Nonprofit organizations thrive on achieving their missions and actively work toward initiating change in their communities, regions, and with their constituents. While committing to a cause is an integral driving force that helps them stay afloat, systemic challenges within their organization and the sector are often hard to overcome. In particular, a lack of decent organizational infrastructure, capacity, strategic planning, tools for internal management, weak leadership pipeline, and ineffective use of human resources.
Talking about her experience as an Executive Director of About-Face, Jennifer Berger says, "There is something extremely powerful about being able to push pause on your organization and take a breath, step back, and take a good hard look at it and move forward with clarity." About-Face is a nonprofit organization that equips women with the tools and knowledge to challenge the social norm and question the status quo. In 2017, when the team struggled to achieve their goals, they realized the urgent need to address these challenges. Tapping into resources provided by Mission Met, About-Face expanded its brand, curated marketing strategies, revised its target market, and developed systems to continually improve over the coming years.
Mission Met believes that the nonprofit sector can be stronger by utilizing technology, consultation, and training support to help them achieve long-lasting and greater impact. Thereby facilitating organizations to achieve their goals faster and more efficiently. Eric Ryan, co-founder of Mission Met, set out to transform the conventional perception and practices of strategic planning in nonprofit organizations. He wanted to make it approachable and accessible, broadening the horizons of those who were previously unable to engage.
Apart from consultation, the start-up also offers a software application - Mission Met Center - that allows users to build, track, and execute their strategic plan. Initially, the software was intended to simply be a repository of plans for Eric's consulting practice, his consulting clients, and the nonprofit executives to capture their strategic goals in a simple format. When his clients showed interest in using the software for greater purposes, Eric worked to develop it into an independent application. Over the years, Mission Met has built it into a fully functional strategic planning system that allows anyone to create, modify and share their strategy internally and externally.
The software offers various views of the plan (plan, timeline, presentation), email reminders to report on goal progress, and many other features. The application also includes a calendar feed that allows you to view the plan of an individual or organization in one place. It enables users to organize documents - making it easier for boards and staff to have access to governance and supporting resources.
Nonprofits are a fundamental part of our society and deserve competent, efficient, and effective service. Mission Met's integrated approach allows them to provide services that fit the unique needs of nonprofits, unlike their larger competitors. "We're focused on helping smaller and mid-size organizations develop and execute their strategic plans," says Ricky Chilcott, co-founder of Mission Met.
Supporting nonprofit organizations is an immense task that requires one to be deeply involved in the causes to enable them effectively. Mission Met hopes to help nonprofit agencies and organizations achieve their goals by training their staff and leaders, streamlining their infrastructure, and instilling an execution-oriented culture. They are also working to expand operations overseas to English-speaking countries such as Australia, New Zealand, and Eurpoean countires.
