Find Capacity, Find Funders

Last month I spoke to the Grant Professionals Association at their annual conference in Las Vegas about attracting more funders by illustrating to them the power of an investment with your organization.  I have spoken and blogged (here) about this topic before.  It is one of my favorite discussions.  Just as my last post discussed ways to tell a compelling story, the numbers can also tell a compelling story.  

The story is not just for your donors.  It is also for you.  We have illustrated for several organizations where they have unused capacity by analyzing the data and the financial information.  This has led to the expansion of services and reaching new groups with services.  How does this work?

As applicable, we look at the facility usage, staff and volunteer usage, and resource usage to determine maximum capacity.  We determine the percentage of this capacity that is currently used.   The organization is then able to focus on areas where there is room to grow because there is already existing capacity in this area.  They identify the resources needed to use this capacity and can adopt a strategic plan of action.   This plan can be communicated to funders and donors and show them clearly how their investment will fuel the expansion of services.