Frances N. Phillips

If your nonprofit organization is grappling with a move to a new (or its first) office building, you’re facing important decisions. And guess what? You need to write a plan!This effort is likely to have three phases: Planning for your needs Identifying possible locations Analyzing the feasibility of the locations you find How much space and of what kind?

Unlike for-profit businesses, nonprofits can’t evaluate their performance solely by showing a profit at the end of the year or increasing the value of their stock. Indeed, they may generate a budget surplus to invest in their future work, but that isn’t their primary purpose. Some people say that nonprofits have to achieve a “double bottom line,” one in which their finances are healthy and their activities are meeting their goals — what a friend of ours calls “an appropriate balance of mission and resources.

Most startup nonprofit organizations depend on volunteers because money to pay staff is unavailable. But lack of resources isn’t the only thing that drives a nonprofit to operate with an all-volunteer staff. Some nonprofits make a deliberate decision to operate solely with volunteers to contain their costs and to achieve results with a collective effort among people who care deeply enough to contribute their time and energy.

Just like managing your nonprofit’s paid employees, working with volunteers requires attention to management tasks. Volunteers need training and orientation as well as clear, written lists of responsibilities and expectations. Basic expectations for volunteers are easily outlined in a volunteer agreement form.

Even in a small nonprofit organization, you want to establish careful practices about how you handle money and financial documents. If you have a one-person office, creating all the following controls may be impossible, but you should try to implement as many of them as possible: Store checkbooks, savings passbooks, blank checks, financial records, and cash in a locked, secure place.

Before you begin tackling client surveys and media releases for your nonprofit, you need to spend a little time making sure you have a few basic communication tools in place. These tools help you tell your clients, audiences, donors, and the general public who you are and what you do. Here are a few websites that can help you understand and use technology for nonprofit communications and management.

Armed with information about the people who already know about your nonprofit, you’re now ready to extend your reach by defining target groups you want to serve and discovering how best to reach them. In general, it’s better to begin with your current constituents and work to expand within their demographic group or to others who are similar to them.

You may find a needed source of donations for your nonprofit from crowdfunding. Crowd funding (also called crowdsourcing) is a form of online fundraising that can benefit from the social networks you’ve developed. Kickstarter and Indiegogo are two of the best-known crowd-funding sites. Kickstarter is all about projects and isn’t specifically designed for nonprofits.