Deciding to Outsource

Outsourcing is a type of vertical partnership, where the non-profit transfers an entire business function to a partner. Types of outsourcing include contract manufacturing, Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO), Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and innovation outsourcing (Product design & development).

Better Partnerships

Non-profits form partnerships for a number of different reasons. They provide resources, knowledge and skills, improve cost efficiency, speed time-to-market, open new markets, gain market share, and develop innovations, new products or complementary products.  

Choosing the right business model

How your non-profit organizes, creates and delivers value is your business model.  They can be focused on products, services, subscriptions, licensing, advertising and hybrids.  While determining your strategic position as it relates to your solution, consider your business model too.

Identifying the greatest opportunities

Social impact opportunities become real when you have a solution that leverages your advantages to solve an important problem for a specific under-served population.  Take action on your real social impact by defining the problem, creating a competitive solution, building your advantage and forming the right team.

Innovative Value

The social entrepreneur aims to change and benefit society by creating value. To do this, the non-profit pursues a mission-related impact using its strategic position.  Creating value is done by either cost-savings or offering new solutions or a combination of both.

Strategic Planning

There are many benefits for strategic planning including cost savings, better cash-flow, faster decision making, more efficient resource allocation, improved competitive position, more timely information, more accurate forecasts and reduced feelings of uncertainty.

Strategic Positioning

The value creation of a non-profit is dependent upon its strategic positioning. This means a social entrepreneur must define the position, make trade-offs and forge a fit among all possible activities related to the mission. Your non-profit cannot be all things to all people, so you must choose what not to do.

Satisfying Real Social Needs

After identifying a true social need, social entrepreneurs must determine how to satisfy those needs in the best way.  Once you have determined an innovative solution for your social cause or issue, do a feasibility analysis before proceeding further.

Exploring the greatest market needs

As a social entrepreneur, building a highly successful non-profit you need to introduce a solution with a mission-related impact better than the competitors at a price (time or money) that fits your business model.

Macro-economic change brings opportunity

Three major types of change increase opportunities for non-profits and foundations. They are technological, social and demographic; and political and regulatory changes.  The savvy social entrepreneur can identify the changes on the horizon and strategically position the non-profit to ride the wave of opportunity that advances.

Building the Best Brand

People prefer organizations they know themselves or through family and friends. Beyond that, they also prefer organizations with effective branding efforts. So be thoughtful when investing time and money building a brand.

Complementary Assets

Tangible and intangible resources make up complementary assets, and it's critical for social entrepreneurs to take a complete inventory. Tangible assets are physically measurable like money, equipment and real estate.  Intangible assets are knowledge, relationships and reputation.  Brand recognition and patents straddle the two categories.

Mastering Competitive Advantage for Non-profits

Sustainable competitive advantage benefits non-profits by providing a strategy that is not duplicated by the competition. Achieving competitive advantage requires specific commitments, decisions and actions by the social entrepreneur. A unique mix of five essential components can create a sustainable competitive advantage:

Industry Structure and Life Cycle

Industry structure is a term which summarizes the barriers to entry and the competitive landscape of and industry. It comprises of capital intensity, advertising intensity, firm concentration, and average company size. It is important to evaluate prior to starting a non-profit to determine the feasibility of the mission and model.

Selecting the Best Industry – Demand Conditions

In addition to understanding all the knowledge conditions of a particular industry, the social entrepreneur should identify the demand conditions to determine the chances of success in that particular field. There are three aspects to demand:

Selecting the Best Industry - knowledge conditions

Selecting the best industry to serve, impacts the chances for success. Social entrepreneurs need to identify the knowledge conditions that make an industry favorable.