the changing goals and strategies of the organisation. The board, in partnership with the CEO, should decide the process, timing and form of this review.

7. Review your diary

• How long do you have to meet your goals for the year? Trace an action plan back from events and put advance warning markers on the calendar to give you notice of work peaks and also alert you to when you should start planning for fundraising events.
• Does your action plan include specific responsibilities and timelines for each objective, or who needs to do what and by when?
• Are there any milestones or events coming up on your organisation's calendar this year that you can leverage to boost your profile or raise funds?

8. Review your contacts

• Are your membership, media, donor, and volunteer lists current, complete and correct?
• Are the lists marked with the last date it was updated and the date when you last contacted the person?
• Who do you need to remind of your existence by ringing up to say hello? Have you started approaching potential grantmakers to tell them what you do and what projects you have planned?
• What action do you have planned to build your lists?
• Are your practices geared to elicit and record contact data from every single interaction with every person you come across?
• Does your database contain additional relevant personal information that could help you learn more about your contacts and profile or segment your communications?
• Is your collection of personal information legal? Recent changes to the Privacy Act tightened restrictions on direct marketing so it is more important than ever to make sure your organisation is complying with privacy legislation and other laws that may be applicable. (Here's some more information on privacy)

9. Review your fundraising

• Have you developed a flexible fundraising strategy for the coming year, with an estimated target for each method? What's worked in the past and what hasn't?
• Have you also developed contingency plans? For example, have you anticipated any funding sources that may dry up and indentified other sources of potential funds?
• Have you planned for future events and programs and determined how much money will be needed to support them?
• Have you considered new methods of fundraising, such as crowdfunding?

For more on this see our help sheet on how to refresh your fundraising model.

10. Review your policies

A policy review will also help to ensure board members, staff and volunteers are reminded of their existence and content.

• Is your board guided by clear policies and procedures to ensure decisions are consistent and can be shown to be such? Is there a need for new policies and/or procedures to provide greater guidance for the board?
• Have irritations and inflexibilities been removed from all policies and procedures?
• Depending on the size of your organisation, do you need to appoint a committee to undertake an annual review of all organisational policies and procedures and make recommendations for changes?
• Have you consulted on any changes widely? Remember, policies are unlikely to be supported and adhered to unless people feel they have ownership of them. Consultation may take the form of casual conversations, formal meetings, policy development workshops or email forums.

Tip:

Our free sample policies may assist you reinvigorate your policies and procedures.