Scaling Altruism

CHAPTER 1Assess

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

—Jim Collins, “The Stockdale Paradox,” from Good to Great

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

• Understand the value performance benchmarking can bring to your organization;
• Identify the organizational assets and capabilities essential for driving organizational growth and impact; and
• Apply performance benchmarks to your organization to establish a shared understanding among board members and executives around organizational strengths and opportunities for development.

Experienced leaders understand that, before beginning any organizational change effort, there should be a shared understanding of what needs changing—and what doesn't. Therefore, they commonly engage in performance benchmarking exercises, such as SWOT analysis. First developed in the 1960s, traditional SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats)¹ is a simple, self‐explanatory model that examines where the organization is and is not functioning well, what the growth potential is, and what risks might be encountered. While it is probably better than jumping into planning without any preparation at all, as practiced in the nonprofit sector, ...