ProInspire Strategy Update 5: Findings from Internal and External Assessment

By Monisha Kapila, Founder and CEO

Last year, ProInspire embarked on a strategy process to define our bold goal and set the course for the organization’s future. Over the past six months, we have conducted an internal and external assessment to better understand our strengths, assets, and the external landscape. A brief summary of our findings so far are available here.

We have identified the following takeaways about the sector in general and our organization in particular:

• Nonprofit organizations face talent challenges across four key areas: recruiting, management support, professional development, and employee growth.
• These challenges are amplified by lack of funder investment, minimal human capital infrastructure, implicit bias, and a compensation model that is not competitive.
• Turnover among emerging leaders, resulting from unclear career paths, perceived management ineffectiveness, and lack of a talent culture, leads to the loss of high performing talent within nonprofit organizations.
• Nonprofits and foundations are starting to prioritize talent and diversity more than ever before, but lack the infrastructure to do so effectively.
• ProInspire’s results around racial/ethnic diversity in our programs are a key strength and present an opportunity for greater impact.

The next steps in our strategy process are to:
1. Conduct primary research around leading options
2. Refine bold goal, strategies, and theory of change
3. Develop implementation plan

As part of our primary research, we want to hear from you to help define our work in the future through this survey. We want to hear from individuals who have worked with ProInspire, and those who have not but could work with us in the future. The survey should take about 10 minutes to complete. As a thank you for your time, we will select four random respondents to the survey to receive a $25 Amazon gift card. Please provide your email address in the final question to be included in the raffle (your email address will not be linked to your survey response). Please respond to the survey by Friday, June 24th so we can use your feedback in defining our strategy.