Are you determined to grow as an organisation and do you have a plan to do it?
How do you determine which service areas your organisation should invest in and what your growth targets are? Importantly - How do you balance growth in impact and growth in revenue?

Mission-led organisations need to focus on delivering both revenue (financial sustainability) and social impact (outcomes that matter to clients of our services). But in an environment of finite resources (and potentially diminishing resources) the question is how to assess where these limited resources should go to achieve growth goals and targets.

One way we have helped clients think about their growth is to review each of their programs across two dimensions using our Strategic Growth Matrix©. The purpose of the Strategic Growth Matrix  is to force critical thinking about each of the services and programs the organisation offers and prioritise resources in a way that best achieves the mission of social impact. Sometimes organisations with lots of revenue and staff can feel their goal is simply to grow as an organisation - more money, more staff. But the Strategic Growth Matrix helps make the social impact goals of the organisation more explicitly reflected in strategy, not just the financial sustainability goals.

We are deep into Government budget time and, particularly in Victoria, there are challenging times ahead. 

In Victoria, it is reported that there will be a 10% cut in spending on public sector wages across the board meaning a $3.6 billion cut over four years. While this may well be limited to ‘back of house’ costs, we know there will be either cuts to services or a narrowing of eligibility for some social programs. We also now know that more than half of all community health organisations are facing 15% cuts to funding that will impact direct services.

So what should we make of the spending restraint/cuts/efficiencies/austerity (choose your word) on the way? How do we try and quarantine our programs?  How do we respond?

At times like this, we believe it is more important than ever to advocate not for your program and service budgets but for your client outcomes. 

The steps you can implement to make sure you are advocating as powerfully as possible for your client outcomes are:

1. Identify those client cohorts for whom you are getting the best results. This means being clear about who your programs support, the things you are trying to achieve for and with them and being able to measure progress;
2. Think about where your growth opportunities are. Where does your mission, your capabilities, skills and resourcing suggest you focus? Where is there growth in demand and need that you can address?; and
3. Build a plan to ‘optimise’ your outcomes in those growth areas. Where there is demand and you have capability you should grow, reallocating resources from where you are less able to.