When Is A Proposal Not Just A Proposal?
Picture of current and former New Initiatives Mercy Corps Team Members. From left to right: Alder Kovaric, Laura Miller, Catherine McMahon, Michael Goldman and Gretchen Ansorge.
Recently I’ve been partnering with a few different teams to put exciting, new strategic plans into action across large organizations. Catherine McMahon's recent LinkedIn post (which features the incredible New Initiatives team at Mercy Corps) reminded me just how powerful it can be to explicitly link program development to strategy realization.
Business development can be used to help sharpen and operationalize your strategy. AND a dynamic, evolving strategy, helps guide use of precious resources - time and money. Here are a few things nonprofit and enterprise leaders can do to encourage these connections:
✅Make brave go / no go decisions. I once made a no-go decision on a multi-million dollar opportunity that our agency was a frontrunner to win - because the work would have seriously undermined our strategic positioning. It was a tough call. But, to my surprise, eventually this became an example we discussed amongst teams to affirm our strategic priorities. And we used those resources to focus on a different proposal opportunity that was much more in line with our long-term goals
✅Carve out time for visioning with partners and government. Don’t let coordination with a range of local stakeholders become perfunctory. Instead, treat proposal design as an opportunity to find strategic alignment together on the larger development issues at hand. This deeper exchange of ideas and priorities will strengthen any single proposal as well as wider strategy implementation.
✅Invest in multi-stakeholder design sessions. When the right stakeholders participate, proposal design sessions are an amazing opportunity to contextualize theoretical solutions; capture wisdom that will improve agency/enterprise-level planning; and - most importantly - help teams explore creative new ways of working across departments in support of the evolving strategy.
✅Consider Calculated (!) Deviations from Funder Guidelines. Funders’ calls for applications can be highly prescriptive. Where your local knowledge and evidence show that a different approach would be more impactful, consider arguing your case in the proposal. If there is an acceptable risk-reward trade off that will significantly advance your strategy.
✅Take a Learning Approach. As a leader, message clearly that a strong design, healthy team and partner engagement, organizational learning, and fun! are more important goals than a single win or loss. Then, after submission, host an after-action session where learning is the top priority. Include partners and staff outside of this one proposal process to get a bigger ‘bang for your buck.’
As Catherine often says, “The best business development activities are where there’s value in the process whether you win or lose!”
Cheering you on in your work toward greater impact!