Strategy and operations for nonprofits

Unlock a more effective and efficient way to serve

Mastering strategy and operations isn’t just about meeting regulations or preparing for the future. It’s critical for fostering innovation in your nonprofit.

An effective strategy, efficient process and well-managed change can help your organization chart a path to gaining more unrestricted funds, enhancing outcomes and adopting new technology. However, operating at that level can be challenging when navigating limited resources, workforce challenges and a lack of staff continuity.

Wipfli’s operations and strategy services for nonprofits and operations provide the guidance and support you need to improve strategy and operations and build an innovative organization.

Why Wipfli?

Wipfli combines over 45 years of nonprofit experience and best practices to help your organization overcome the challenges preventing you from reaching your objectives.

We offer holistic services that not only examine your planning and processes but can also help with recruitment and retention, financial health and technology. We also focus on relationships, working to deeply understand your people and mission so that our solutions can help you achieve transformational outcomes.

Strategy

Wipfli helps you develop a strategy that’s more than just paper. We provide practical guidance and valuable insight into how you can better serve your mission while keeping your staff and technology aligned.

Wipfli’s team of dedicated facilitators brings extensive nonprofit experience and best practices to help your organization overcome the challenges limiting your outcomes. We build a deep understanding of your organization and mission so that we can tailor our approach, applying the methodology that best fits your critical concerns.

Our team provides three levels of support for nonprofit strategic planning:

Transactional planning: Sustain your current performance by finding new ways to increase efficiency, eliminate waste and improve resource allocation.
Forecasted transformational planning: We help you develop a plan that meets your organization’s future. Our planning process starts by analyzing your performance and comparing it to organizational shifts so that we can better identify the gaps you need to address. We then apply that analysis to develop an actionable plan, including the organizational changes, process changes and infrastructure improvements you may need to make.
Revolutionary transformational planning: Whether you need to expand services or want to develop more unrestricted funding, we can help you innovate and transform to achieve your ideal future state.

In developing your strategy, we can also help you facilitate:

Stakeholder or community needs assessments.
Human-centered design discussions.
Custom survey administration.

Wipfli’s strategy services don’t stop at a paper plan. We work with you throughout your journey, supporting you in implementing strategy effectively and mastering your organizational culture.

Our strategy support services include:

Journey mapping: Our participant, member and technology mapping services can help you understand your strategy through the lens of those you serve.
Enterprise risk management: We help you assess and minimize the potential risks associated with your plan. We can also assist in completing mandated risk assessments.
Implementation: We align your people, technology, culture and operations so that you can achieve a successful strategy implementation.

Wipfli applies holistic ideation and planning to help your organization achieve an effective technology transformation. Our digital advisory team works closely with your staff to understand your goals and mission and develop a technology strategy to accelerate your progress.

We help you use technology to achieve a greater impact through four essential components:

Idea journey: By engaging in collaborative discussions, such as design thinking workshops, our advisors assist you in visualizing technology from the standpoint of participants and members so that you can formulate a strategy for how to better meet their needs.
Technology innovation road map: Our team integrates technology with your mission and vision, guiding you through the software selection process to help ensure you maximize your return on investment (ROI).
CIO advisory: Our outsourced CIO services help shape your organization’s digital strategy at the executive level. Our services can be scaled to your needs, whether you want situation-specific guidance or coaching to help your leadership achieve their full potential.
Program management: Wipfli specializes in helping orchestrate multiple technology initiatives. We work closely with your staff to assess existing project management processes and provide recommendations for improvements.

Operations

Wipfli’s nonprofit operations consulting team applies our history of serving nonprofits to help organizations improve processes and manage change. We help you select the tools you need, identify opportunities to increase efficiency and keep your organization aligned while you change.

Allocate resources effectively and increase efficiency with Wipfli’s process improvement services. Our team works closely with yours to identify opportunities, create an improvement plan and help your people navigate change.

Our services include:

Administrative process improvement: Using root cause analysis tools, we can help you map process steps, identify waste, define your ideal future state and develop the action plan you need to get there.
Automation: By identifying opportunities for automation, we help your team do more with limited resources and staff. We also help you navigate the entire automation process, including establishing requirements, development and testing.
Documentation: Our team works closely with your staff to gather in-depth details about how your organization works to help review, document and optimize your processes.

Wipfli can help your organization choose software that can increase engagement and your impact. We support your team through all stages of the software selection process, helping you carefully evaluate potential solutions so that you get the value and capability your organization needs.

We can support your organization with the following:

Requirements-gathering workshops.
Demonstrations, including provider demo scripts and demo scorecards, so that you can stay focused on high-priority functionality and clearly understand how software can meet your needs during vendor presentations.
Provider due diligence.
Statement of work review and execution.

Wipfli helps guide your staff and minimize disruption during change, including support for:

New technology implementations: See a smoother transition and higher adoption rate with your new technology. Wipfli works with your team to build a strategy that supports staff, provides the necessary training, addresses resistance and clearly communicates about changes.
Mergers and acquisitions: Wipfli can help your organization minimize disruptions, support alignment and navigate complexities with your integration.
Procedural and organizational culture shifts: We help you engage stakeholders and communicate proactively so that new processes, procedures and culture shifts can be implemented effectively.

Wipfli’s project management team is ready to help you achieve better outcomes with your investments. We can support all areas of implementation, including:

Communication.
Critical tasks and task prioritization.
Budgeting.
Alignment.

Wipfli works at the intersection of your organization and software vendors, helping you identify the processes, decision points and data crucial to success. We can also support your organization with education-focused guidance on best practices and system design.

Our team

Marcie Bomberg-Montoya, OCI, OEI

Marcie Bomberg-Montoya brings over 25 years of experience in executive leadership roles in both financial institutions and private enterprise to her engagements. She has developed a high level of proficiency, leading a myriad of complex enterprise-wide endeavors such as mergers and acquisitions, strategic analysis and plan implementation, growth and transformation strategies, as well as innovative product and service development.

Full profile

Courtney Kohler

Courtney P. Kohler is a consultant in Wipfli’s nonprofit and government practice. She has worked directly with vulnerable populations, as well as at the state and national levels, to develop and deliver training programs, build organizational capacity, facilitate transition and planning processes, and identify best practices.

Full profile

Alyson McKinster

Alyson McKinster is an organizational performance consulting manager. She brings a strong skill set in the use of behavioral assessment tools, with a keen focus on understanding people’s motivational drives and needs and how these relate to team dynamics and strategy execution within a business.