Forget multimillion-dollar corporations – your nonprofit needs project management as much as any other organization. Utilizing the principles of project management can help make your nonprofit a resounding success.

Ultimately, the operations of a nonprofit can be boiled down to a series of projects, which need to be managed if they are to be successful. In running your nonprofit, you’re probably already applying some of the principles of project management. However, you might not be using them consistently or in a well-defined manner.

Here’s why you need to beef up your knowledge about project management to make a success of your nonprofit:

Return on investment

Your nonprofit is trying to accomplish huge goals with limited resources, so it’s essential that you get value for money. A lot of your already scarce resources can be wasted by inefficient planning and procurement. This means that, after a successful fundraising project, you could still be in the red.

One of the primary principles of project management is assessing available resources and comparing them with what is required to accomplish your goal. Planning also helps you to save money because it prevents you from exposure to hidden costs when you’re trying to complete a task at the last minute.

Planning

Once you’ve determined your project objectives, you can break it down into a set of manageable tasks with deadlines, which is one of the first things you’ll learn if you undertake PMP certification training. This avoids last-minute hiccups that can derail the project because you had not planned for them.

Project management allows you to set milestones to accomplish on the journey toward project completion. It also allows you to monitor adherence to deadlines so that you can put contingencies in place where there is a delay or bottleneck.

The project planning phase also allows you to run through scenarios of what might go wrong and how you should act to mitigate it. It’s impossible to plan for every eventuality, but at least your planning will take care of the major ones.

Collaboration

A project is only successful when the people involved work together, each contributing their strengths to its completion. This is even more vital in a nonprofit, where you have limited employees due to budgetary constraints.

It might not be possible to have frequent meetings as a team for one of several reasons. There are time constraints and competing priorities that your staff will face daily. Often, your staff could be scattered geographically, making gathering in a central venue very challenging.

The project management approach, together with the right software or tools, means that you don’t need to have endless meetings. By using productivity tools, you can set out the assignments and deadlines, and then monitor progress. All team members involved in the project can see what is happening and where their part slots into the bigger picture.

Greater success

The first time you try using the project management approach might be a challenge. Your team members are not used to the method, and some might resist it. Others will be unfamiliar with the software or tools you’re using, which can add to the problem. You will need to exercise patience to show your team how much better the results will be if they follow your lead. 

Communicate with clarity and regularity if you want to make a success of it. The best approach is to get buy-in from your team members at all levels in the organization. Send the relevant people for training so that they understand how beneficial project management can be. Choose tools and software that best suit your nonprofit and its goals needs.