Should you do what the nonprofit wants or what the community wants? Before deciding, understand how the outcome impacts each group. There are probably different reasons why the outcome is important to them.

The nonprofit has certain goals it must achieve. How does doing the assigned thing impact this? For the community, why is their version a better outcome? Understanding both equips you to explain the real tradeoffs of one outcome vs another. And, ideally, this creates an opening to explore if what they want is feasible with the nonprofit. It may not be, but you can at least test it out.

EVERYDAY EXAMPLE

A local nonprofit got a grant for new playground equipment. But residents told you what they really needed was better lighting, so the park felt safe to use after work. Taking this input to the nonprofit allowed them to work within the constraints of the grant to reduce the scale of the playground to afford real lighting.

DRIVERS

The tool explored here comes from project management and finance. In these worlds it’s called value and is usually expressed as money or a measurable result like customer satisfaction scores. In everyday life though the reasons can be more subjective, like safety in a playground. So I call them drivers instead: the things that make something important.

There’s more information on drivers in the free UNSTUCK Guide on my pmez.org website.

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